Regent's Park
London

Miguel has gone to see the Sherlock Holmes museum, I'm sitting in the park, surrounded by dog-walkers and ducks. We're going to catch a train to Gerrard's Cross this afternoon to go to John's, but we're decompressing at the moment. We've been sitting here discussing how I'd like to live in England again, but Miguel finds it claustrophobic and isn't sure he could bear it for very long.

I told him it's ok, and it's just how I always feel when I'm here. We had a good time at Jackie's in Sheffield, we went to Chatsworth and Miguel met the Duchess, wandered around the grounds and wondered how it would have felt to be born into money. Yesterday we went out for lunch at the Olde Cheshire Cheese in Castleton, I took the opportunity to have plaice. We walked up to Peveril Castle and inspected the fortifications. Miguel felt guilty, he said, because Ian would love it so much, so we bought the coloured book to take home to him. Then we went to Iyam, a plague village, and walked round a bit, saw the Celtic Cross which, I think, is the oldest "in place" thing we've seen yet -- 8th century. Then on to Bakewill but not for long, because Mike was cold and couldn't get warm. We actually had a beer in a pub, White Rabbit beer, very nice.

Got to sit with Grannie lots, although most of her conversation revolves around things that happened many eyars ago. She was very tired on Wednesday, hadn't slept well, and a couple of times she asked me if I remembered things that could only have been Mum -- putting violets on her father's coffin -- when I gently said that I didn't remember, she said, "Oh, no, you wouldn't, you would have been quite little, Jan was little." Considering Jan is my mother's older sister... She told me about Auntie Jess dying, and Uncle Harry, and said that she wishes she could just stop with all the medications and let nature take its course. Jackie got annoyed at her line of conversation and wanted her to talk about something else, but Grannie's pretty stubborn still and managed to steer the conversation to Auntie Nora, and how she died.

This morning we hopped a train back to London, and sleepily rode into town again. A few minutes from Marylebone and the train to John's, but first we need to feed Miguel.

We went to Montmartre. Miguel says when we retire he wants to go and sell paintings to tourists, in the square outside Sacre Coeur. It was a beautiful day and the view from up there was amazing, hazy Paris spread out to the horizon. And a minstel in a box on the terrace, playing a piece of music I recognized as one they often had on CBC when I was pregnant with Kirsten. Everyone up there jsut sitting quietly and listening, arms around each other.

Later, the Champs Elysee and the Arc de Triomphe at 11 pm, wavering flame on the tomb of the unknown soldier, cars honking around and around, as we sat out of the wind. We talked about how seeing it in person put everything in place, gave surroundings to all the often-seen pictures.

When we finally returned to the hotel, we found that we only had one (wet) towel -- and not any of the three we had been entrusted with. As we checked out, Miguel told them, as we didn't want to be charged, and the woman at the front desk proceeded to yell at the chambermaid...

Hotel Mauberge
Rue de Mauberge, Paris

It's a little old hotel, about 7 storeys high, only a block or so from the Gare du Nord. High windows and light wood floors, breakfast not included. Yesterday afternoon we set out to walk to Notre Dame, with the rest of the masses. Walked through an interested district -- all wig and hair extension shops, and black people speaking Caribbean-accented French.

Down at Notre Dame we lit a candle for Miguel's grandma at the shrine to Sainte-Jeanne-D'Arc. Then the Latin Quarter for dinner, including onion soup and escargots and very tasty red wine. Behind the bar a happy fellow who sang along to the music and tried out different languages on the patrons. Wandered to the Palais de Luxembourg and sat by the Medici fountain, then got kicked out later by the whistle-blowing gendarmes. "Fermeture, fermeture". So then, still pretty full of red wine, we decide to find the Eiffel Tower, and walk down by the river. When we reached the tower it was lit up magnificently, but we didn't go up, as although Miguel has not been travel-sick he felt the ride sideways up the legs, in the elevator might be too much.

Back across the river, to the Metro. We discuss strategy to get back to Gare du Nord and our hotel, and come up with changing at Strasbourg St-Denis. The machine refuses to take Miguel's visa card, so we scrabble through pockets, wondering if we will have to walk our weary feet all the way back to rue de Mauberge (and when we get there, will the front door be locked) when suddenly a little woman appears in the kiosk next to the machine and everyone who has been standing around doing the same as us rushes her to buy tickets. Miguel manages the transaction: Deux personnes s'il vous plait.

This morning we were slow to start. Pere Lachaise is mentioned, to see Jim Morrison's grave, but dismissed. So, the Louvre. Seasoned now, we take the Metro. 18th and 19th C paintings by French folk turn out to be closed onSundays. This, being our driving force for the visit, invokes no small amount of gloom. La Giaconda, the ubiquitous Mona Lisa, in her new home, is surrounded by bickering Americans. Miguel wonders why I don't want my picture taken in front of her, to prove I was there. I say, "If we've got you, (which we did) I was with you so that that would prove it. And anyway, who would I be telling who wouldn't believe me?"

My favourite bit is 17th C Italian memento mori cartoons -- "Le mort surprise une jeune femme a sa toilette" Death is holding an hourglass, the young woman is primping in a mirror. We take a picture of one cartoon, and then notice the sign saying that picture taking is forbidden in this room (everyone was happily snapping the Mona Lisa, so apparently not everywhere) so we scurry off. Contemplate visiting the Egyptians, but opt for lunch. Chevre sandwich and donair, then a little church where a choir is singing.

We've been trying out our French on people. Some respond in English, but a lot have humoured us, and the waiter at dinner last night told us that the coffee Miguel likes, espresso and hot water, is called "cafe allonge". I just ask for cafe au lait, and I get what I want every time... This afternoon we sat outside at a street cafe and managed to order our respective coffes, then sat in the sun and drank them with some smugness. A wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Miguel is napping, now, but in a bit we're off to see Sacre Coeur and Montmartre. Tomorrow is back to London and on to Sheffield.

There are homeless people here, sleeping over heating grates, and fleets of young Eastern European-looking girls begging, hands outstretched and beseeching noises, outside the stations and cafes.

When we were sitting eating our lunch, outside the little church in the Latin Quarter, we attracted a flock of pigeons. I was telling them to go away, but they weren't listening. A small boy, who had been in the church with his parents, came around the corner, saw the pigeons and set to -- running wildly through the flock and kicking, saying 'waa, waa' and they all flew away.

Sitting on the train to Paris. Miguel is trying to check his email, but we keep going through tunnels...

Yesterday, we walked. Out to the Tate, where Whistler, Turner, and Monet were waiting for us. It was incredible, a hundred pieces from around the world, including some that were series on the same subjects, but to see them would mean going to probably 40 different collections. One of the things that is so wild about seeing all this here is that a lot of the subject matter of the paintings is in London. So we saw a lot of it before going to the Tate, and then wandered around afterwards saying, "He painted that from here maybe?" We want to know where the Savoy was, they all stayed there. In the afternoon, we hit the Tate Modern, and I have to admit I wasn't very reverent. The space is a converted power station, amazing, so huge, the big hall downstairs had a sound thing, you walked through different speaker banks with repeated texts -- "shit in your hat", "work, work, work" -- to what end, I don't know, but cool all the same.

Saw some Alice Neel -- a painting of a man with four penises. Some bizarre thing with paper cut-out people on the floor in a big room, all being swept up by mannequins and put into boxes for recycling. I went to the back of the room and looked towards the entry door -- ten people with their mouths open, staring at a televison suspended from the ceiling, showing a mock commercial for the recycling service. I hadn't watched it for long, I figured it wasn't going to have much to say. However, from the other side of the room looking back, I suspect it is something set up for the amusement of the gallery staff. How long will people wait to see if things are explained?

After a while, we rounded a corner and came across a glass cabinet with two small silver cylinders the only things in it. I told Miguel I was going to write a label and claim it as my art. "Two Cylinders -- Kate C. -- 2005 -- This represents the artist and her husband, and their experience in the vastness of life."

Outside, we ate our cheese sticks and Miguel rashly fed a pigeon. Suddenly there were twelve. We laughed about them eating us like in Monty Python.

Walked on, although it was too late to get admission we wanted to see the Tower of London. then we navigated the Underground, even managed to change trains at Embankment. Unfortunately, although Miguel said he remembered where the Indian restaurant we had identified as a dinner possibility was, it had moved... Found a different although slightly awkward Indian restaurant, and had butter chicken and prawn curry, followed by a beer at the Imperial on Leicester street. Friday night and gangs of roving youth, but mostly harmless.

In about an hour or so we will be in Paris.

Regent's Palace Hotel
Glasshouse St., London

We were tourists, today. We walked among throngs and posed for pictures in front of lions, Eros, Nelson. The National Gallery, where we went as soon as we had dropped our bags at the hotel, proved more evocative than when I was seventeen. I sat for a long time in front of Monet, revelling in light and shadow. Tomorrow, Turner. We anticipate. Buses go by with huge advertisements for the show at the Tate, Whistler/Turner/Monet, we nudge each other. Tomorrow. I pointed out Buckingham Palace but Miguel resisted -- it transpired that I was correct, his hesitation inspired by a feeling that the reality was not ornate enough. I identify what I can, fill in the pieces with my strange childhood recollections -- that's the Duke of York, and he and his ten thousand men went up a hill, but I don't know why.

We had fish and chips for dinner, with brown sauce and fish knives. I explain the use of fish knives -- don't put it down, keep your fork in the other hand. He gamely acquiesces. We discuss, in an unfocused way, how he had no idea there were so very many old buildings stretching on and on, with new bits added on at random. How he thought people would be more smoothly dressed, how cosmopolitan London is.

We discuss the fact, while walking back from the Palace in the dark, that we are now too old to move to London and be young and hip. We settle for tourist.

On the Underground this morning, we are stopped at Knightsbridge and the station is evacuated due to some unspecified emergency. Everyone obediently streams out into the street and heads for Green Park. We find our way slowly to the hotel.

Tonight, there is Ribena. And Hula Hoops and Milky Way bars. Food of my childhood. Our room is the size of a shoebox but it has a bed. We are in London.

tomorrow in foods class, Kirsten will be making grilled cheese sandwiches. I told her that when I was in high school my Home Ec teacher was a very large lady, and she said that her teacher is also voluminous. She said that her teacher eats most of what they cook, to test it, you know. And I was thinking, what a cool job; forcing teenagers to feed you. Sweet revenge.

Well. I've been wading through statistical research methods for over a month now, struggling frantically to put together a paper that makes sense so that I could pretend I knew what I was talking about. The paper was due on Thursday, and on Tuesday I went to class and the professor decided that TWO DAYS before the paper was due was a good time to talk about EXACTLY what he wanted us to do for the paper. Needless to say, without prior direction I had not done half of it, had gotten a wrong-headed notion about some of the applicable tests, and had to stay up all night Tuesday in order to hand it in as planned on Wednesday afternoon. (I'm not on campus on Thursdays).

I'm too old for all-nighters, and of course on Wednesday I had to go get on buses and ferries and skytrains for the trek to Burnaby. It was spring break for the kids, and when I was wandering around the house after 90 minutes sleep Wednesday morning, Kirsten said to me, "Why don't you take Rachel to school with you, she can be your guide dog, since you're stunned". So I did, and we had a very nice day. I just went up and handed in my paper, which Rachel thought was funny; "We came all the way up here to staple your paper in the library and put it in a box???" I took her to MacDonalds for lunch, her choice, and we were early back to Horseshoe Bay to catch the ferry, and she played on the playground for a while. One of the cool things I discovered earlier this term is that since both my lectures are in the big halls, the university records the lectures and puts them on the net, so I can listen to them at my leisure if I don't feel like going. I still have to go to my seminars and labs, but on Wednesdays all I have had is the one lecture, so I've skipped it quite a bit and listened to it at home. There's no video, but the audio's good, and it's great to be able to pause, and to be able to sit in my pajamas with all my stuff spread out, instead of in a little seat with a tiny table surrounded by people who talk and fidget and smell of perfume...

However. I am almost done. Next Monday and Tuesday are my last exams, for which I am studying pretty hard as they're both hard courses. Then next Wednesday Miguel and I are going to England, to see my Grannie. And some art galleries, including the Whistler/Turner/Monet exhibition at the Tate in London. We're only going for ten days, as I can't see leaving the kids with my parents longer than that. Then I have to come back and look for work.

A few years ago I read The Nazi Doctors by Robert Jay Lifton. If you're interested at all in the way that humans can commit atrocities against other humans, I highly recommend it. Despite being a very thick book, it is very engrossing.

During my research for a stats paper I'm supposed to be writing, I came across this.
It backs up a lot of Lifton's ideas, as to the rise of Nazi-style thought and action being reproducible at any time in human history if the infrastructure and public opinion is right... In other words, the Nazis were not merely a random group of psychopaths, but what they were was woven into the fabric of their society.

I got locked out from this thing for a few weeks, finally figured out how to get back in...

Kirsten is babysitting tonight, for a family down the street. She's almost 14, and it doesn't seem like ten minutes since I was that age, setting out to spend the evening looking after someone else's kids. I walked her down, as it's dark, and as I was walking back I was thinking about how hard it is to turn them loose on the world.

Enchanting a buffalo ... A buffalo that escaped from an auction in Rapid City, S.D., ended up in a dressing room at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center where it spent a couple of hours gazing into a mirror. The animal had jumped over a steel panel and gone down an alley into the area reserved for visiting sports teams. Sales staff decided to leave the buffalo alone with its thoughts until the auction was over. Afterward, it was coaxed back into captivity. -- The Globe and Mail, 3 February 2005, p. A 16.

I'm enjoying my new courses. Even the stats course, apparently one does not actually need to know how to do the calculations manually, only how to persuade a computer program to do them. And since the computer program is almost identical to Excel in its layout, I'm breathing easier. School two days a week is strange, though, I seem to be spending an awful lot of time on modes of public transportation, listening to other people talk on cell phones. The other day I dozed on a bus between downtown Vancouver and Horseshoe Bay while a woman shouted rapid-fire Spanish into her cell phone.

Next week I'm off to Nashville. If I live through this phase of things. Although I have quite enjoyed it, I won't be sorry to have it be over. Some decisions made by the organizers of the conference have made for some very angry people on the phone. I've managed so far not to take any of it personally, which is easier over the phone somehow.

Well, school starts again next week. I have to take the statistics course I've been putting off. I've got the text book, and I've been reading it. I understood the first four chapters, and was feeling kinda smug, but the day before yesterday I began to sink in the fifth chapter. The little glimmers of comprehension I'd been relying on turned out to be all well and fine but not the real thing, as the nice easy ground covered in the first four chapters was merely intended to lull me into a false sense of security. The real thing: Read paragraph. Huh? Read paragraph again. Right. That's what I thought you said. And I don't get it.

It looks like English, on the page, but I think it may have been written by trolls.

Sometimes the problem with discussing things is that it pins them down at a certain level. I have been living with something that was said a month or so ago, to do with doubts about relationships, that set me to crying on the ferry for an hour and a half in front of strangers after M dropped me off to go to my last class at SFU. Last night, as we were going to bed, I suggested that if this little piece of pinned-down stuff were to no longer be true, that I would appreciate it if he could let me know, if and when that happened. He replied, "Oh, no, I don't have those doubts any more."

I want to question when it stopped being 'truth', but I also don't want to continue to give it any validity. I suspect it was almost a throw-away remark, and I don't want to know that either. The fact that he gives it no weight now suggests that it had little weight at the time really but was just a manifestation of his state of mind (conflicted). I am cautiously hopeful. Time will tell.

It's a new year. I thank the universe for all the beauty in my life, and hope that those in distress from natural disaster will find some comfort, if comfort is possible. Happy New Year to my scattered readers. (I mean that in a geographical and not a cerebral sense, you understand).

At the tai chi class yesterday we finished learning the whole set! I still feel kind of awkward, and I don't entirely know what to do with my hands for all the moves, but the feet are good. And, the best thing, is that even though I'm currently suffering through a full right-side attack of knee/wrist/elbow swelling and pain, I still managed to do an hour and a half class, and don't feel any the worse for it today.

time travel?

Christmas is almost here. This year I am NOT working retail, and I'm not so Scrooge-ish, on the whole. I've been baking, and I've done some Christmas shopping, and I haven't been yelled at by a single frustrated Christmas shopper. Bliss.

"Geek at 9 O'Clock, Carl"

"Prairie dogs, those little pups popping in and out of holes on vacant lots and rural rangeland, are talking up a storm. They have different 'words' for tall human in yellow shirt, short human in green shirt, coyote, deer, red-tailed hawk, and many other creatures", says The Associated Press. "They can even coin new terms for things they've never seen before, independently coming up with the same calls or words, according to Con Slobodchikoff, a Northern Arizona University biology professor and prairie dog linguist." Most scientists think prairie dogs simply make sounds that reflect their inner condition. That means all they're saying are things like "ouch" or "hungry" or "eek". But Prof. Slobodchikoff believes prairie dogs are communicating detailed information to one another about what animals are showing up in their colonies, and maybe even gossiping. -- The Globe and Mail, December 7, 2004, p. A20.

Yes, I'm supposed to be writing a paper. But this is much more interesting.

FROGS!

Kids came home from school yesterday with a warning about a cougar in the area. One of the tips they give for cougar interactions is:

"Stay calm. Talk to the cougar in a confident voice."

I wonder how the cougar will recognize that one's voice is confident? And what will that accomplish? It also doesn't tell you what to say....

Well, it looks as if I'll be going back to work tomorrow. At M's work, on a project that requires someone to answer the phones and speak French to callers. A challenge... It was funny, because just after Miguel told me that, the Jehovah's Witness lady who came to the door the first day I was off work showed up again....

It's grey and rainy here this morning, typical west coast weather. Kids have gone to school, and I'm sitting here with my coffee and my notes for a paper on conceptions of power in critical criminological theory.

I'm thinking that my feeling that I wouldn't get the job I interviewed for last week was correct. The woman who interviewed me said she would make her decision by the end of last week, and no-one called. The joys of the 'looking for work' vacuum. I worked at Community Policing on Friday, and for once the phone rang a fair bit.

The library had a book on hold for me, Rupert Ross' "Returning to the Teachings", on Aboriginal approaches to justice, and I picked it up on Saturday. One sentence that stands out, so far, for me:

"Sacred justice is found when the importance of restoring understanding and balance to relationships has been acknowledged" (27).