The Canadian Adventure

Part 4 - 28th October 1996

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The latest in a series of reports from t'other side the world, this time featuring the rediscovery of cheese, adventures with electricity and the joys of making beer.

There are still one or two things that set the Canadians apart from me (wearing a Gore-Tex coat with shorts and flip-flops in torrential rainstorms, keeping a 7-11 travelling coffee mug in the boot of the car, having no sense of irony) but the cultural integration is on target and in full swing. I've done a weekly shop in Safeway at half past midnight, a baseball cap is a genuinely sensible alternative to locating a comb, and my first action of the day is to try and get the coffee beans into the grinder without having to open my eyes. I'd like to add that my daily routine continues with a jog to the bread shop followed by a leisurely breakfast on the sundeck with a view of eagles swooping majestically over the mountains, but sadly the confines of 8 to 6 working ensure that coffee-shower-shave-car-coffee-wake-up is more the order of the moment. I can't report any eagles yet, but I’m told that they are there.

In this episode, many of my anecdotes seem to centre around food, to my complete surprise. Some of you will recall my disappointment with the quality of Canadian cheese. Have experimented at length when I first arrived I quickly discovered that I would generally rather eat my own underwear than a piece of the local rubbery tasteless "processed-dairy-based-produce". But all is well again! On Granville Island (which isn’t really an island at all, a bit like London’s own Isle of Dogs), overlooked by the skyscrapers of downtown Vancouver is the biggest concentration of intriguing shops I've ever come across. I'd already covered about half of the acreage one Sunday afternoon when most of the place was closing down for the evening. This time I got there early, in time to see most of Vancouver's touristy craftsmen variously whittling, scraping, and painting. One weather beaten old chap was removing the middle of a tree trunk with an adse the size of my head. The drawings on the wall suggested that he was going to turn it into a totem pole.

Back to the plot - one of the famous establishments of this most marvellous of discoveries is Dussa's Ham & Cheese, nestled in one corner of the stonking great veg market. And it sells the real stuff. Cheese that is yellow and not dark orange. Cheese that is hard and fragrant and not squidgy and lifeless. Cheese that makes your taste buds tango in appreciation. Cheese, in short, that I like. Ironically, when I was at college I spent three years buying Canadian cheddar because it was the best that Sainsbury's had to offer. Now I’m Canada and the stuff is a bugger to find. It's a funny old world.

The weather is getting colder, and the first snowfalls have already settled on the north shore mountains. On Saturday morning it was quite clear and bright, and the tops of them were all sparkly in the sun. I wasn't the only one to have spent a while gazing at them like a wally. Strangely they seem to be really close to you in good weather, then look a long way away when it's hazy. An illusion. Honest.

I also wasn't the only one to be caught out by the electric socket system in my house. Some of you may recall me saying that living rooms often have no built-in lighting over here. Mine is no exception. It does however have loads of sockets, one of which didn’t appear to work. I'd accepted this as dodgy wiring and put a plant in front of it. Anyway, a couple of days ago I was at Richard's place after meeting up with him and Andy Dunn (ex of DSL, now working at Microsoft) and he proudly anounced that he'd purchased a standard lamp at last, and wouldn't have to sit in the dark any more. But the real surprise for myslef and Andy was that he turned it on USING A WALL SWITCH. We all had a socket which didn't work. We all had a light switch which appeared to do nothing. We'd all been fooled by a strange local lighting trick.

To make it worse I'd been having similar games in the bathroom. The razor/hairdrier socket appeared to work about half the time, and I had taken it to be some sort of overload protection coupled with the effects of steam from the shower, although I had noticed that it worked when I got up really early. I'd put up with this, trying to use the TV screen as a mirror to dry my hair with every other day or so. On the same evening as the living room revelation I happened to flick on the bathroom light at the same time as I was looking at the switch. The red 'live' light on the socket came on! The reason it worked early in the morning was because it was darker and I'd had to put the light on then. Later on I didn't bother. This is what you get for emigrating.

What you don't get however, is curry. Well, you have to look a bit harder, to be honest. And the waiters seem really strange with Canadian accents. Food was good though.

One of your good selves had the good taste to give me a couple of Margaret Attwood books before I left. So far it's been a pretty close battle between her and Emily Carr as to who gets the "celebrated local" award. Both of them pop up all over the place with exhibitions, lectures, newly discovered work. Emily became famous with her sculptures and painting inspired by going to live with the Native Peoples. Her work is more visual than Attwood's maybe, but Mags gives the better personal appearances on account of Emily having died a while back. Her career is still moving from strength to strength nonetheless. Great totem thingies too. Hairy masks a speciality.

Curiously Michael J Fox rarely appears on the front of my local paper at all, despite having grown up just down the road. Tamas (husband of Loretta) went to school with MJF's sister apparently. She is making a name for herself as a quality actress in local theatres.

I've been made aware of some fashion points for the winter's impending snowboarding. Dress like Oasis and you're with the in crowd. Apparently when snowboarding first started it was the 'alternative' set who went for it, complete with whatever clothing they could rustle up. The manufacturers of skiwear have cottoned onto this and have now decreed that anyone caught on a snowboard wearing a puffy ski jacket is terminally un-cool. You have to wear clothes that look like they came out of a dustbin, but they'll charge you hundreds of dollars for the kudos you aquire. I wasn't swayed...

On a side note, Paul my unlucky workmate, who has had his car broken into twice since he's been here, had his house broken into on Friday. They took 110 CD's and left only one - What's the Story (Morning Coffee) or whatever. They must have gone to the Vancouver show that the brothers walked out of... They also left his Billy Bragg concert ticket, but took virtually everything else.

Back at the ski show I had a sit in the new Ford 4x4 monster. Without exaggeration the bonnet was at the same height as my neck, and I had to climb to get into it. Vast. I think it had a mere 5 litre engine churning out 280bhp at around 1200rpm or something absurd. Neat electrically controlled seats kept me entertained right up to the point where I saw a three year old poking the knees of an "alive but motionless ski-wear model" to see if she was real or not. I was quite tempted myself...

As you can see, I haven't been on many excursions over the last couple of weeks, but have explored closer to home. Which is where I should go to now I guess - it's either 7.30 or 8.30 - the locals have a very relaxed attitude to when exactly the clocks change !

Mail me some of the goings on from the other side of the pond. Or California. Delete as appropriate.