Water

Most of my trips to British Columbia had one thing in common apart from work, and that was rain. Joni must not have been at home in BC when she wrote "Sunny Sunday".

Probably further down the Western seaboard than that.

".....California, California I'm comin' home".

Western Canada is called Nothern Temperate Rain Forest for a reason. It rains!

As I sat in another Starbucks on another wet Sunday in Vancouver, I got to musing about water, that thing that seems to be both a curse and a lifeline.

Too little of it and you die of thirst, too much of it and you drown.

While my distant relatives in Selby and York were mopping up the brown sludge from what was left of their carpets and filling in the forms for the insurance, the cattle herdsmen of the Masai Mara in Kenya watched as the the source of their livelihoods fell, starving and dehydrated in to the dust when the rains failed again.

On that Sunday, the forests of BC, the lungs of Western Canada, dripped with the rain of late November. That same rain at some time in past millennia had deluged the vale of York and singularly avoided the Masai.

The forest browns and greens are more vivid when it rains in BC. Not the brown of the Selby sludge, the red-browns of an Autumn turning to Winter on the lower slopes of Mt Seymour. While further up the mountain, we see water in its other forms. Above 500m, the low cloud, the mist, envelopes your car, leaving you peering ahead in to the gloom. Above 650m you hit the snow line. More water. Just a few patches by the roadside at first where the snowploughs piled it up, then slowly, inexorably the landscape becomes arctic, until eventually you lose the road markings and discretion becomes the better part of valour and you retreat down to water in a less hazardous form.

Humans have a fascination with water. Maybe there's some folk memory that tells us we have to worship it. We swim in it, we sail on it, we hurtle down mountains while sliding over it, and some even give birth in it. Canadians freeze it and use it to play hockey on, while the more sedentary of us just go and stare at it. It's far more interesting if it's under the influence of gravity. BC has lots of examples of water and gravity interacting. It has waterfalls that cascade from dizzying heights, two serious ones at least, just on the road from Vancouver to Whistler. Numerous rushing torrents of rivers, and many examples of water and gravity in uneasy equilibrium. The Capillano dam that holds back a reservoir and provides the drinking water for Vancouver, and the sea defenses that stop Richmond being inundated both testify to man's need to control this vital resource. Water uncontrolled floods houses, and drowns children, water controlled provides drinks and electrical power.

We have an uneasy relationship with this most elemental of elements. Divert it and use to much of it and we get the fishing boats of the Aral sea, 20 miles from the coast. Water is in danger of becoming the oil of the 21st century. As we demand more of it, we will need to protect it from our neighbors. Already, territorial disputes are breaking out over access to water. Unlike oil, absolutely no life is possible without it, so the disputes over it will be much more serious.

BC seems to have more than its fair share so maybe Canadians should be grateful for it.

I like to go rambling at Christmas

Every year, I leave it to the last minute to send Christmas cards.

This year is no exception.

Many people have actually come to the conclusion that they are a dying institution in these days of email, internet chat rooms and all that stuff. But for at least for this year I will persist! Perhaps it’s easier for me to send cards because I’ve got fewer to send these days. Whether it’s due to parents, aunts and uncles going “the way of all flesh” or just that with all these massive advances in communications and the decline of Christmas as a “religious duty” we communicate in different ways.

The postal rush could well be consigned, in a few years from now, to the same fate as the Telegram or the Pony Express, with people not needing to have to communicate all in one go, in one mad rush of bonhomie a few days before Christmas. There is frankly, something in the view that a card with “From John” written on the bottom and stuffed in to an envelope once a year is a poor replacement for a regular email, letter, Skype call or phone call.

But I disagree, even if so far my favourite card - replacement greeting this year was from my Aussie mate in Tasmania, who sent me an email with a graphic in red of the words “Merry Christmas” which after five seconds rotated and morphed in to a row of Santas flashing their backsides.

Said Aussie wrote a the bottom “I'm all class, aren't I?”

Beats the whatsit out of reindeers and snowy cottages and just so Australian!

But hey, we live in hectic times, some of you have families and businesses to run, or are just too busy being retired, so you won’t find me complaining if I receive a card with “From Uncle Lionel and Spotty the dog” on it every year, at least I’ll know a couple of things:

You’re still alive

You’ve still got all your marbles

You still think of me at least once a year.

So have a great Christmas whatever you’re up to and do something you've always wanted to but never had the time...

Finding out how things work

I just had a comment by email that only bloggers or Googlers could comment on "Microwaving my Cat" This is all just part of learning the art of Blogging I guess 'cos I didn't realise I had the settings such.


Well I've fixed that now, so feel free to add comments, even anonymous ones.


On the subject of cats, Florence, my wandering soul still continues to do her own thing and disappear for days on end. Fortunately we've found her second home, the local restaurant pub. She must smell the food 'cos inevitably, she pitches up after a few days and is taken in by a nice Polish girl, who, bless her heart, takes her in and looks after her until the owner gets chance to call me, and I duly pitch up with the cat basket.


She seems such a nice girl and doesn't seem to mind looking after Flo, I had to insist she took some money to pay for the cat food she'd gone out and bought.

I feel tempted to give Flo away, but as (like many of the "new Poles" in England,) where her benefactor appears to live, in a tiny room at the back of the pub kitchen, is not really conducive to keeping pets. Not really conducive to keeping anything actually but I guess the working conditions of Eastern European immigrants in the UK is is a reflection for another day.

Fish

Every now and then, a travel story comes around that is:

a) someone elses

b) so much funnier than yours that you wish it was yours,

c) you just have to tell it.

A Few years back our Beloved Company upgraded the Hong Kong Fire and Ambulance Mobile Data system. We sent out our resident radio expert, Simon, a PhD with wicked sense of humour delivered in broad Lancastrian. Amongst the good doctor's myriad useful talents he could do Morse code in Russian, a skill learned during a research career that took him from Sierra Leone to the Russian Arctic. (I'll leave it a an exercise to the reader to work our where he developed his bilingual telegraphic skills, and why this is relevant to the story.) He was accompanied by a fellow North Westerner, a soccer - mad Cumbrian with a penchant for finding amiusement in all things foreign. Apart from collecting the most naff national dolls from every country he visited, foreign languages were a constant source of amusement. I well remember him being in in hysterics in Holland after seeing a series of signs saying "Shlicten zu Lichten". Chris found this funny despite the fact that it means "dip your headlights" (Almost as funny as the Tourist in Spain who after following the signs for 4 hours stopped and asked a policeman when they would be getting to "Cedo El Paso".)

Anyway, returning swiftly from Andalucia to Hong Kong, our intrepid brace of Engineers (What is the collective noun for engineers?) decided to spend a day on the Chinese Mainland. Relaxing from the stress of the colony, and taking in some real Chinese culture. They duly took the ferry, Chris's amusement somewhat blunted by his absolute inability to decipher a single road or shop sign. (For the non - English reader, Cumbrian dialect is rooted Old Norse not Old Mandarin, but for most of the rest of us English it might as well be, but that's another story)

After a few hours of walking round being the only Westerners in town, they decided that it might be a good idea to find lunch. Being good Northern lads, brought up in multicultural Manchester and Wigtown respectively they considered the options for a while, and "decided on a Chinese",

Well, the first problem was to find a restaurant. Unlike Hong Kong, the mainlanders did not like to encourage Westerners by putting "Restaurant" (in English) on the sign outside. After walking in to two private houses and a bank, they noticed two girls standing giggling outside another building, decorated only with indecipherable Chinese characters. They beckoned the boys over, and, still giggling, led them in to a restaurant. Now clearly the girls were having a slow day, and thought that two Western travelers would be good sport. They were led to a table, sat down and handed each a sheet of laminated paper, covered on both sides with a solid block of Chinese Characters. After some thought they decided that this, admittedly ornate, but completely indecipherable sheet must be the menu.

Now in most foreign countries anyone with even a smattering of another language can decipher enough to point vaguely at a menu and not get served donkey's testicles. Even in Finland, it's possible to separate the courses and not accidentally order two portions of "VAT is charged at 18%" and a side dish of "Service is included". Not in mainland China. Its a solid block of Chinese text, no numbers, no separation of the courses.

Donkey's testicles were beginning to look a distinct possibility.

By this time, the two girls we rolling about on the floor with amusement, the grinning now overtaken by laughter, loud enough to bring out the Head Chef, who, after appearing to argue with the girls, also began to laugh loudly.

Well by this time, Northern Man and hunger were taking over. The boys weren't going to be giggled at by two girls, or a chef, Head or otherwise, nor were they going to suffer an ignominious and hungry exit. Suddenly Simon's PhD kicked in, and he walked over to one of the tanks around the walls and pointed animatedly to a fish. Quickly the message was put over, "we'd like fish" and they returned to their table with anticipation.

Well they were pretty pleased with themselves, they'd made contact with another culture, and were going to get a fish supper as well

They continued to chat until an old lady sidled up to Chris with a plastic supermarket carrier bag, and held it out. Chris, lost in animated conversation and thinking it was some type of Chinese lucky dip plunged his hand in to the bag, only to make contact with a cold, wet slimy object that moved when he touched it.

"There's a fucking fish in here!"

He cried (in old Norse) pulling his hand out so rapidly he nearly knocked the old lady off her feet. At this point the old lady looked mortally offended, and thinking the fish she'd brought for them to approve was not good enough, scuttled back to the kitchen, only to return two minutes later with another plastic bag. At this point Simon slid under the table and joined the girls in uncontrollable laughter.

Chris this time smiled gracefully, nodded his head and the old lady smiled, bowed and headed to the kitchen again. They did eat that evening, and I'm sure the two girls tell the story just as often as Simon and Chris.