Category Archives: Opinion

England ’23 – Coronation Street

21 Tuesday Nov 2023

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Today we went to Manchester. Not to a trendy eatery, or a hot night spot, but to the set of TV’s longest running soap opera, Coronation Street.

The “Coronation Street Experience” is a tour of the actual set, a closed area in the part of Manchester known as Media City UK. A largish group of us was given a guided tour of the set, at least the bits they use to film the exteriors for the show, and jolly nice it was, too. The Street has been going since 1960, and I have watched it on and off since the late sixties, so there was a genuine interest here. The tour guide, Alfie, was quite good, being professional, funny and he found time to impart some little nuggets of information that I’d not heard before. He gave us some insight to the tricks that are used to make each corner of the set look bigger than it actually is, and how they give the impression that places are further away from each other than the reality, which is usually quite different. Of course, standing on the actual Corrie cobbles was the real treat.

The little exhibition area after the set tour was interesting, including such delights as all the dead character’s coffin nameplates, which was hardly mawkish at all. One big omission was the actors’ names, which were nowhere to be seen, perhaps in an attempt to continue the fantasy.

It was a fun morning, though, especially for the real fans.

I should mention the Imperial War Museum North, right next door. It’s free and while we didn’t see its exhibitions, we did buy some stuff in the gift shop. The museum’s parking, which was where us Corrie types had to park, was run by National Car Parks (NCP). They use a fancy system of spying your plate as you enter and then you can pay as you leave, or later online. One fellow hadn’t worked the system out, had driven in and paid up front. The system of course assumed that he was leaving and gave him ten minutes to leave before being given a penalty charge. Did I mention he was Irish? He did!

After the Street, we hit the M&S Foodhall that lies within the shadow of Old Trafford Stadium, home of Manchester United (boo hiss), and sampled some of Manchester’s finest traffic jams.

Then it was over to Leeds, across the Pennines, to visit the house I was born in on this very day, sixty-five years ago. I hadn’t been back since 1959, which is quite the gap, but at the least the place was still standing, and looked much as it did all those years ago (I don’t have that good a memory, but I do have the photographic evidence). Someone has taken the Blue Plaque off the wall, though… (If you know, you know). The good Mrs. Mayne wanted me to go and knock on the door and introduce myself, but that would be so far beyond my comfort zone that it doesn’t even bear thinking about. I took photographs instead, although even that was a bit dodgy.

As the sun disappears at about 3:45pm in northern England, the light was fading fast. However, we managed a quick dash to Lawnswood Cemetery to have a look at my Grandparents’ grave, something I’d never done before. Given that they both died before I was born there wasn’t too much of an emotional issue for me, but it was a significant task on my list of things to do. I also searched out another family grave (it wasn’t far away), which will add nicely to my family tree knowledge.

Driving in Leeds is a bit of an eye-opener, even on a Sunday. It’s not a huge place but the traffic is constantly heavy, and everyone else seems to be in a dreadful hurry. However, we burst out of the City limits, past Leeds United’s Elland Road ground (again) and headed south on the M1. As we cut across the hills towards Holmfirth, I made a mental not to take too much notice of the Google lady giving instructions, because she had some pretty odd routes for me to take.

My birthday meal was taken at the famous Compo’s Fish and Chip restaurant in Holmfirth. Compo is a reference to the TV show previously mentioned, of course. The food was nice, and the service good, especially given that it was a Sunday night. It most definitely would not have been open in Canada.

Back at the cottage, I made the mistake of trying to reposition the car on its steep, cobbled parking space and found out about the limits of tyre traction on wet cobbles. I discovered that the only way to do it was to take a run at the cobbles and try to stop before hitting the wall. What fun.

It was a long day, and an enjoyable day, and we ticked three things off the list, so that was good.

England ’23 – Bramble Cottage

20 Monday Nov 2023

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We booked a week in the Yorkshire town of Holmfirth, just on the northern edge of the Peak District and just a few miles east of the border with Lancashire. The area is known as the location for the (very long lived, maybe overly-long lived) TV series, The Last of the Summer Wine and is undoubtedly a beautiful part of the country.

Bramble Cottage is a nineteenth century workers’ cottage, perched on the steep valley sides, and overlooking the centre of the village. The cottage itself has been wonderfully refurbished by the owners, who live next door, and it’s a very comfortable one bedroom holiday let, with every modern convenience. The original cottage would have been just one room downstairs and one room upstairs, but the owners have dug into the hillside at the back to create space for a modern, if narrow, kitchen downstairs, and a bathroom upstairs. It was warm inside, even though it was stone built and prone to a little condensation, and to be honest, we couldn’t fault it.

It’s not a great place if you’re not too steady on your pins, though, as all the slopes are very steep, and it’s quite a climb up from the town below. We’d been warned that the parking space was small, which it was, but the hill it was on was really quite steep. You had to take a run at it in the car, avoiding the low walls and parked cars, because once on the cobbled surface, there was no grip at all. If you didn’t get into the space first time then you had to roll back to the asphalted road to start again. you’re also going to have to have total confidence in your handbrake. I’m making it sound worse than it was, because after a couple of days I had it mastered. There was alternative parking, but it would need a walk up a steep cobbled path to reach it.

The cottage’s location worked very well for us as we visited Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool, all without going much beyond an hour’s drive away. The roads in the town, or at least in the valleys, were scarily narrow and steep, and had parked cars everywhere. I know parked cars act as speed limiters, but when you’re not used to hill starts, blind bends and gaps just big enough to take a car, it’s challenging. We had a very nice Audi A3 as a rental, with an automatic gearbox and handbrake, and they were both put to the severest tests.

My only complaint about Holmfirth, and it applies equally across Yorkshire and probably beyond, was the constant traffic. On the two main streets it was never ending, even in early November. It’s not like there is no public transit, either, because there were plenty of buses. But we have all become accustomed to being able to drive anywhere we like, and that’s what the problem is. I am of course extremely aware that in our rental car, we were part of the problem, and I fully accept that.

Would I go back to Bramble Cottage? Yes, I would. That is the best recommendation of all.

England ’23 – Yorkshire-bound

20 Monday Nov 2023

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Saturday November 4th

Plymouth Travelodge hotel. It’s Saturday morning, 3am, and I’ve woken in a sweat and heard someone clumping around the room above. At 3am. My trip to the loo woke the missus, and we lay chatting in the dark for quite a while trying to decipher the sounds from above. My conclusion was that there were wakeful children moving around, but who knows in these basic but reasonably priced hotels?

We did go back to sleep, but my alarm was set for 6:30am, so it wasn’t long before I was up again. With a five or six hour drive ahead of us, a broken night’s sleep wasn’t in the plan. Still, we did have plenty of time to prepare.

Our first stop, though, was the Tesco Extra superstore, that cornucopia all things grocery related, and a bit more. We had a list of a few basics to buy for the coming week in God’s Country, Yorkshire, plus some exciting things to take for the journey. We also bought some Cornish Pasties in Warreners (“The Oldest Pastie Maker In Plymouth”), which was conveniently located next to Tesco. Handy, that.

Oh, and we bought petrol, knowing how expensive it would be at the motorway service centres. It was £1.53 a litre at Tesco. Make a note of that.

I set the Navi (it’s been promoted from being a Sat Nav, or Twat Nav, to being a Navi) for our destination and watched the system work things out for us. From our location, Plymouth, it would be a drive of 307 Miles (494 Km), to Holmfirth, and would take a little over five hours if we didn’t stop or get held up. I didn’t really need the Navi, at least not until Manchester, but it was good to watch the miles and the time slowly drop on the display.

It being Saturday, and still relatively early, the roads were surprisingly busy, but did lack the usual big trucks. The weather was fairly calm as well, so we were off the A38 and onto the M5 at Exeter in good time. We stopped at Sedgemoor, just south of Bristol for a natural break and a pastie, before negotiating Bristol, which wasn’t so bad, even through the road works.

Remember I asked you to note the price of petrol in Plymouth? £1.53? Well here at Sedgemoor services on the M5, that same petrol was £1.83 a litre. For those with number difficulties, that 30 pence per litre difference, and I have no idea how that can be justified.

North of Bristol we encountered some dreadful rain. We could see it coming, too, and it didn’t disappoint. Then around Worcester, still in the rain, we were reduced to a crawl for quite a while, supposedly for road works, but I didn’t see any.

South of Birmingham, the Navi decided to change the agreed route, supposedly because of heavy traffic. I didn’t hear her instructions at first, partly because of the noise of the rain, and partly because there appears to be a glitch in the Navi software whereby, we can’t increase the nice lady’s voice volume. Anyway, I ignored her and carried on up the M5 towards Walsall and the M6. We had another stop, this time at Frankley Services, just to the south-west of Birmingham. The M&S sandwiches were very nice.

Back on the road, the Navi kept trying to re-route us, and I kept ignoring her, and we crawled up to, though, and past, the junction with the M6. We pressed on, through Staffordshire and Cheshire, before a last stop, at Knutsford this time, for a quick splash and dash.

Here we left the M6 and veered eastwards, onto the ring of motorways surround Manchester. The roads were teeming with expensive cars here, all racing around at speed, which gives some indication that there’s money in Manchester, and the place is living up to it’s perceived reputation as England’s second city. Leaving that particular vehicular hellscape at Ashton-Under-Lyne, we started into the Pennine Hills at Mossley, though villages made of darkened stone, although they were bright with the shops and pubs open. The rain was still coming down, and the hill tops were shrouded in mist, so by the time we had reached the top of Saddleworth Moor, it was foggy, rainy and getting dark, even though it was only about 3:30pm.

Then it was across the border into Yorkshire, down into the deep valley of the River Holme, and into the little town of Holmfirth. We were nearly there.

We did take an alternate route through Holmfirth to Bramble cottage, up steep hills, narrow and littered with parked cars. The oncoming cars were without mercy, dashing around as locals tend to do in these places, and at the very last right turn I had to make, across the traffic, a car sped around the blind bend and we both screeched to a halt. The other car, who had the right of way, simply passed me on the wrong side of the road and carried on with his or her speedy descent of the hill.

The final couple of hundred yards of narrow road, again narrowed with parked cars, was completed at walking pace and with very little room to spare on either side of the car. But then Bramble Cottage appeared through the rain, and we had arrived, just about seven hours after we had left Plymouth. The two hours on top of the Navi’s estimate was down to the driving breaks, and to the on-road delays, but for all that, I was happy to get there before 4pm.

I was knackered, though, and my bed beckoned, especially as it was pretty much completely dark by the time we’d unloaded the car.

There will be more about Bramble Cottage in a later post, as I get a chance to sort through the photographs.

England ’23

20 Monday Nov 2023

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Multi-Modal Travel

The first part of the multi-modal journey began with a thrash up Highway 401, to Lester B. Pearson International Airport in Toronto. I say Toronto, but it’s more Mississauga, which works for us because it’s on the western end of the conurbation that forms the metropolis of Toronto. Just two of us, two bags, two backpacks and already checked in, we left super-early and arrived at the airport super-early, given that it was a clear run, if quite busy in parts.

Pearson Terminal 3 was our departure point because we’d opted for British Airways this time. It was nothing to do with love of the mother country, but everything to do with the fares being half of those demanded by Air Canada this time around.

Bag drop and security were quick and efficient, due largely to there being a real person checking in the bags, and Security being very quiet. We whiled away our free time eating our homemade sandwiches and doing a bit of people watching. Indeed, we enjoyed the sandwiches all the more for having seen that a single sandwich in the airport, before tax, was retailing at $14.99! I still get a bit riled up at the airport when I see all the iPad bedecked tables that replaced the regular seating a while back, because the desire to part you from your money at Pearson is all pervading. Sitting at a table and ordering drinks and food on an iPad may be a little bit of fun, but it’s a premium service with premium prices.

Our chariot for the evening was a Boeing 787, the famous plastic aeroplane. Our Premium Economy seats were OK, certainly roomier that those in Economy, but flying in the twenty-first century is never a marvellous experience because of the feeling you get that you’re packed in far too tightly. It may be efficient to do that, but spending six or seven hours in close quarters with strangers isn’t my idea of fun. The 787 is certainly quiet on the inside, comparatively speaking at least, but having to share the cabin with a lot of other people snuffling, sneezing and chomping their way through their in-flight meal isn’t ideal. Still, it was going to be a quick flight (six hours), and overnight, so I could at least sleep through some of it.

I was disappointed by the meal choices, which were too fancy and too curry-based. There should be a bland menu available for people like me. The one non-curry dish was pan-fried Cod on Polenta, surrounded by peppers and Kale, which really isn’t my bag, man. As for the breakfast sandwich, well the less said about that the better. There was just one cup of coffee offered throughout the whole flight, too, which is not great.

The aircraft took a southerly route, flew at 41,000 feet (thank you, Flight Information screen) and arrived in London a full fifteen minutes ahead of the scheduled six hours, due entirely to a wickedly fast Jetstream up high, and Storm Ceiran hitting the UK that very day.

It took a little while for our bags to appear, and a little while for us to find the Sixt Car Rental place in the Sofitel, but we were out on the wet English roads soon enough and enjoying the Audi A3 that the young fellow at Sixt had skillfully upsold us.

Driving along the M4 motorway, I took some time to adjust to English driving again. It’s not the driving on the left, but rather the fairly gentle speeds that most people were keeping. The National Speed Limit is 70 miles per hour, but not many were even close to that. Anything from 55 to 70 seemed to be the general flow, and that was perfect to allow me to settle into things. We did stop off at Reading Services, me for a coffee and a Cornish Pastie, and the missus for a tour of M&S and a couple of Greggs’ vegan sausage rolls. Very, very expensive it all was because of the motorway services premium, but it was all much needed. Oh, and our English bank account cards seemed to be functioning nicely, too.

Driving west along the M4, then south, and south-west, on the M5, the weather worsened but the driving was fine. Another stop, at Sedgemoor services this time, was required for natural purposes, and to buy some sweeties, which are required by law when making any road trip.

We rolled into the Travelodge (very basic, but sensibly priced) Plymouth hotel in good time. The rooms are sparse in these places, but this one was clean and sufficient for our needs. A quick shower was taken, and I hopped into bed to snatch a couple of hours of much needed sleep.

It is at this point, dear reader, that I will close this journal entry. We’re in Plymouth to visit family, and that’s not really the right material for my tales from Blighty. My next volume will begin when we’re setting off for Yorkshire in a day or two’s time, when we tackle one of the main reasons we’re here at all, and that’s delving into the past, specifically my family’s past.

England ’23 – Back Home

19 Sunday Nov 2023

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Or: “That Went Far Too Quickly”

We’re back from our jaunt to our ancestral homeland, and ancestral home in fact. I have returned with a handful of draft blog entries which I will clean up, add photos, and publish, probably in chronological order, although it’s not important if they’re not in time order.

Firstly, though, I wanted to say a word or two about the drivers in Ontario. I drove for ten days in England, and while the traffic is dreadful there, the drivers are generally not. They drive in a co-operative manner, never putting people in danger to maintain a right of way, largely sticking to the speed limit, understanding that the limit is not the minimum, and being aware of what’s going on around them. Of course, in that little country there are far more cars than the whole of Canada, which will make for attentive drivers, but those wide open spaces on this side of the pond make for some pretty awful drivers.

Coming back along the 401 today, we witnessed everyone, and I mean everyone, speeding. The 100kph limit is entirely ignored and 110 seems to be the absolute minimum. US plated cars seemed to be among the worst offenders, too.

Then there are the tailgaters. Seriously, a Hyundai SUV was doing around 120-130, about a car length behind a pick-up truck. The SUV driver couldn’t possibly see anything except the rear of the truck, and if the truck driver had slowed for any reason, the SUV driver wouldn’t have time to even reach the brake pedal before hitting the truck, let alone use it. That scene was played out by countless other vehicles just this morning, on a relatively quiet Sunday.

There were also the lane weavers, attempting to make up some ground, weaving from lane to lane, always at speeds well in excess of the limit. Again, one slight mistake from another driver and they simply would have nowhere to go. It’s craziness.

England ’23 – Holiday Blog The First

01 Wednesday Nov 2023

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Or: Heading To The Old Country

We’re leaving the kids at home and heading off on our holidays. Two weeks (and a bit) in England, on a long planned but late executed return to my roots. It was supposed to be a sixtieth birthday excursion, but we’re five years late. No matter.

The plan is to spend a week in Yorkshire, among the bones of my long-dead relatives, then to unwind in the great metropolis that is London, for a week. It turns out that I shall again be among the bones of my long-dead relatives because I have recently discovered a whole branch of the family who made it to London in the mid-nineteenth century, living, working, and dying, in places I know well. Not that we shall dwell too much on past family in either Leeds or London, because there is much more to do than sink into family history.

We will also be making a short stop in Plymouth, home to the living relatives of the good Mrs. Mayne, and will be looking forward to meeting Storm Ciarán, which is currently ravaging the west of the country. Fun, fun, fun.

I’ll use this blog to record the trip, more for my own benefit, and when I get back I might just publish a little more widely. Who knows?

Anyway, the first part of the multi-modal trip is about to begin, a drive up the notorious Highway 401, to the airport in Toronto. I’m wishing myself a happy bon voyage.

Autumn

29 Sunday Oct 2023

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Or: “Fall”

I’ve said before that we’re lucky to live where we do, and the Autumn, or Fall, is a great time to be here. Certainly, it’s not Maine, or even Algonquin, but when the trees start to change colour it gives the whole area a new look. The picture is Rondeau Provincial Park, this year, mid-October.

We took a run out yesterday and noted that the leaves are really falling now, so the trees are starting to get bare. The rush to rake leaves from the lawn has just begun, not for us of course as we’re big on leaving them where they fall, but for many in the suburban parts of town it’s an annual ritual. To be fair, things have changed during my nearly fifteen years in Canada, due in no small part to the City limiting the number of leaf bags it will remove in its weekly curbside collection of garbage. There is a “leaf yard” where you can take them yourself, but there has been a growing movement to maybe just mulch up the leaves with a mower, or rake them to a another part of the garden and let them rot down. The lines of paper sacks full of leaves, left next to the garbage can, have largely gone and which is a good thing in my view. I’ve always thought leaf raking to be a pointless exercise anyway, so the trend to leave them where they are, to aid the natural over-wintering for many beneficial critters, suits me just fine.

Out in the country, trees drop their leaves and there’s no one to rake them, like in Rondeau Park, but to see the vivid yellows and reds now forming a colourful carpet is all part of the scenery. Also in the country, the crops are being harvested. Tomatoes, peppers and Soy Beans are all in now and the fields have been ploughed. Much of the corn is in as well, although there is still plenty still in the fields, and some won’t be taken off for a few weeks yet, that’ll be weather dependent of course. I love to watch the land change throughout the year, and Autumn is a busy time for the farmers. Again, it all adds to the scenery.

A word about the word, Autumn that is. In the UK, nearly everyone will use the word Autumn for this time of year, and it’s origin is obvious given the French word Automne. Fall is the usual term used in North America, and it’s very descriptive. If you say “Fall” I think you miss out on the word “Autumnal”, but then that’s just me, they both great words.

I’m also looking forward to winter!

Bridging The Gap

24 Tuesday Oct 2023

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Or: “From One Side Of The River To The Other”

The Gordy Howe Bridge is taking shape here in Southwestern Ontario. It is being built to add capacity to the busiest land border crossing between the USA and Canada, currently the Ambassador Bridge across the Detroit River, about a mile or so upstream towards Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario.

The Ambassador Bridge was opened in 1929, and really reached its capacity some time ago. The truck traffic between the two countries is immense, and amounts to billions of dollars annually, so being stuck on capacity has been an issue for quite a while now. The problem has been that the Ambassador Bridge is privately owned and operated, and the owner has spent the last twenty years trying to prevent the new bridge being built, with one injunction after another. The new bridge was eventually approved and work started about two years ago. It’s funded in part by the Government of Michigan, and mostly by the Canadian Federal Government, and tolls will be collected by Canada. Tolls apart, the private ownership thing has been such a limiter over the years, but in anticipation of the new, publicly funded structure, Canada has extended Highway 401 right to the new bridge, and Michigan is building a new link to the North/South I75 Highway, so access is going to be so much easier. Trade, and therefore money, should increase significantly, and the benefits are already being seen on the US side of the river, with significant rejuvenation of Detroit’s south side already happening.

Because taxpayers’ money has been involved, there are plenty of detractors saying the project is a white elephant, but if you’ve ever had to use the Ambassador Bridge on a weekday, you get some idea of how important the extra capacity is going to be.

The project itself is amazing, with the two towers that will hold the cable stays for the bridge deck rising 220m above the river, meaning you can see it absolutely miles away. Here’s a link to the project website, as that has all the real data: https://www.gordiehoweinternationalbridge.com/en

We went to have a look at construction a couple of months ago, and it’s seriously impressive. The thing is, progress is so fast that the project has moved on significantly since then, and what we saw is quite different to how it looks today.

The new bridge is due to open in late 2024, although I have my doubts that will be achieved. However, 2025 is still a good target.

When the bridge does open, we will be there to use it. I doubt I could persuade anyone to come with me, but there’s a foot and cycle path being built into the structure. How great it will be to stand above the centre of the Detroit River!

I may do another piece about the bridge, perhaps when the spans meet in the middle, which won’t be too far off now. The picture at the top is taken from drone footage, recorded during the week ending October 19th, but even in a weeks time, you’ll see the changes. Exciting times. Well, I think so.

Hockeytown

23 Monday Oct 2023

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Or “What On Earth Is Happening?”

This was my second exposure to American professional sports, Detroit Redwings versus Calgary Flames in the National Hockey League (perhaps that should be International, given the protagonists). It followed on from my evening a few months back watching the Detroit Pistons basketball team get beaten by the Denver Golden Nuggets.

You have to understand that I grew up in the UK, where professional sport doesn’t, or at least didn’t, attract the kind of money that American sports do. Football (Association Football to the uninitiated) was the only popular professional sport with mass appeal, and there wasn’t the money in the game that there is now. Ninety-two professional league clubs across four divisions in England, and players in the lower leagues were earning pretty poor money. I mention this because there was never seen to be the need to invent reasons to generate income. Gate receipts and advertising were the key income generators, and while gimmicks were tried, they never came close to changing the weekly trek to watch your local side play, and it was good on-field performances that sold more tickets, not dancing girls, blokes playing organs, or giant video screens. Indeed, military bands appeared to be the chief entertainment, pre-match and at half time, although there was a bloke at Arsenal who used to sing “Born Free” every week.

But I’m not really a rube and I am aware of the amazing amount of money that swills around American professional sport, and the super-human efforts made all the time to do stuff that increases the money flow. I’m also aware that the average sports fan here has so much sport to choose from, even if they only follow, say, two teams, that they have lost much of the tribal instincts of watching their home team (there are not that many “Home Town Teams” now, just big teams in big cities), and don’t have much of an attention span as a result. I pitched up at the Little Caesar’s Arena in downtown Detroit expecting the game, Redwings versus Flames, to be only part of the evening’s offering, and I was right.

The Arena is modern and well stocked with food and drink places, and there are “Merch” shops everywhere, so no surprise there. Inside the Arena, though, it’s just non-stop attention-grabbing. Music, light shows, videos on the big screens, competitions, and even a bloke playing an organ. I think we were spared too much of a floor show given that the floor was made of ice and not only would be dangerous to dance upon, but it needed constant attention to smooth it out with not just the famous “Zamboni” ice smoothing machines, but fleets of enthusiastic young things on skates, armed with big snow shovels.

Hockey is a fast and furious game where they play three twenty-minute periods and swap players on and off the ice, two or three at a time, every few minutes. When the music stopped and the play began, it was relatively quite inside the arena. People were watching fairly closely as there were a few “Ooohs” and “Aaaahs” as the action developed. Two minutes in and the home team scored, cue massive amounts of noise, horns blaring and lights flashing, which was all good stuff. Then I noticed that at every “Face Off”, when the play stopped, in came the music, the video screens lit up and we were visually and audibly assaulted for the next twenty seconds or so, until play resumed.

At the period breaks, people headed out to restock on Pizza, beer and whatever else they needed, while the music kept up and video screens were busy. We had a pair of shouting comperes in between all the fun and games, and it only really settled down when the hockey started up again.

It was a good night for the home team as the goals rattled in, but I noticed that people were losing their attention to the play, myself included. Every break in play and we were back to that assault again with the music and the videos. In the final period, there were so many breaks in play that I kind of lost interest all together. I did see the the final goal (6-2 the eventual score) go in, but the delay between that and the fans cheering led me to realise that they had only been alerted to the goal by the horns sounding. That, I guess, is what happens when there so many other distractions.

It was definitely a better evening for sport than the basketball, and that I reckon was down to the limited use of the ice and the lack of a floor show. The seats were cheap enough (US$40 for a centre-ice seat), even if the beer was very pricey. I bought some merch and listened to the crazy drum band, and actually had a good time. But for an Englishman who likes to watch the sport, I was left somewhat disappointed. I don’t like to have my attention dragged away, but even the most laser focused people would not have been able to concentrate on the game after two hours of assault and battery. Give me ninety minutes of football any day, where breaks in play are not rewarded with crashing music and light shows, and I can come away at the end of the game remembering much of the play.

Still, when in Rome and all that. I’d imagine if I go to see games often enough, I’ll get used to everything and maybe I’ll be able to zone it out and watch the damned sport!

Winter’s Around The Corner

16 Monday Oct 2023

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Or “Where Am I Going To Put All This Stuff?”

We have really nice summers here in South Western Ontario. Warm from May to September, often thirty degrees Celsius or more, and not too humid most of the time. As a result, we all like to have a nice yard to use, and with that yard comes an awful lot of stuff. Tables, chairs, plants, bird baths, fountains, and much, much, more. The only problem is that most of that stuff isn’t going to survive too long if we left it out during the winter.

Winters here are, by Canadian standards, very mild. We don’t normally get much cold weather before Christmas, and while we can go six or eight weeks below zero in the New Year, that’s rare, as is us getting much in the way of snow. But that would still be enough to trash anything left exposed to the elements.

So, come October it’s time to pack everything away. The pool gets closed by professionals (at huge cost!), but I still have work to do prepping, then getting the poolside furniture put away. This year we have two rain barrels, and a heap of children’s toys to be stored, that latter item expanding with every year as the grand-baby gets bigger. The patio furniture has to go in the shed, as does a growing arsenal of garden tools and sundries we now have to maintain the garden. It all has to be cleaned off, too, which is isn’t fun.

Then there’s the garage, used in the summer months to store camping gear, well one side of the garage anyway, and that all has to be shifted so that we can get two of the three family cars stored under cover. The garage this year was also an auxiliary potting shed, and a store for Charlie’s bike, scooter, go-kart, and strollers, so there was even more stuff.

Our shed isn’t packed up yet, rain stopped play when I was working on the task today, but the basement, is packed to bursting with seasonal accoutrements ranging from camping gear to pool pumps.

We have at least stopped prepping the garden for winter. Our native plant array loves to be left where it is, and that allows all manner of beneficial creatures to over-winter with us. We don’t mulch or rake the leaves anymore, either, as the bugs like those as well.

But the packing up process is a chore, and gets more involved every year. I don’t mind, though, as it’s always an inversely proportional pleasure getting it all out again next Spring. Thank goodness for retirement.