More about Life

Today we had a few peaceful hours without mammals under foot. Basically our kids spend the better part of the day at a kittie rave. A full-on drug festival. An acid mouse party. It's the only thing that explains how they were dozy, red-eyed and barely able to walk when we collected them. And what's more, we paid for the drugs.

Tenzin took something that knocked her out completely, but Borneo, with his singular appetites and dodgy ticker, had to have a completely different cocktail of drugs. Main ingredient in the mix was Ketamine, known on the street as "mean green", "K", "Ket" and "Special K". It's a horse anaesthetic. Well, actually it's lots of things, but it's also a horse anaesthetic. And a recreational drug.

It was quite a party just to get their teeth cleaned. Maybe next time I get my teeth cleaned, I'm going to wink at the dentist and hope I get the same treatment. If not, I'm going to the vet.

Top 5 Cat drug songs
1. Pussy in the Sky with Diamonds – The Beatles
2. Sorted for E's and Catnip – Pulp
3. Smoke Two Joints – Bobcat Marley
4. Ebeneezer Puss – The Shamen
5. Sweet Leaf – Black Tabby

Feel free to add ones I've missed.

Labels: Cats, Drugs, Music, Wildlife

As many of you know, Professor Gray and I live with two creatures of the genus Felis catus. The functions of these creatures are to act as a crude alarm clock, to cover everything in the house with a thin layer of hair and for scientific observation.

Cath and I both have very different disciplines. I am in charge of noting the negative characteristics of the subjects: such as, the frequency and irritation of pitch of their whining; their tendency to believe they are ankle bracelets; and their inability to learn practical lessons from many of their escapades. Professor Gray is in charge of exaggerating their learning and cognitive skills.

Even before our chubby little subjects went on their diets, the overriding concern in their lives was food. Whilst this is true of many animals who, in the wild, don't know where their next meal is coming from, for animals that have never known the wild, rarely go out and are fed pretty damn regularly, this should not be a worry. Yet, Borneo (the male subject) spends his entire waking life whining that he doesn't have food in his bowl. Obviously he does have food in his bowl quite frequently, but it's only ever there for a few seconds before he wolfs it down. This brief period does at least afford the briefest gap in his whining. Borneo has an eating problem.

One of other joys in a cat's life is the stalking, wrestling and torturing of such prey as twine, thread and lengths of string. This of course is also related to food. In the wild, these bits of string would be mice, birds and adorable, little baby rabbits with big eyes and a delightful curiosity. But even cats know that the nutritional value of a bit of string is somewhat below wood shavings and hair (although Borneo does eat a lot of the latter). However the process is so closely linked with the getting of food, even for a cat that has never caught anything bigger than a moth in is life, that once the string has been caught, very often Borneo will drag it down to the kitchen and drop it in his bowl. Because all he knows about food is that this is where it appears.

Professor Gray has hypothesised that this shows rudimentary understanding of currency. Which I guess could be true. But it's more likely he's either treating this as a gift (more able cats often give their owners gifts of disembowelled mice or the badly-chewed heads of adorable, little baby rabbits with big eyes and a delightful curiosity); or that he is using some rudimentary logic along the lines of:

things caught = food;
food lives in bowl;
therefore anything put in the bowl will become food.
(Reductio ad felinus)

It's possible that some dropping of caught string in the bowl has been seemingly rewarded with real food, which may have reinforced this behaviour.

However with true scientific rigour, we do need to prove or disprove the currency theory. Therefore I am creating a whole system of different-length strings that equate to different amounts of food, along with an exchange rate (linked to stock market prices) between the string and other currencies (little squashy balls, catnip mice and shoe laces). So the cat will be paid unemployment benefit of three balls a week and an obesity allowance of one catnip mouse, plus whatever string he's able to hunt, as long as it's under the string-hunting quota of 15 pieces of string a week. Once he's got the hang of this, we'll starting introducing hunting levies and taxation, plus we may have to investigate possible unemployment benefit fraud as hunting could be considered an occupation. Once he has mastered these complications, it's time to make him CEO (or perhaps Main Executive Operating Worker) of his own corporation and see how long it lasts. Although the problem I foresee is that his first role as CEO will almost certainly be to reward himself a huge food bonus.

Who said cats were stupid? Oh, yeah, I did.

Labels: Cats, Science, Wildlife

The usual breakfast maid must have been off today as the coffee was very weak indeed. Or they were expecting British people.

Apres le breakfast, we walked to the end of the hotel grounds and hopped over a disused gate onto a quiet country road. At the end of that, we recalculated and realised the forest we were heading for was further than anticipated, so decided to head up a narrow wooded path. But this soon began showing signs saying, "Private Property," or the French equivalent, and something about dogs. The signs were hand-written, which is always more ominous. After all, people who can afford fancy signs almost certainly have them there to keep you away from their nice stuff. Signs daubed on rough offcuts of wood seem to say, "please don't tempt me."

There was thick woodland all around us, but we found no paths in. The only one we did find ended in a small flat area of overgrown grass that was circled by bags on sticks. All very Projet De La Sorcière Blair.

We headed back along the country road. It took us to the outskirts of the village. At one point, we stopped off at one of those French cemeteries filled with concrete houses and ornate family tombs. In France, the dead often have better homes than many of the living.

One of the great finds this trip was cabécou, a goat cheese that Catherine does very well with. She has problems with cow's milk and sometimes even milks from other dairy creatures. She's not tried aphid milk. Once we found the main part of the village, we hunted around for places to buy this cheese in order to bring it back home and feast on it for the limited period it would keep.

As well as an inordinate number of hairdressers, the town has a vast collection of immobiliers, or estate agents, or (if you are American) real estate agents. I like the suggestion in "immobiliers" that they actually try to stop you moving.

Back at the hotel, our room was being cleaned so we sat and ate chocolate, watching the stream and admiring the bamboo forest. We were somewhat surprised to see a bamboo forest in Europe. Our conclusion was that the owner misses the colonial days of Vietnam or is harbouring a strange and terrible beast from South East Asia. (Perhaps a Malaysian vampire, a Myanma mummy or a Kung Pao Panda.)

After taking showers (pictures withheld) we wandered back into town. We made some young lass's day by spending a small fortune on French glamour in her cute little boutique and in return she told us her aspirations and long-distance relations. We then wandered and settled down by the riverside to paint and write. The sun was out, as it had been most of the day, and the scene was very conducive to artistic pursuits.

However, as we walked back, the rain started to do its thing. I also realised I was a little sunburnt. I burn very easily. My skin has the sunscreen factor of tissue paper. It is made almost exclusively of photolopustre cells that go instantly from bright off-white to a scary shade of lobster.

For dinner we ate at a place we'd seen earlier whose name I don't seem to have written down. However, I noted what we consumed because it was sumptuous: duck gizzards, filet mignon, cabécou, caramel d'Espelette (which I believe were something like caramelised hash browns). For dessert we had pear in wine and a great fruit and sorbet.

One of the key local fruits is the walnut. They use it to make cakes, oil and a great liqueur that we managed to have before pretty much every meal. If it had been available, we'd have had it at breakfast as well.

Wandering back past the Irish bar, we became fully aware of its lack of Irish credentials. The bar was open weekdays and nights, except Friday when it was only open during the day. Saywhatnow? An Irish bar that's not open Friday nights? Are they teetotallers? Is it a kosher thing? We were perplexed.

We walked back through the grounds of our hotel. One old stable had been converted into a games room and inside stood a fine table tennis table (where one could play table tennis tennis). The building was locked, although I'm sure we could have got the key. The trouble is it was so eerily dark and quiet in and around the almost certainly haunted stable, that we decided not to play. Instead we went skinny dipping at the old abandoned quarry. (That last bit wasn't true: we actually simply went to bed at the top of the old, old house.)

Labels: Anthropology, Drink, Europe, Food, Movies, Shopping, Sport, Travel, Wildlife

Since retiring, my parents have become much harder to track down. It doesn't help that some years ago they bought a run-down little farm in the under-populated part of France (i.e. that bit which isn't Paris). So a couple of months of the year they are there, making the place habitable. Which two months of the year is anybody's guess. You never really know until the last minute whether they'll be there or not, because they answer to no one. No one, that is, except the bowls club in their local village.

So it happened that Cath and I who, at the time, were still answerable to the man, or I suppose more accurately, the men, booked our wee trip in advance only to find my parents couldn't be in France then and had to ship back to the UK. We could have gone to my parent's place without them being there, but it was quite a long way to go to end up surrounded by nothing but sheep. So we decided to not stray quite so far from the airport as all that. To this end we selected the village of Le Bugue in the Dordogne.

We flew on Transavia, which is the Dutch equivalent of easyjet. There is a Dutch equivalent of Ryan Air which is locking yourself in a car boot (trunk) and being driven there.

Bergerac airport is one of these tiny airstrips or air fields that have been hurriedly turned into an airport because of the increase in cheap flights. The list of airlines who use it is small and a summary of bargain-basement airlines. Most of which are British. Bergerac as you know was named after an ex alcoholic policeman based on the channel islands (or Les Malvinas as the French call them). A line of portacabins outside the shed where you collect your luggage represent all of the budget car rental companies. The portacabin for our particular firm was populated by a lone Englishman. A small queue formed but it didn't seem to bother him any more than he already was. It was not a great job, but in a country with so many English people with only adequate French, it's a rare "proper" job.

By the time we had our car it was dark. We had a couple of hours' drive along generally pretty good roads and through some great-looking villages before we arrived at Le Bugue. We drove around the village a few times and eventually had to stop and ask in Hotel Le Cygne where OUR hotel was. It seemed very insulting to do that. "Say you, man with a perfectly good hotel, where is the less conveniently-placed one that we picked instead of yours?" But the man was very friendly (and helpful) about it.

Our hotel for the next few days was the Domaine de la Barde, which we picked partly for the name, but mainly for it being a beautiful old place in plush grounds. The receptionist very kindly waited late for us and 'upgraded' us to a very large room in the loft with some curious furniture including a tiny rocking crib. The downside of the room was that the windows were very small but did offer a great view of one of the staff's motorbikes. A tree blocked the sumptuous gardens. On the plus side the bed was solid and firm and the room quiet and dark. We slept like two snug logs in a large ipod.

Labels: Anthropology, Europe, Geography, Transport, Travel, TV, Wildlife

It was time to leave this sleepy paradise and begin our journey back towards civilisation (via the US). We said goodbye to our temporary landlords, from whom we bought a couple of great wildlife pictures, and then drove across the island towards the ferry.

We followed the windy, windy roads, through the mountains and past rain forest and lakes. Shortly after starting out, we got to cross off the last big thing on our holiday to-do list. There in the morning mist, by the side of the road, a mother and baby bear were chewing grass. It was a better sighting than we could have hoped for. Pity we were not able to stop and take a picture, but that's life.

Although there were several bear spotting trips organised in the area we stayed, they all started at about 6 am or before. We were too much on holiday to get up and be active at such a time. Not even for bears. Many of the reasons I am not a religious icon are the tenets by which I live. These would translate religiously as, "If the mountain won't come to Morehammett, then, quite frankly, I'm not going skiing;" and "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. And even then, you try sewing a button on with a camel."

Not long after the bears, we passed another deer. This one was dead. I think we managed 2 dead and one living on the deer front. I never saw this deer; Cath did and uttered, "Oh. Deer," which I heard as "Oh, dear," and didn't relate to the presence of any horned, woodland creatures. Ah homonyms.

One of the interesting things we noticed about signs in this area ("go on," I hear you say) was that the French names for places were usually exactly the same as the English ones. The only exception we saw was Green Point, which, as you guessed, had been translated. To Pointe-Green. Even I can do a better translation than that.

We eventually found our way to Nanaimo and Duke Point ferry terminal. Here we waited for the next boat off the island and had some of the worst coffee ever made. It was hard to say exactly what was wrong with it, but at a guess I'd say: the milk was off, the coffee decaffeinated and it had been stirred with a festering rat foot.

On the island, tannoy (PA) announcements are much more sensitive than those on the mainland. No "ha ha, someone stalled on discharge" here. In fact all the announcements were for the "craft fair." We had time and the tent containing the dozen tables of jewellery, cards and dog-related products was on our way back to the car. Somehow even the term "craft fair" was bigging it up a little.

The ferry trip took 2 hours and I passed some of the time with a soup and a roll which nicely used up our Canadian coins. Then, we discharged without embarrassment and headed south.

After the normality of the island, the mainland seemed weird. We passed llamas and signs telling people not to drive on the central reservation (the way they did in The Blues Brothers). I suppose that's the danger of half the population driving off road vehicles.

The mainland is also not nearly as beautiful as the island. At least that bit wasn't. I think if we'd headed north, it might have been a different story. We passed through a grassy savannah called Prairieland. It was exactly how you picture somewhere called Prairieland. At one point, we even passed two old men sitting on the veranda of an old, wooden house. They were just sitting there watching the cars go by, and, one imagines, spitting into spittoons and muttering that if one of those cars heads this way, they'll reach for the Winchester. This was almost as great as seeing the bears.

Eventually Canada ran out and we joined the line of cars for US customs. The US border patrol has to justify the employment of thousands of men and women who otherwise would clog up the army or mail service. One way they keep them busy is a computer randomly selects people for a search. This is called a "compex" search because the piece of paper they give you says "compex" on it. It all sounds sinister, but the computer side of it, it seems, is not some clever algorithm to find likely people to search, it’s completely random. The computer side of this system would have taken about an hour to develop including testing. Although I suspect the US Government was charged for several months.

How it works is: a man in a Perspex box is told by the computer to direct you over to where a surly man with more gun than charisma tells you to park the car and sends you to an office where someone with no gun but an ability to deal with people makes you wait while he has a quick look over the car for things he knows he won't find because the car has not been selected as a likely source of problems, but randomly by a computer. Many of these people are so hopped up on the thought they are defending their country, they forget that most people coming in are not actually the enemy.

Once the guy with people skills finds nothing amiss, you are free to continue, feeling you've experienced some of that good old-fashioned American hospitality you hear about.

Labels: Americas, Anthropology, Drink, Food, Language, Politics, Transport, Travel, US, War, Wildlife

As the trip was drawing to a sad close, it was time to buy gifts. We spent a small fortune at an Aboriginal store / gallery and then went to a Hitchcockian bakery for lunch. Hitchcockian because here we noticed for the first time that in this town, ravens outnumber gulls. They strut around like they own the place, and quite possibly they do. It's unusual to be in a seaside town with hardly any gulls. It's clear the ravens had taken over.

We had another "slice of life" moment with a lawyer talking to a father and new wife about a child-custody issue with lurid allegations flying from both the father and the absent wife. Do all lawyers in the Americas conduct private meetings in public places? Maybe they all think they're on TV and need an audience. I'm not complaining, but it means that the writer in me needs to hang out in more American cafés. It means that my new legal soap opera, The Bar, set in a bar near law courts, will practically write itself.

That evening we chose the Spotted Bear Bistro to be our place du mange, as the French probably don't put it. We didn't book, but were early enough that we could nab the last non-reserved table. It's a small place that does tasty, well-sculpted food. I had some great duck and Cath some holy butt. Every meal was served with froth. Now before you start asking what is this froth? Is it some crazy American side dish like grits or fries? No, it's basically vegetable (or other) juice whipped up into a frothy pile. Intriguing and very molecularly gastronomic. The name of the place is very molecularly gastronomic as well: they all seem to have names that are .It was clear after tonight that all Tofino restaurants play reggae music while you are eating. The odd thing is that all the local radio stations play exclusively classic rock. I get the remote North American town / classic rock thing. The remote Canadian town restaurant / reggae connection is not so clear. It's probably so they can do all the old jokes when a customer asks things like, "what's this pudding got?" "Jam in."

Despite what is depicted in the literature, the bear illustrations and many totem poles, the local fish of choice is not actually the salmon, but the halibut. The halibut, or holy butt (I kid you not), or hippoglossus (I kid you not), which literally means horse tongue (I'm not sure if I'm kidding you here), is one of the world's favourite flat fishes. But it doesn't have the glamour of the salmon with its quintessential fish shape and heart-warming and -rending struggle upstream to have kids and die. The salmon is the self-sacrificing parent of the piscine world. The halibut is the bottom-lying loafer.

After dinner we took a strole on the beach and watched a large band of kids light a bonfire. It was Friday night and the kids have gotta do something for entertainment.

Labels: Americas, Anthropology, Food, Music, Travel, Wildlife

# posted by Peter More @ 12:23 0 comments

I haven't really said how great the breakfasts were at our bed and breakfast. In fact both the bed and the breakfast were splendid. And I do feel the bath should also have got a mention. But somehow Bed, Bath and Breakfast never caught on. Probably because it sounds like a novelty American store or a doss-house. There was a lot of thought and effort gone into these breakfasts. And our keepers must have got up so early to make them. I couldn't run a bed and breakfast place. Bed and lunch, perhaps. But not bed and breakfast.

As I'd said before this is an area chock full of First Nationals (this doesn't seem to be the correct term, despite seeming like should be) and there are a few places to find out about their culture.

One tribe have organised their own trail (seemingly with some help from the queen who apparently is an expert in the tiimapt and poo-up flowers). The Nuu-chah-nulth trail (previously the Wickaninnish trail) begins with the Wickaninnish Interpretative Centre, which sounds like a dance studio, but is in fact a museum undergoing refurbishment and gift shop. BTW, an interpretation of Wickaninnish is Nuu-chah-nulth.

At the museum we picked up more brochures on what to do in case of bear attack. Apparently it depends on the type of attack. Sometimes you play dead and sometimes you retaliate. And woe betide you do the wrong one. Basically, pregnant or nursing female bears require the opposite tactics to curious male bears. Which all means that the only way to know how to survive a bear attack is to be a competent bear psychologist and gynaecologist. Seems that bears are not the simple picnic-hamper-stealing creatures we all thought.

In one part of the Interpretative Centre, a ranger was giving advice in a strong Scot's accent. I think that made him a Celtic ranger. (That was the kind of joke you should play dead for.) I was disappointed his advice was not something along the lines of "ye be'er no bother a bear wi' bearns." (That was the sort of joke you should attack with a stick.)

First thing you see on the trail is a totem pole donated by the Nuu-chah-nulth tribe. It depicts an eagle standing on a whale which is balancing head-first on top of a bear eating a fish. The Nuu-chah-nulth are presumably circus folk. Although I am pretty certain "Nuu-chah-nulth" was a hit for Bananarama in 1986.

Near the totem pole is a stony beach covered in shell fragments. Here we had another encounter with the mysterious local habit of balancing stones on top of rocks. Apparently it stems from basic First Nations trail signals, and the stones mean things like, "turn left here," "bear seen ahead" and "wasp nest 300 meters South-West in the leaning tree." (You could say they were "really saying something," which is the last Bananarama joke I will ever tell, I promise.)

A little way on there is a barrier with not one but two signs warning you about bears. In this part of Canada, bears seem to be the equivalent of paedophiles in Britain and terrorists in America. I was expecting a sign saying, "Current Security level: Bearcom 3"

For all these warnings, bears seem to be pretty thin on the ground. (Not unlike paedophiles and terrorists.) On no part of the pathway, sorry, trail did we see a single bear, curious, pregnant, male, female or otherwise.

The path, however, was a haven for that neglected and oft vilified member of the animal kingdom, the slug. Give it its own curly home and it's cute. But, homeless, it's disgusting and slimy. People are so shallow.





We never had time to get all the way to the end of the path (at Florencia beach), but we got close. We rested near a couple of surfers who were discussing where the best places to surf were. Surfers, stoners and hackers. All three only ever talk about that one thing they do.

We traversed the trail back to the gift shop and then drove further along the coast to the small town of Uclulet. The exciting part of the trip is that you pass a tsunami hazard zone. Although, I believe tsunamis are actually more scarce than paedophile bear terrorists.

Uclulet is much less quaint and we didn't even stop. (Sorry Uclulettians.) We headed back to Tofino where we took in a gallery of First National stuff, a couple of shops and then ate Thai food at the Schooner restaurant. Here they played a reggae version of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. (This was probably Dub Side of the Moon by the Easy Star All-Stars, who have also redreaded the Beatles and Radiohead.) It worked remarkably well, but then one is famed for being laid-back music beloved by stoners and so is the other.

It was another day with a lack of bears. They must have been off terrorising Americans or hanging outside British schools. Despite this lack, it was quite the wonderful day and could only be rounded off with a bath overlooking the jungle.

Labels: Americas, Anthropology, Art, Food, Music, Sport, Travel, Wildlife

Again I seemed to be on an early schedule and got up and read on the balcony long before Cath and breakfast were served.

First order of the day was to get our clothes cleaned. Hotels charge to clean things about what it costs to buy them and by now we were getting low on fresh clothes. So we found a laundrette; slotted in the clothes, piled in the coins, and waited. We killed some of the time in an outdoor clothing emporium and a tiny little health-food shop that was squatting a much larger closed-down store.

After lunch, we took one of the many trails the island has to offer. We picked the Schooner trail, presumably named after the pub/restaurant. The map warned the trail was "steep in places and passes the community of Esowista, Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation." Well, perhaps it's fairer to say it "noted," rather than "warned." In the olden days a wooden sign painted red would have merely stated "cliffs!!! Injuns!!!"

The trail was not really steep, as Canadians like their trails to be safe. For almost all of it, there was a wooden walkway and inclines were stepped. To me this is not a trail. It's a pathway or promenade. This doesn't mean that it's entirely safe; there were still warnings about bears and signs indicating the dangers of dancing to Bon Jovi albums. Only in Canada are such signs necessary.

The trail led to another great stretch of sandy beach, next to the First Nation community. These were not made up of wigwams, tepees or tupiks but template houses like any other in the North Americas.

After the trail, we headed home and then out again to eat. We chose SoBo which does great world cuisine. I had a mushroom enchilada fit for a gourmet, Mexican hippy.

On the toilet doors, a nautical theme was there to cast no ambiguity over which door to use. The girls had a mermaid and the men a highly phallic conch.

That night we leafed through a magazine highlighting the wildlife photographer of the year and decided to ditch the tiny little pocket camera in favour of finding something with a bit more oomph. There were 12-year-old kids winning categories with far better cameras then we had. Mind you, it turned out in all cases that the parents of these kids were also wildlife photographers. It's not often what you know, but who spawned you.

Labels: Americas, Anthropology, Art, Food, Music, Travel, Wildlife

In our bed and breakfast, the latter is served disturbingly early by our chirpy British hosts. I was still on some Mid Atlantic time so it wasn't an issue for me. But Cath, when she is determined to sleep, could represent her country at the Slumberland Olympics. I wrote on the balcony (that is I wrote on paper whilst on the balcony) and listening to the chirping of chirpy birds and scurrying of scurrying mammals. Setting myself up for the main wildlife event of the day: whale watching.

Whales are contradictions. Lumbering yet intelligent. Fish-shaped yet mammalian. Less fun than dolphins, yet the phrase is "a whale of a time." Dolphins don't even have a phrase. Except perhaps, "dolphin friendly," which ironically means fish dolphins don't hang out with.

That afternoon, we boarded a boat with about 20 or so other tourists armed with water-proof clothes and cameras. The boat then took us to likely and recent whale spots. We were lucky to come across two whales pretty soon into our trip. This was fortunate because we didn't see another whale for the rest of it. The boat hung around the whales for a while we got millions of shots and metres of footage of the whales lying just below the surface and the occasional glimpse of whale tails as they dived down for another serving of cold krill.

Despite not seeing more whales, we did see many beautiful islands, eagles, puffins and big fat sea lion suitably annoyed to be bothered during his afternoon nap.

After the whale expedition, I was feeling somewhat queasy. More to do with the sea than the whales, really. Cath, however was hungry. We went to a place called the Schooner, which looks like another nautical word appropriated from the Dutch, but in Dutch it means "cleaner" as in "more clean" so where not sure where the boat got its name.

The menu had a broad cross section of things. Many of which sounded exciting, although one, something like steamed fish with boiled vegetables. It seemed the sort of thing that would never get picked being in the same column as the crabs and Herb Crusted Salmons.

In there was a couple that excited Catherine because they could pretty much eat nothing. Cath has a couple of allergies and aversions that means she can't just wolf down every thing that happens upon a menu, but these poor souls had to give so many pre-requests before their food was prepared: gluten and dairy free and devoid of nuts. But things weren't so bad they had to order the steamed fish with boiled vegetables. Having got their abridged meal, they complained constantly about it to each other. And they could drink wine, we noted, although they complained about that as well. It was actually heart-warming in a way. It was great that they had found each other.

And before we left, an elderly lady came in and ordered the steamed fish with boiled vegetables which pleased and astounded us no end.

Having eaten too much, we had to walk it off on the beach. Poor us. Here we observed more of Canada's wonderful wildlife. Sand fleas and types of seaweed with which I was not familiar hopped and lay along the sandy shore.

That night we watched Aboriginal TV before going to bed. Yes, there is a channel here called Aboriginal TV. We watched a documentary on a man who became a hockey star, then an alcoholic and then a community leader and hockey coach. It tried its best to be upbeat but somehow failed. But it helped us realise something about Canadian culture: It's all aboot hockey, eh.

Labels: Americas, Anthropology, Drink, Food, Language, Transport, Travel, Wildlife