24/09/05: In which Ben does a lot of sleeping and I suffer from people overload
Tuesday, 20 December, 2005
We slept in far too late to do any of the things mentioned the evening before and, besides, there are people on the way to visit and will arrive by lunchtime—Jack and Lois' daughter, Sandra, their granddaughter, Louise, and their great-granddaughter, Annabelle (who is still in nappies).
Uncle Jack and Auntie Lois' house is very pretty and, I dare say, very English. Auntie Lois is an amazing cook (last night's roast was proof of that) and she makes the best shortbread I have ever eaten. But for all their Englishness, there are still bits of Canada, all around the house, like these ornaments:
The one in front is a male mallard duck (my favourite kind of duck—so colourful. I once had a stuffed toy mallard ... hmm, perhaps I still have it somewhere). The one in the back is a loon—that cool speckled bird which graces the Canadian $1 coin (and that's why they call them “loonies”).
When I got down to the kitchen after getting up and having my shower, everyone else had breakfasted and Auntie Lois had a present for me—my very own copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. The night before she had been telling me about it—how she read it, really enjoyed it and thought of me all the way through it—and when I told her that I hadn't read it, she went out the following morning and bought it for me. This was especially lovely because hardly anybody—not even my husband—buys me books anymore. (When you're a bibliophile I guess it's too hard, unless you are 100% sure they don't have it.)
Ben, who wasn't sleeping very well on this trip with all the strange beds and the jetlag, was still not up. Everyone else (except Auntie Lois) decided to go for the traditional walk by the bay. Apparently Uncle Jack does the walk every morning—he gets up at something like 6 am to do it.
The day was bright and sunny but there was a bit of a bite in the air, absent in the days previous. Peter complained bitterly about the fact that the leaves still hadn't turned autumnal. Of course everyone had their cameras out. Here's a shot of me with my short(er) hair:
Georgian Bay looked choppy and cold. In the winter, often it freezes over and you can walk/skate/ski on it (I've done the latter). Uncle Jack once told me that jetskiers liked to use it as a shortcut but every year some foolhardy person would always fall in when the ice starts to melt.
We walked past the mariner and past the area where they beach the ships in winter. Then we turned back and Uncle Jack pointed out what poison ivy looks like.
At the house I noticed that all the acorns that had fallen off the oaks had been swept to one side of the driveway.
If you want to know what's inside an acorn, this is it:
Back at the house, there was no sign of Sandra, Louise and Annabelle so we sat around and waited—read through things, etc. We had lunch together—sandwiches with the leftover beef from last night's roast. I went and woke Ben who told me that he had a bad back and he hadn't slept very well.
In the afternoon, Sandra, Louise and Annabelle finally arrived, bearing produce from Sandra's garden: beans, cucumbers, tomatoes and cherry tomatoes:
Louise had left her husband, Phil, back home. I think the last time I saw Louise she was in her early teens and now she was all grown up with a little daughter of her own.
Even though it was nice to see everyone, Ben and I were a bit over the whole people thing and we decided to go out for another walk near the bay. It was getting colder now that the sun was going down so we couldn't stay out for very long and had to come back.
When we returned, Sandra's other daughter, Kristina, her husband Aaron, and their two kids, Aliina and Daegan, had arrived—Kristina, when she had heard that we were coming, said that she must come and see us. Kristina is a little bit older than me and I still can't believe she already has two kids. We all sat in the lounge room, talking. I started knitting Lizz's wrap jacket and Aliina was fascinated by my circulate needles.
Auntie Lois made a buffet-style meal for dinner—with roast pork and cooked veggies from Sandra's garden. Everyone ate themselves silly, then I helped wash up. Canadian sink drains are really neat—I've just started seeing them here—they have these stainless steel basket strainers so that, when you turn them one way, they act a plug, stopping the water from going down the drain, and when you turn them the other way, they pop up, allowing the water to go down the drain and all the solid stuff to get trapped in the basket, to be disposed of in the bin. Much more sensible than those pithy sink strainers you get in Australia. In addition, in Canada most people seem to have just one tap head that you can turn left or right for hot or cold water; I don't think I saw a sink with two taps the whole time I was there.
Unfortunately, as I was doing the dishes, Auntie Lois' sink got clogged up. Sandra managed to unclog the drains by pouring baking soda and vinegar into them.
Dessert was chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream (or orange sorbet). We spent the rest of the evening in the lounge and stayed up talking. Finally, Kristina and her family had to go (Aliina was excited about getting to stay in a motel for the first time in her life). After they left, we finally went to bed.
Blinks:
A way of funding writing in the future: pitch and idea and get people to support it.
Place where you can hire play equipment for parties, etc.
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
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Here’s some acorn trivia for you. In “A Midsummer’s Night(s?) Dream”, a character is called an acorn as a term of insult
Having discovered this in Year 8, I promptly used this on fellow schoolmate 