tony’s blog

With huge effort, we persuaded Sue to visit a DIFFERENT campsite for our annual camp with Bevangarth, after a couple of decades of Port Burwell. Signs were good – hot and humid weather here, so the northern cool at Killbear Point should be a tonic. True, the weather forecast said “sunny periods” … Several times Sue wanted to cancel the trip, with lots of provocation (visitors, Roz sick so us caring for Sausage, work, G20 street closures, etc), but we finally set off at 6.30pm on a beautiful Thursday evening, and Tony’s spirits rose.

Then it got dark, and difficult. We missed the final turning off the highway and almost went to North Bay. By the time we found Killbear it was nearly 10.30pm, and the whole park (880 campsites) was in the charge of just one virgin (Carolyn) in the front office. She was very sweet, but had trouble finding our reservation for site 117 on the computer – she invited us INTO the kiosk away from moskies while she struggled. No good. Then she announces in horror that our campsite has been re-sold!

Because we booked WED-Sun, and didn’t come til Thurs, the computer sold it to someone else on-line. “But we’ve already paid for it!” – ah yes, but we changed our system this year, we re-sell them. Can’t have campers at the door and empty sites a-wasting.

Tony and Sue look mutinous. Carolyn hurriedly radios to a senior, who tiredly agrees to come in. A long pause.

The senior arrives (Carolyn having very apologetically asked us to stand outside again – rules). He massages the computer keyboard with a confident flourish, and assures us that she is right – we’re screwed. Carolyn finds us an empty site (5 km away from #117). “But we’re here with friends! We need to be near them…” Can’t be done, but we can try again tomorrow – well, today (it’s now after midnight). So which campsite are our friends (the Hatts) on? Oh sorry, sir, that’s CONFIDENTIAL. (Deeeep breath, suck it up. Canada, eh?)

By this time things are so bad that we begin to laugh. We drive miles to #511, on a totally different campground, and find we are almost the only residents, no-one within earshot, the moonlit lake glimmering silently between the trees. So we stumble about in the dark, falling over and screaming with laughter, pop up the trailer, eventually find the hydro, make tea, and bed at 1.30am still laughing.

It’s beautifully quiet, just the faint sighing of wind in the trees. We sleep until 9, and Sue bounds up in alarm (must get on) … and then finds she misread the clock, it’s 7am. Ah well, nice day and we’re up now, so tea and dress – let’s go look for some Hatts. They’re up, welcoming, with coffee, and delighted with their beautiful campsite (#62), right on the sand with scenic vista of bay, islands etc. They’re curious – where are you? – and show us campsite 117 next door, which is EMPTY!!

Tony leaps up and drives off in haste to the front office. I don’t care how many people it’s been sold to – if I’m the first one here AND the first one to pay for it, it’s MINE! Different virgin all alone (it’s only 7.30am), consults computer, says no sorry it’s definitely sold. Tony changes tack. “Excuse me, but if I want to get really angry, who should I shout at?” Virgin is baffled, “What?” Tony repeats himself. Virgin stares, and says rather nervously “Er, my boss Jeremy I suppose” – and is relieved to radio him.

Another wait.

Finally Jeremy arrives, young, energetic, charming, and very intelligent. After some minutes struggling with the computer he looks up in amazement and tells Tony site 117 has been sold … to the Hatts!! Boggle. Tony assures him that these very Hatts are sitting drinking coffee in site 62 as we speak. More struggle, and the computer insists that site 62 is not available – yet hasn’t been sold to anyone. Impasse. Computer totally unwilling to change its mind (and probably STILL offering our site to other purchasers on the web).

Oh the joy of talking to the boss! Jeremy waves his hand at Virgin, orders her to make out a “manual” ticket (yes, with pen and paper) for site 62, and voila – back to tell Sue the good news … we’re going to move the trailer all over again. And we settle happily at 117.

But only just in time. Within an hour an angry man appears at #62 saying THEY booked and paid for this site. Bevangarth suddenly speak only Hungarian, with eloquent shrugs. And during the day (Friday), as the camp fills up with weekenders, 3 or 4 more people arrive at #62, glare at them angrily, then drive off. Aren’t computers wonderful?

And we’re so lucky. It rains, then rains, then pours torrents. But B&G are right there, we eat under their tarp, we play bridge in our trailer, we launch their boat during a dry spell, lots of fun. And it’s NOT HOT! (And Tony&Bev took a punt at 5 diamonds, despite both opponents bidding … and made 7).

Definitely worth the travel.

Watching gradual brain failure from the inside is quite interesting. Things get more effort – you tend to give up rather than think it through to work out what day the 29th will be. And in any case it will be here in a second! I now realize my error: in old age life does not gradually slow down and peter out. It speeds up and up, until you can’t keep up with the frenzy and it’s just a blur.

Some of it was always vague. Wandering around Heaven (aka Lee Valley Tools) Tony could buy cutters “with escutcheon”, or “onsrud bit”, or “FrenchTable/RomanOgee”. Duh? Get your filthy ogee out of my escutcheon, you swine!

However, there are still occasional triumphs. Tony wrote a 13-page legal report, then reluctantly submitted it to “Spellcheck” – and there were no errors! He got trapped leaving Toronto in rush-hour (twice) and made it home via Steeles, Derry, Eggers, and Burnhamthorpe, with no time to consult maps, and NO GPS!

And he achieved a long-standing ambition – to find out how taxis get into Trunno airport despite the jams on all the highways. Here it comes! Dundas (5) east, left on anything, right on Eggles, left on Renforth, along the airport perimeter fence, left on Silver Dart Drive … and suddenly you’re looking at signs for Terminal One. In rush-hour that left turn onto Renforth will be a nightmare – but better than the 401.

And another ambition. Sitting in the final session of an African worship music workshop, Tony got called to the microphone to do the bass voice bit, where you chant the same words to provide the rhythm and bass line. Fun!

A colleague Kim was fired, and gave out farewell mugs to her coworkers WITHOUT her name on! Wow, amazing grace. Vic now rents part of a house in Guelph where the upper floor was built before the ground floor. Boggle.

Humans continue to amaze and enthrall. Neighbours have dogs but are busy – so they hire teens to walk their dogs every day. Why bother? At our church’s “party in the park” Tony quietly asked the bass-player to turn up his amp to be audible, whereupon the guitarist had a huge fit and explained to the audience how much he hated people like that who interrupted a band during play. At great length! Tony was shaken. However, a week later the SWAT team were called in because he had barricaded himself in his house to avoid arrest – we meet such interesting people!

Walking Ben along the rail trail Tony keeps left, to avoid being mown down by cyclists appearing silently from behind. EVERYONE else walks on the right. Finally he met another lady on the left, and asked her excitedly why. “Dunno really” she answered, “my dog seems to prefer the left.” Intelligent dog you have, Madam.

A local burger joint advertised “New Chipolet Burgers!” Then it was “Chipotel”. Now it has “Chipolte” one side and “Chipotle” the other. Progress.

Playing golf with an ex-policeman, Tony admired the pretty lake (Medad) next to the golf-course. The guy looked pensive, then explained. A 14-year-old boy had fallen through the ice there, and his 15-year-old buddy had rescued him – but been too exhausted to get out. The policeman had to put on diving gear and retrieve the body … “I can still see him lying there on the bottom in his red checkered shirt”.

Being an examiner for the final MD exam means sitting in a small (pink!!) dungeon in McMaster with a stooge (a “simulated patient”) and having a very nervouse candidate knock on the door every 15 minutes, enter, examine the stooge and leave – with a 2-minute gap. The stooge turned out to be a nice 60-year-old lady from south London, so we had an interesting conversation in 2-minute bursts. Finally Tony got to evangelizing (she was interested), and lo! the next candidate was missing, so we got a full 17 minutes! Thanks, Lord.

Canada is still beautiful, wonderful hot weather and blue skies. On one dog-walk about 150 geese flew over in a single “V” – the biggest I’ve ever seen, occupying about 1/3 of the entire sky. And Matt has built an elaborate gazebo in our garden for Sue, to replace the old tree-house that Tony and Mike built 2 decades ago. But hey – it lasted!

And the Bible (in Greek, and in German) still is fascinating. It occurs to me belatedly that the whole sad United-Church-putrefaction thing has happened before. Jesus must have felt exactly the same about the Pharisees, the cream of Judaism which had somehow curdled into a solid reactionary People-Of-The-Book mass? To see the very best destroyed is very sad.

It occurs to me that being an atheist is very like being self-employed. Living as a Christian is comfortable because you KNOW what the job is, you have secure tenure, you know what the wages are, and the pension scheme is guaranteed. Living as an atheist you have to keep worrying “what job will I do next?”, and “is this the right job for me?”, and “am I getting the rewards I deserve?”, and “what’s going to happen to me when I get old?”

A last question. I appreciate that most Americans were convinced (by their media) that Saddam Hussein was partly responsible for the World Trade Towers attack, and therefore merited invasion and assassination or whatever. But, I wonder, what did they see as the justification for shooting both his sons and gloating over the bullet-holes?

Humans continue to drift into even more stupidity. A whole generation has grown up with MS-Word “correcting” their letters from “re:” to “Re:” and from “cc” to “Cc” – now they actually believe it’s correct. Tony received an invite to “our upcoming Knowledge Exchange Event: Promoting Healthy Living Among Low Income and/or Diverse Ethno-cultural Women” (honestly!). It came from either the “Leadership In Learning Centre” or the “Centre For Innovation And Discovery”. Puke.

The new Chief of Medicine oop noarth is native, and is pushing “traditional healing” as a healthier alternative to psychiatry – and guess where the funds are going? A yob started backing out of the parking lot without looking, almost hit Tony parking in the next slot, and had a huge shout at him (Tony thought rather sadly about natural selection).

But sometimes humans fight back! We have a “wet hostel”, Claremont, in which alcoholics are given wine every hour of the day for free, until they die. (It’s cheaper, cos they don’t cause road accidents and call ambulances and use up court time.) One of the “clients” (ugh) got really ill but miraculously recovered last month. He was so impressed that he’s given up drink … and so have several of his friends! Now the staff are wondering if these clients should be evicted? “You MUST drink zis Vine!!”

A fully-booked flight from Vancouver to Trunna was delayed many hours, and the passengers were delighted by the opportunity to see our country win the Olympic hockey final against the USA. When the flight was called in mid-match, ALL the passengers refused to go, and the plane was obliged to wait an hour on the tarmac until the end of the match!

MoiDeGaulle. a predecessor to Idi Amin, once told the American ambassador loudly and publicly “I want every American out of France forthwith”. The ambassador replied smoothly “Does that include the ones buried here, Mr. President?”

Occasionally there is even supernatural help. The United/Universalist Church of Hamilton (which doesn’t believe in anything much) purchased a German church here, took out the pews etc, but were stuck with a huge cross made into the wall, which they found offensive. So they painted it over. During the next month it gradually reappeared, through the paint! So they painted it over again … and the same thing happened. Three times.

One of Tony’s colleagues oop noarth reminisced about being sent to the Residential School at age 9. (Canadians have been taught that this was the Supreme Evil, on a par with Hitler.) She said it was great! “They had running water, so we didn’t have to carry water from the river every day. AND they had electricity. AND a wood furnace – I went down to the basement to see it – so we didn’t have to gather wood every day.” Bit different from Tony going to boarding-school in 1951 (a decade or two earlier).

Ooh la la – the first cerebrovascular event. Tony gets home with Ben from a walk, sits down, and notices the left side of the world flashing in his left eye – just like when you drive past sun shining through branches, and it flickers on your eye. Went on for about 5 minutes. Alas, this time there won’t be a “deus ex machina” to explain it away, in the shape of Victoria’s pot-muffins.

And Tony had a thought. When his IBS gets bad, he doesn’t get abdominal pain (which is why it took 10 years to get diagnosed). He gets extreme fatigue, weakness, malaise, light-headedness and sometimes vertigo, for hours or days at a time. Hey! IBS runs in families … Do you suppose that some cases of “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” (aka “Myalgic Encephalomyelitis”) might actually be undiagnosed IBS?

On his 69th birthday Tony sat in the Emergency Room of a local hospital for 5 hours with Matt, whose right knee got mysteriously infected. A sobering reminder of hospital life … fluorescent lights, yellow or grey walls, no windows, endless machines, busy people striding past ignoring the patients lying around like beached whales, overhead pages, inscrutable notices (“Raz”…”No unauthorized entry”), and that timeless 24/7 tired-and-dirty feeling you get in airports.

Eventually the ER physician and young acolyte arrive. By this time Matt’s knee has got visibly worse. The ERP is typical – shrewd, decisive, no bedside manner whatever – spends less than 2 minutes, looks at the knee, asks a question, walks out of the room muttering to the acolyte. They’re cross because Matt is HOURS behind with his dose of medication. Funny that – maybe it’s because we’ve been waiting here since 11am? But then Matt gets cutting-edge IV antibiotics for free, and they’re working, so we shouldn’t complain.

And half a dozen different people recognize Tony and shake his hand with a big smile, and chat about the good old days when they worked together. About 10 minutes afterwards, Tony can work out the names of some of them. But he instantly recalls their characters, and what they were like to work with! Surprising how little has changed in 4 years since he retired.

Joke from drunk ER patient: What’s red and tastes like blue paint?* Motto from family pet: when something hits you, if you can’t eat it or hump it, piss on it and walk away. Comment from Nadine (old friend whose trip to France was hugely complicated by her husband’s illness): “We have wonderful vacation photos, but they’re only visible if you can read Xrays and CAT scans”.

Tony’s all ready to bang off angry emails about the withdrawal of funding for his service oop noarth, when they suddenly announce he can do one more trip this Spring. So maybe hold that. It’s to Peawanuck (MFN, Ont) the farthest outpost of his empire, and necessitates a long day (leave house at 6am, arrive there 3pm, work until 10pm). But hey, enjoy – it may be the last! Internet says to expect day temp -15C, night -28C, and sure enough there’s squeaky snow and a howling gale, thank heavens for carpet jeans and workboots.

Chris’s splendid Cambridge friend ffooks (!) visits. He’s set up a business in Madagascar! Gives Tony a visiting-card with a map on it, increasing Tony’s education enormously. Turns out 3 of the elusive Four-Ms are in a straight line! (from L-R: Mozambique, Madagascar, Mauritius, but not Morocco).

Victoria appears in the UoG musical, along with dozens of other half-naked students, all exuding energy, vitality, and enjoyment (and really singing quite well, wow). Our old church has yet ANOTHER conniption over the youth group … old ladies and youth don’t mix well, do they? (Harmony has old ladies of both sexes.)

The march towards gay pride continues. Schools will no longer tell parents when the children will have sex lessons (so you can’t keep your child out of the indoctrination sessions). A leading candidate for Mayor of Hamilton has just adopted a child with his gay partner. A friend Andrew goes to City Hall to get his marriage certificate for his coming wedding, and finds it’s headed “Applicant 1, Applicant 2″! So he scratches them out and puts “Bride”, “Groom” – and gets into a huge argument with the form-filling flunkey for 20 minutes, in front of his amazed fiancee! He basically said “Look, I’m not marrying my dog, I’m a Man marrying a Woman” – which is probably a hate crime. (He prevailed.)

A patient announced that his most enjoyable social outlet was ballroom dancing. Tony looked astonished, so he explained “Er – remember that I’m a nudist, see?”. Oh, yes. I do see.

Tony’s cartoon calendar continues to please: e.g. Carol to Pointy-Haired Boss at committee meeting: “I spent this entire week unscrewing the problems created by your ambiguous communications. Next week I hope to unscrew the problems created by your hiring of morons.” PHB: “Moving on, I’ve made some changes to the budget…” Carol: “There goes April.”

And Roz’s fridge cartoon shows a woman sitting in a prison cell, saying to her cell-mate “There I was, cooking up a storm, pie in the oven, flour everywhere, and he says ‘Who cares about pie-crust, anyhow?’ ….. Apparently I do. Very much.”

*red paint.

Good Friday is perfect, warm, sunny, blue sky, quiet air. Ben and Tony walk down the rail trail past loads of cyclists, joggers, … and find a short old man clutching an empty coffee cup eager to talk. “Look in there, see what I did!” He’s made a back gate from his garden onto the rail trail and it’s open, revealing neatly tilled seedbeds sprouting in dead-straight rows. He explains excitedly that “I made it!” – constructed a roto-tiller from an old discarded machine and an electric motor, “verks be-ooo-tiful!”

His accent is German, but his intonation is not at all – strange mixture. So Tony asks (of course) – and this story pours out.

He’s 84 and Hungarian. At 16 the German army arrive, and take many teenage boys back to Germany. “They gave us army uniforms, and $40 a month”. He rapidly learns German. Three years later the war ended, he returns to Hungary, and finds himself in a suspect group, with different ideas (and language) from the population who had never left. Because he speaks German he works for the railways.

One day a stranger gives him a parcel in Vienna, and offers him money to deliver it to “a friend” in Budapest, who will introduce himself by saying “What a nice day” in a particular way. In Budapest he’s surprised to see the “friend” is the same man! The Russian secret police catch the man, and the railway worker is jailed for 5 years, and forced to work in the mines because he’s small (he says the tunnels were only 80cm high – boggle?) – he shows me the mineworker’s tattoo (a pick and shovel) on his forearm.

But 3 years later the communist uprising changes public feeling, and he’s released – and given a gun and appointed a peace-keeper! “Difficult times – people would pick quarrels, and form lynch-mobs.” But only a few years later (1956) the Russians invade, and there’s chaos.

The Canadians send a delegation to Budapest – who don’t speak Hungarian!! (Typical.) One of them spoke German, and went around asking “Anyone speaks German?” When my story-teller says “Ja” the Canadian tells him “See if you can find some men who would like to go to Canada – I’ll contact you soon”. So he goes into the high-school, and tells boys if you want to go to Canada sign this paper. The same evening the Canadian calls back and says “How many you got?” and he says 252! The Canadian gulps and says OK, have them all ready at 5am tomorrow in the square, I’ll send buses, but make sure only your 252 signed-up people get on the – we won’t have room for more.

Sure enough next morning there are the buses – and a huge crowd of teenagers, many more having heard the rumour. Nasty fights are narrowly avoided. The buses take them to the station, where two empty coaches have been attached to the express from Romania to Paris. The coaches are transferred to another train to Le Havre. A Portuguese cruise-ship has been redirected there to pick them up, and the lads embark to the strains of the Hungarian national anthem (and some tears). The RCMP board the ship in the St. Laurence to take their names … and they’re Canadians! (and shattered by the cold.)

My informant is himself a bit tearful by this time. He recalls fondly how 5 years ago the lads invited him and his wife to a 50th anniversary reunion in Winnipeg. About 30 of them met, coming from all over this continent and all kinds of lifestyles, including a retired police director from a southern State and a retired American army officer.

Maybe I’ll go on asking about accents… GK

A bad day last week. Ouch.

I emailed one son asking if he had photos of any disasters (for my website). He told me to look on the web, and said where. I said that wouldn’t work (copyright). He had an epy, said I was a lazy so-and-so, and should be doing it myself. “After all, you’re retired!”

Then I asked my revered wife if she could think of a good Bible quote showing we’re not going to hell. She had an epy and said I could perfectly well look in a Bible myself, and that I’m a lazy xxxx.

Then I went to another son’s website. I’d spent 2 hours trying to sort out a computer problem and failed, so I emailed him the files and asked him. He’d emailed an answer – yet another epy, saying I’m lazy AND stupid and should be able to sort this out for myself! (And didn’t tell me the answer.)

Tony 0, World 3.

Logic says: they can’t all be wrong. Either I’m lazy, or I ask too many questions, or I ask questions the wrong way. Or all of the above.

Difficult! I’m not lazy – tend to spend too LONG on things. Don’t know how to ask the questions differently – they look OK to me. And I don’t know how to generate less questions – there are so many things I don’t know, and want to know.

The only solution I can see is to dilute the problem. If I can find more people to answer my questions, each of them will get less questions. Right? Photos…my only camera-crazed friend is distracted at present (getting married)…must be someone around. Bible…shouldn’t be a problem, lots of Reverend friends. Computers…mm, that’s tough, must look around carefully. Graysie, possibly?  (Run, Grayzie!) Wish me luck…

Happily, I have found a slogan (thanks Roz) which is TOTALLY mood-congruent:

You must remember:  if the world didn’t suck – we would all fall off.  … Gk

The last trip oop north had an ominous portent – an email saying “the money has run out, so you can’t go up again until the fall”. OK, I know, psychiatry is not very important. And they’re increasing the use of traditional healers.

Huge snowstorm Monday, but Web check-in on Tuesday morning says “on time”. Weather in Attawapiskat looks bit nippy (-27C) so will wear carpet jeans. Arrive in Moosonee OK, but Trudy’s nice boarding-house is full (some conference) so stuck in the Polar Bear lodge. Ah well.

Busy morning Wed at the office, then smooth flight to Att … and wow! Blinding sun on snow, bright blue sky, your nose-hairs start freezing within 15 seconds – that’s cold. Fortunately no wind. Hump bags into back of hospital truck, get driven the kilometre to the hospital happily – to meet a very hostile glare at the entrance. “We’ve got no room for you!” …  “I told that women when she called, we’re full.” Stand there meekly at reception, with bags, nonplussed but immobile. There’s nowhere to go.

Wing Director Cecile arrives, flustered. “We really have no room. The apartment’s full of doctors, the nurses’ residence is full, …” Turns out some idiot brought TWO medical residents with them, and technicians are here to install a fibre-optic link (so we can do psychiatry from Kingston, cheaper). Continue to stand there, with bags.

Our mental health worker arrives at last. “Oh, you’re at the Hookimaw lodge, I booked you.” So call the truckdriver back, wait, load bags back into truck, get driven back down the road to the “lodge” (a set of portables riveted together), get bags, totter up gangway – into another very hostile glare, “We’ve got no room for you. Full.” But I’m booked in? No. Again stand there nonplussed. Large lady goes off into adjoining cubicle, shouts down phone angrily, comes back, repeats the unwelcome-message. I stand there. She softens – “You need somewhere?” – goes back into cubicle, more shouting, comes out, “You’re going to the Koostachin lodge: they’ve got room for one. And don’t let that idiot truck-driver take you to the wrong place – he took someone all the way out to the Kataquapit lodge the other day”

So call driver, wait ages, load bags into truck (good exercise this), get driven back up the road just past the hospital, we bang on door of house, old man finally appears and says … “We’ve got room in the tepee”, pointing to it. Tony starts obediently to shamble towards it, and both men roar with laughter at white stupidity. Turns out there’s another portable, spacious, warm, well-furnished, even milk in the fridge. Mind you, the door-lock was frozen solid, and when Tony grabbed the brass knob his skin froze stuck to it – shame he lost his gloves. And wifi internet! Tony heaves a prayer of thanks, drops bags, grabs computer, strolls back past beautiful huskies to the hospital (it IS cold – look at that husky curled up against a snowbank sun-bathing!), and starts his clinic as though nothing had happened.

Lots of patients. Memorable were a pretty 14-year-old with DISASTROUS acne, and a terminal but quite happy alcoholic dementia, who’s going to keep the nurses busy for the next 10 years. Good luck, ladies. Work until 9pm, trudge back (it’s got colder, the snow squeaks really loudly), discover rasperries have “bled” all over my food cooler, microwave everything in sight (long time since breakfast in Dundas), remember to hang sopping wet towel in bedroom (it’s bone-dry well before morning), sleep safe and sound, but right next to the loud furnace.

Up in more blinding freezing sunshine, marvel at row of huge trucks outside my trailer (there’s less than 2 kilometres of road in this entire town. Guess they’re for the ice road.) Patients until 2pm, then the receptionist triumphantly announces the plane is delayed 90mins … long enough to miss the connection at Timmins. So chat up the nice medical residents (one turns out to have been qualified 5 years – oops), sit in the doc’s quarters doing email for a short while – oh, truckdriver arrives to take us early “in case the plane turns around”. (It stops on its way north to Peawanuck, and on the way back. But if it’s really late it might skip that trip.) Difficult – I leap about emailing and phoning to change my next flight, booking motel in Timmins, cancelling Gerry’s ride home from the airport – and the truckdriver threatens to leave without me. And one resident chooses to sit on the back of the truck (at -25) rather than sit on my lap. Right.

So we spend 2 hours in the airport hut while the plane does go up – but the conversation is animated, and I meet the old RC priest again (he’s been here for nearly 40 years, and is still working hard) and the bishop. And the plane finally takes us to Moosonee (women’s olympic hockey match on the TV – not as accurate passing as the men, I think?) and on to Timmins. “Our” plane to Trunno is just leaving, still has its door open, but we aren’t allowed on (regulations.) Everything in the airport is closed and dark, but we talk our way into sharing someone’s taxi at the door. The resident decides not to join me for supper (beginning to see a pattern here), but nice surprise – I’ve got a private palace! The motel (seedy and huge) has 107 rooms in rows, and ONE behind on its own like a little cottage – mine! Well worth the half-mile walk from reception.

Starving again and it’s 9pm and I’m alone, don’t fancy sitting in a restaurant, so order pizza (and eat it all, oh dear). Notice with surprise that the snow I trod into the carpet isn’t melting … it’s salt! They must have salt-morons here too, just like Hamilton hospitals, who leave huge piles of salt on each doorstep. Hoover it up, feeling very virtuous, then watch “The Bourne Identity” again (love that actor). Hang up TWO huge sopping-wet towels (both dry after a few hours), and sleep in blissful quiet.

Up with the alarm, stroll over for my receipt and breakfast pastry, notice I’m in a shirt and open jacket cos it’s so MILD here (-14C – I’ve been in Canada too long). Make tea – good job I brought those extra tea-bags. Chinese taximan arrives, I explain we’re going to “Cedar Meadows” to pick up Monica (the “resident”) en route, he gets alarmed and asks repeatedly “Is dat matter?” And his radio dispatcher is asking loudly if he’s collecting Dr. Carr. Huge confusion, I can’t hear his words). Turns out some other lady, Martha, called from Cedar Meadows and then left before her taxi arrived. Pick up a happy Monica (nice new hotel, beautiful enclosed grounds with moose and elk etc), get to airport, desks are all closed! Ah yes, plane is “delayed” to 12.30pm – exactly the same time as the NEXT flight to Trunno, what a coincidence …

This time the restaurant’s open, we drink endless tea and get chatting. She’s from India and trained at Mac, and reminds me strongly of Anita (the girl whose disasster inspired me to start the anti-Dawkins website), so we talk about this. She’s intelligent and staunchly agnostic (didn’t realize one could be – I thought they were all vague), so Tony picked up some interesting ideas for the website. And who knows, maybe gave her pause for thought? She’s been an ER physician for 5 years, and hasn’t had a nervous breakdown yet. Impressive. Try in vain to call Gerry AGAIN re arrival time. And finally we’re off, at last. As last month, the plane is full but the stewardess has no less than three seats reserved for her (2A, 2C and the one by the door) as well as the servery – and she hardly sits down at all! Talk to her about this – after all, she’s the only one not paying through the nose for this flight – and she explains the union negotiated this deal after a long fight. Hastily back down – have already discovered the passenger I’m jammed up against is a union steward. Nuf said.

Trunno – stand in snow for a while, then guess Gerry is not coming – call him – yep! He didn’t check his phone messages, came 2 hours ago and left in disgust. Shame. Get ride with interesting Paki taxi-driver, who writes poems about the Bible, and tells me Pakistan is WAY superior to India in freedom of speech and lack of racism. Road is treacherous, and he breaks off to say “ooh, look!” and here is a lady FACING us on the highway coming towards us. She skids gracefully into the central median (a concrete wall) and we miss her. Traffic is sparse … maybe she panicked and jammed on the anchors?

Well, it’s been an exhausting trip, but fun. Wonder if it will be the last? Have written a stroppy email to the Band pointing out no-one is now legally responsible for the patients. Ah well, I feel it is 20 years well-spent. GK

Well, administrators are clever, eh? You visit Moosonee monthly for 20 years. Then you get a message saying “We only have funding for 10 visits per year.” You object, and are told “Nonsense, it’s always been like that.” Then you get an email “No more visits until July” … why? … oh, they counted the June30-July2 visit in BOTH financial years. Of course.

So maybe small-plane fun is coming to a close? Ah well, it was indeed fun. I did web-check-in today for Timmins, and the forecast is “Attawapiskat Wed MORNING -27C”. Wonder what the night temp was? I’m wearing my carpet jeans …

Computers are still fun. With much help from Chris, I battled for a MONTH to rescue my Linux system after it crashed (cos I let it run out of memory during a massive upgrade). Huge problems. Efforts stymied by “Your linux is incompatible with these upgrades” … hell, I’m trying to upgrade! Finally we realized: it had crashed after upgrading itself but BEFORE upgrading the boot-up. So I was booting into the old linux and thinking I was in the new. Duh.

I also like the way that my printers act just like my dog. After printing something, they sit and lick their chops loudly for a minute or two. Something to do with using up as much ink as possible, I think.

The Hebrew-Saturday-breakfast guys are great, but the Hebrew is baffling. May I quote an entire sentence from our book? “Note that the accent meteg is not to be confused with the identically-written accent silluq.” No indeed, by Jove, perish the thought.

Matt continues to have fun, too. The idiotic management erected a stop-sign in the middle of his building-site … and keep on erecting it, each time it gets “accidentally” flattened by Matt’s crew with the gigantic zoom-boom. He hadn’t realized quite how habitual this was becoming, until the z/b driver said one day “Hey Matt, I’ve got a few minutes spare, want me to take out the stop sign?”

And tidying out rooms (Vic’s bedroom) is nostalgic fun. That old ‘electric-plasma-lamp’ we bought Tim still works! I donated it to the rhythm-guitarist’s teenage son, and his dad loved it too. Thanks Vic.

And the world continues to amaze. Went to a fund-raising dinner for the church youth groups, and the teenage girls were wearing Shakespearian costume – as current fashion! (You know, skin-tight black tights and bum-freezer waisted jackets.) Shakespeare had them on men, but they do OK on the ladies.

And Australia has outlawed small breasts! I kid you not. Pix of small-breasted women “could encourage child porn”. See. What next, I wonder?

What are the pervasive mistakes that the world has made? Things that go on and on making life worse for everyone? Here are my favourites – please add your own.

The “qwerty” keyboard was invented to make typing difficult! Ladies were typing too fast on the punch-card machines. It’s made life difficult for 100 years. The ideal keyboard was invented in 1928, but is getting nowhere.

The music “staff” was developed by singing monks. They needed to know how much breath to spend on each note (hence “breve”, “semi-breve” etc), but weren’t too concerned about the pitch – they already knew the tune. So we have musical notation with notes on lines and on spaces (but no relation to black notes and white notes), no use of colour, antique “key-signatures”, and it takes a semi-genius to sight-read most music.

We can’t even write a date! When was 9.11.01? Americans simply cannot believe that anyone would write differently from them, so maybe the rest of the world will have to change?

In my childhood you picked up the phone and waited, and Auntie Connie on the local switchboard said “Number please” (and then “Hallo, dear!”). When the dial was invented, it seemed logical to put ALL the alphabet on it in order, so we have (over here) “mno 6″. Which means that no-one knows how to dial the bus company, who advertize their number as “GET-ON-GO” – are they zeroes or sixes? (The Brits have solved this one.)

A Viennese neurologist, Freud, noted that his anxious patients were neurotic about their penises being too small. Not having the internet, he didn’t realize this was normal, so he concluded that neuroses are all rooted in sexual fears! Two generations of earlier psychiatrists had noticed that demented men masturbate, and (again not realizing it’s normal) concluded that masturbation causes dementia. (We now know it’s caused by watching TV.)

Around 1600 AD a philosopher, Hobbes, rejected the mediaeval idea that man is qualitatively different from animals (men can make conscious decisions, animals can’t). He recognized that there is only a quantitative difference. So he concluded that men can’t make free decisions!!

Similarly, around 1960 Germaine Greer (et al) rejected the double-standard (it’s OK for men to be loud drunk and sexual, but not women). So she decided that women should be like men!

OK, so much for the Universe. Tony went off north again this week. He consulted the web, which said “Highs in Kashechewant: Monday (today) +1C, Tuesday -20C, Wednesday -19C, Thursday -23C” … apparently they knew I was coming? So out with the carpet jeans and woolly shirts.

Wednesday morning seeing patients in Moosonee, a worker comes in and says “Hey, we’re DRIVING to Kash, wanna come?” So up the “ice road” for the first time. I always imagined a road over the lake (the ice freezes several feet thick), but no! They cut a wide path through the trees, bulldoze snow into the cracks and crevices, and then use huge tractor-trailer water-tankers to spread water over the snow to freeze, repeatedly, like a Zamboni. Eventually you have an enormous endless “slide” of ice, varying from 10-40 feet wide, running 200 miles (up to the diamond mine). Occasionally we drove down onto and across a wide river, but mostly it was dead flat gleaming snow (blue sky and sunshine), with straggly small trees often only 6-10 feet tall. No wildlife – I guess at -20C they have better places to go? Must say I didn’t envy our driver when she got out to take a pee.

In this remoteness care is needed. A young man got his welfare cheque (high-light of the month here) on Wednesday, drank it all, cruised off along the river alone on his skidoo, and then decided to sleep, for the last time. The skidoo was fine.

The coastal communities are all less than 100km apart, all around 1000 inhabitants, but have curiously different cultures. This one is quite antinomian. Ground-floor windows get broken unless they are boarded up. The community got a new school bus (hooray for the government), which lasted a month until the kids set fire to it. It’s gone now. A family bequeathed a “jungle-gym” to the school in memory of their son – it lasted 2 weeks. Why are the other communities so much less destructive?

Home life is fun, and we’re planning ye olde familye getawaye. We liked the opening line of the British passport service: “Everyone’s unique. Let’s keep it that way!” Vic continues to slave her fingers to the bone at UoG. She had a lecture at 3pm – when Tony said he would come over for breakfast, she messaged back “Yes, but will that be before or after 3pm?”

Also amusing. Walking Ben, Tony came to a small building labelled “Dental Surgery” with a 10-foot pile of earth piled outside it. Now that’s what I CALL a root canal. Tony picked up his container and shook it to see if there were any sweeteners inside it. There weren’t, then, cos the lid came off and 3,000 tiny white pills sparkled all over the purple carpet. Pills kept appearing from nowhere over the next few days.

Tony’s ladies are mastering Bridge. The bidding last week went (NS have 90 points towards rubber, dealer is South):
1D, pass, pass, (Tony) 2C
pass, pass, 2D, 3C
pass, 4C!, (our hostess) “Wajja mean, FOUR CLUBS?? Gimme back that date square!”
To her credit, she also bid 4D and they made it.

From the Middle East: the Talmud includes the idea of Purgatory . Bad Jews may go to Gehinnom – but after a while they’ll get reprieved. There was some dissension over this. Some objected that good circumcised Jews COULDN’T go to Gehinnom. So an ingenious Rabbi announced that angels would replace the foreskin of really bad Jews (using ones from babies who had died before circumcision), to allow them to enter Gehinnom.

And Randy (who was a missionary in Pakistan) was asked by a friend to “read” the inscription woven into his beautiful expensive Persian rug. He explained that he could only read the letters, he wouldn’t know the language, but agreed to try. He slowly and laboriously sounded out “Ee-ankee – goo – hoome”. GK

[Zamboni  = machine which smooths the ice with water between hockey sessions]

Growing old and spastic has many parts. One is fashion (lack of) – Tony is now the ONLY person he knows with a handkerchief, and is viewed very oddly when he uses it (Sue is appalled – “Cough into your sleeve like everyone else!”). He saw “Avatar” and liked the *slightly* elongated humanoids – and realized they must look truly alien to modern 250-lb Americans.

Another part is of course memory. After searching his computer for ages, Tony gave up and re-wrote his favourite rice-pudding recipe for Vic. When he came to save it, he thought for a moment where it should go … and yep! There it already was from the last time he wrote it.

Yet another is spast. At Timmins airport Tony got a “random search”, and was obliged by a 6′8″ security officer (I asked him) to put ALL the contents of his pockets in a tray. Tony carries a LOT in his pockets when travelling. Then the nice security man assumed the tray was empty, whisked it into the air, and scattered all Tony’s belongings all over the airport. “Nngh-Nngh-Nngh!”

Great when it’s someone else. Tony put Vic on the bus to Long Branch (or sunnink). The driver took her money, gave her a ticket, gave her change, and she said “You do stop at Long Branch, don’t you?” He looked at her in alarm. “Oh, if you’re only going to Long Branch I’ve charged you too much!” So he took back the change, took back the ticket, printed her a new ticket, gave her new change, thought for a moment, and said “Wait – no, I don’t stop at Long Branch, this is the Express”! – took back the change and ticket, and gave her her money back, much to the joy of the impatient line of waiting passengers. (She caught the next bus, and survived.)

And sometimes very fortunate that Tony is getting slower. The inoffensive man in front of him at the food checkout paid for his fruit by credit card. The total cost was $1.23. We were in the Express lane. A younger Tony might well have caused a disturbance.

Hey, I can still do it! Roz wanted teeny batteries charged for Jake’s toy. Tony hasn’t built an electronic gadget for 10 years, and was seriously considering junking all his stuff. Whee! We now have a variable-constant-current charger (0.2 -20mA) running off an old computer power supply. And it has a “visual meter” – four identical LEDs in a row, passing 0.5mA, 2mA, 10mA, and the charging current, so by comparison you can estimate the charging rate.

Yeah, well, sounds great, and it charged Jake’s batteries OK – but the toy didn’t work! Bother.

Technology still fascinates. Roz accidentally emptied the colour cartridge on Tony’s printer. He refilled it, and the printer observed sourly “cartridge in channel one contains non-HP ink”!! Hey, if I want to run my printer on horse-piss, that’s freedom, ennit? And Chris equally sourly noted that “Ubuntu” (name of new Linux distribution) is an ancient tribal word which means “can’t install Debian”. (Sorry, it’s an in-joke, but very funny.) And Sylvia has a blog!! Whoopee.

And church continues to stimulate (partly the pleasure of seeing Roz AND Sue wearing jewellery made by Daneille!) Why did Plonker-John say “One whose sandals I am not worthy to unfasten”? Well, guess what you do immediately after you unfasten someone’s sandals? … You clean them, and carry them around until your master wishes to put them on again – cos you’re his foot-slave, aren’t you! Given the ubiquity of horse and donkey poo, and the total absence of street-sweeping machines, I guess that was a fairly lowly job. GK