I shovelled snow for the first time this morning. A shovel full of snow is lighter than it looks. It's just cold rain really. Perhaps that'll be my most profound take away from my year in Canada. Snow? It's just cold rain really innit?
This is the longest I've ever been away from Britain - about ten weeks so far. I'm still utterly immersed in British culture. I watch Sky News. I watch Premier League football. I follow British social media. I know that while the UK waits for Brexit to kick off again you've all gone mental about a vegan sausage roll. No one else who inhabits the frozen tundra I'm supposed to now call home knows that but I do.
On Monday my son starts day care and I am a free man. Free to do what? Perhaps I could become a gentleman detective. Roam the streets, solving murders. My hook? I don't speak the language. Just like the blind's heightened other senses allow them to see things others can't see, my inability to speak French will enable me find clues the lazy Quebec police cannot. I'll have a fractious relationship with the Police Chief. "You're a bastard, but you get the job done" he'll say, but I won't understand him because he'll say it in French. Instead I'll notice that his hand is swollen and end up getting the son of a bitch sent down for killing his wife but I won't know that I have because the verdict will be read out in French.
I just spent forty five minutes trudging through snow looking for a Nelson's Column my dad told me was in Montreal. That sounds like something a man who misses London would do doesn't it? I found it and it's shorter than the UK version. That's the thing about North America - bigger portions, smaller Nelson's Columns. Now I'm writing this on a cold laptop in the cafe of an IMAX. When you stop for a coffee in the foyer of an IMAX cinema it's clear you haven't really got to know the city's best spots just yet.
And what an opportunity sits in front of me! The time and the space to truly experience a foreign town - to dig deep into its crevices and describe it to the world/roughly 100 regular blog readers. Or I could just solve crimes.
This is the longest I've ever been away from Britain - about ten weeks so far. I'm still utterly immersed in British culture. I watch Sky News. I watch Premier League football. I follow British social media. I know that while the UK waits for Brexit to kick off again you've all gone mental about a vegan sausage roll. No one else who inhabits the frozen tundra I'm supposed to now call home knows that but I do.
On Monday my son starts day care and I am a free man. Free to do what? Perhaps I could become a gentleman detective. Roam the streets, solving murders. My hook? I don't speak the language. Just like the blind's heightened other senses allow them to see things others can't see, my inability to speak French will enable me find clues the lazy Quebec police cannot. I'll have a fractious relationship with the Police Chief. "You're a bastard, but you get the job done" he'll say, but I won't understand him because he'll say it in French. Instead I'll notice that his hand is swollen and end up getting the son of a bitch sent down for killing his wife but I won't know that I have because the verdict will be read out in French.
I just spent forty five minutes trudging through snow looking for a Nelson's Column my dad told me was in Montreal. That sounds like something a man who misses London would do doesn't it? I found it and it's shorter than the UK version. That's the thing about North America - bigger portions, smaller Nelson's Columns. Now I'm writing this on a cold laptop in the cafe of an IMAX. When you stop for a coffee in the foyer of an IMAX cinema it's clear you haven't really got to know the city's best spots just yet.
And what an opportunity sits in front of me! The time and the space to truly experience a foreign town - to dig deep into its crevices and describe it to the world/roughly 100 regular blog readers. Or I could just solve crimes.
Discovered your blog after you commented on an Alasdair Green post re: shit pubs. Now wasting entire first day back at work by reading them all - bloody brilliant.
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