What’s bugging you?

Sorry for the predictable title, and, for harping on about them because I know that you locals don’t even notice the bugs, well that’s what I’m told by some.

But then again other folk say different: “they bite us just the same as you, we just got used to it.” GOT USED TO IT! ARE YOU CRAZY?

The bugs descended from I don’t know where onto my home last weekend. One minute we were enjoying the first really warming rays of spring sunshine, the next it was blotted out by a black cloud, and I don’t mean the type that rains on you.

“It’s OK, they’re not biting,” said a local friend of mine as I was besieged by a buzzing fog of black flies. “Oh good!” I spluttered, trying to dislodge twenty or so now partially drowned flies from the back of my throat.

“Good job we’re in the screen room,” I hacked, fighting my towards the gaping hole that signalled the very open door. Slamming it shut, I set about wreaking lethal vengeance on the 500 or so insects that I hadn’t swallowed.

I know, I know, I should have been more prepared for this. I have moved to bug central, after all. But how prepared can you be. My wife won’t come near me because I’ve been eating garlic by the bulb for the last three months. I’m told is dissuades vampiric mosquitoes from slaking their thirst on English folk.

I have also been trialing another natural remedy, essential oil of catnip. The bugs don’t seem to care but the cats! All I can say is, if you’ve lost your tabby in the last week, it’s probably scratching at my front door. I can’t go outside anymore. The bugs I can stand, the loved-up cats, they’re more of a problem.

I’m also informed that bugs are attracted to perfumed scents. No more drinking the Chanel N^o5 before I venture out, then. In fact, I’m going to forego any type of chemical soap, scent or deodorising agent. Will it keep away the bugs? Probably not. Will it detract the unwanted attentions of charity workers and Jehovah’s Witnesses… I may have inadvertently come up with a plan, there.

Now, I could resort to chemical warfare, slather my entire body in gallons of Deet and wander my three acres naked daring the bugs to come take a chew. Any bug foolhardy enough to come to close would drop like a fly, quite literally. Bathing in chemicals such as Deet day after day may send me mad but if I’m already wandering around naked that won’t make much difference, and, come to think of it, wandering naked in my garden will keep the Jehovah botherers away, too.

I could do as many folk in the UK do to their diminutive gardens and just pave my entire three acres. They do it to create a space to park the car. I do it to eradicate the habitat of unwanted pests. Trouble is, I might attract miserable, lank-haired, jeans-hanging-off-the-arse teenage skateboarders. I’ll have to give that idea more thought.

Time for desperate measures, may be. How about I throw my beautiful plump, rose skinned, two year-old son out of the door and let the bugs eat their fill of him before I step outside in Speedos and tanning lotion. Don’t think the wife would let me get away with that – the Speedos, I mean!

Bugs, they will become an accepted part of my life in years to come, I’m sure. However, if you happen to see an Englishman running maniacally down the road (naked or not, I haven’t decided on that one yet) flailing his arms around a head that is hidden within a cloud of insects, don’t worry it’s only me taking a leisurely stroll to the post box.      

  

Wedding, what wedding?

What with fortifying my home against tiny winged marauders; delving into the stickier points of maple syrup making; splashing about in moonlit creeks looking for tiny silver fish; and, gardening (I’ll get to that ongoing adventure in the next week or so), a couple of little events have slipped by almost unnoticed in the Jones household.

You Haliburtonians don’t miss a trick though and folks have reminded me of my civic duty to report on such matters.

And so, I cast my mind back a while to the, would they wouldn’t they? the guessing the date and who’d be invited to the party: the constant media agonising over whether they’d get along afterwards. Argh, the anticipation (yes, I meant to spell argh that way!).

When the big day finally arrived there was pomp and ceremony, coiffured hair, police escorts, fancy clothes, speeches, crying grandmas, coiffured hair, flag-waving babies, cheering crowds, champagne and celebration. Did I mention the coiffured hair?

Boy, you guys certainly know how to put on an election.

I’m afraid, or rather I’m absolutely elated that since moving from the bustling metropolis of Londinium to the relative wilds of Haliburton – since my immersion in all things local to my new locale – I have rather lost touch with the rest of the world.

I’ve got TV, radio, internet access, semaphore, smoke signals, all the gizmos – haven’t been brave enough to go ‘off grid’ like some of you folks – but I just don’t feel the urge to have an intravenous drip of news, views and spews from the world media 24/7. A couple of minutes of Mike Jaycock recounting the sports news over breakfast and I’m set for the day. On the radio, that is; I don’t invite him round specially!

News to me at the moment is the tree across the creek being blown over; the phoebes nesting in the woodshed; the honk of returning geese; and the ice finally going out, so the fishing can really begin.

It may sound like I’ve gone all R.D Lawrence on you. And may be I have but it’s a reaction to 15 years of being constantly pummelled by news. Radio stations with rolling newsflashes every few minutes. Wall to wall news networks on TV. Big screens in bars and stations that blared out the latest tragedy, while little screens on buses and tube trains inundated me and my hapless fellow travellers with feckless facts that I didn’t want or need to know.

The Times, Telegraph, Independent, Financial Times, Guardian, Sun, Star, Express and Mail - the UK’s national daily press. The Morning Metro and Evening Standard, plus a pile of other local papers as tall as your average blue heron, for London alone. A plethora of pulp faction, all destined for the recycle bin.

Exhausted by this onslaught, I’d lock myself in the loo for a quiet moment of self reflection, and what would happen? The next door neighbour would turn on the TV and I’d be privy to his news addiction through paper thin walls. In fairness, he’d also be able to hear my ‘thoughts’ on the matter as I flushed them down the pan!

And so you see, I missed the wedding. I awoke an hour after his royal baldness and commoner Kate had walked down the aisle. I breakfasted oblivious of the joyous celebrations being played out across London, England, the world (perhaps that’s stretching it a bit now-a-days). I just didn’t feel the need to turn on, tune in. I dropped out, so to speak (to misquote Timothy Leary). And you know what, I enjoyed it.

I have been quizzed on and received quizzical looks about my thoughts on the royal wedding. My accent it seems makes it mandatory that I should have a view (a ringside seat even!). And so, to satiate the calls for a statement (I believe that’s what they call them in the press): I wish good luck and long happiness to William and Kate.

I just hope they don’t mind if I can’t make it to their next garden party.

Beaver bothering

Tis a balmy night: the first one of spring. The stars shine brightly and peepers peep but the fog hangs thick, like a woollen shroud, over road and water. And I stand silent, rubber suited, nerves jangling, arms braced, net poised.

Voices: mutterings in the blackness. Two shady figures slowly materialise, walking around the edge of the weak pool of illumination that my headlamp casts; their faces shadows under baseball caps. When they speak the conversation is clipped: polite in a gruff kind of way but evasive at the same time. I take note and respond accordingly.

“Anything moving?”

“Nope,” I reply.

“Been here long?”

“Nope,” I reply.

“Been anywhere else?”

“Nope,” I reply.

“Hmm, looks like we’re too early, eh. Or, too late.” And with that they disappear again into the inky blackness.

My fishing partner smiles. “You meet all kinds and some are talkers but no one wants to give too much away,” he says. “If the smelt are running, they want to be first to the action.”

Yes, smelt fishing it is. Another first for this English city boy escaped to Canada.

I readily agree to try almost anything new. And, if that thing has the word ‘fishing’ in it then you know I’ll be there. I’ve waded tidal rivers at dusk, casting for sewin. I’ve stalked carp in mist enveloped lakes before dawn. But these nocturnal wanderings up creek and down culvert are a new and altogether more clandestine experience.

KABLOOSH!

My heart jumps into my mouth. My foot slips off the culvert that I’m perched upon and I almost, almost drop the long pole to which the dip net is fixed.

“Don’t drop the net,” chastises my partner through a fit of giggles. “You’re annoying the beavers.”

I regain both my composure and my position on the culvert and lift the net again. A silver flapping meets my gaze. This is the magical jewel-like fish that we have come to harvest.

Glinting in my headlamp. Smelt.

Now I could leave the description at that. Smelt. But that would be cheating you, the reader. Smelt, you see, is one of those dual purpose words like sheep, moose or wildebeest. It can mean a solitary beast or a vast herd.

There are no smelt herds roaming the watery plains tonight, I’m afraid. My smelt is a smelt. A forlorn little specimen no longer than my middle finger (and I don’t have very big hands, either).

What this single fish does, however, is spur us on.

“It’s a scout, an eager male rushing to spawn,” enthuses my smelting partner. “The run is on, we just have to wait and there’ll be more.”

There were. Eight more, to be precise.

As we wait for the sadly absent myriad silvery smelt, the darkness becomes less oppressive. The night world opens up to us. A fox trots by unconcerned by our presence. The first bull frog of the season practices a rasping croak. Glow worms glow, so warm is it as we sit and wait.

But the smelt, they remain an enigma.     

And so, as I sit, eyelids drooping, I wonder about smelt. Do they really still run in such numbers that folks can fill pails, pans and baskets in minutes? Is their run triggered by water temperature, the cycles of the moon, or a synchronised inbuilt urge to spawn? Do they really have to wait until bloody midnight!

The questions are left unanswered. All I know for sure is that those smelt (all nine of them, thanks to my generous smelting partner) will taste divine seasoned and fried, with a thick slice of homemade bread.

Good enough for me to go disturbing beavers again, next year.

It’s all in the bark

I see a waft of smoke rising above the treetops into the still spring air. Like the silver grey tail of some mythical aboriginal wolf, it wavers and wags before drifting to invisible.

Ah, the poetry of imagination, the whimsy of a writer still acquainting himself with the rhythm of life in this splendid wilderness. But quaint ditty aside, this wisp of smoke is a signal: not some ancient bush telegraph but a sign that my neighbour is boiling sap.

It’s maple syrup season and all around the county, in sheds, lean-tos and workshops, there are folks piling wood into furnaces, stoking the flames, bringing vast vats of watery tree liquid to the boil.

Sorry, shacks. Sugar shacks: that’s the name. I still have a lot to learn about maple syrup production. For instance, I’m told that soft maple don’t make good syrup. How you differentiate them from hard ones I have yet to figure, though. Hit them with a hammer? Call them names and see which cries first? Give them a good firm hug (may be not, I don’t want to be accused of being a hippy!).

Thankfully, one, shall we say, rather antique looking gentleman whom I met recently took me under his wing, to educate me on the ways of syrup making. He told me it’s all to do with the bark. “The bark!” I exclaimed. “I may be new to this country but even I know trees don’t bark.” He didn’t hang around to clarify his point.

Now, I also believe these wondrous woofing maple trees have taps. I know what they are. It’s mighty convenient, if you ask me. Wander out into the bush, turn the tap and you’ve got hot and cold running syrup. And they tell me its hard work making Canada’s favourite condiment.

But I jest. To me maple syrup seems to add up to a whole lot of work for a relatively little harvest. To begin with syrup harvesters (I guess you could call them that) are at the mercy of the weather. Last year was terrible, I’m told, because it warmed up far too quickly. This year: better. I’m glad these frigid temperatures are pleasing someone!

Then there’s the boiling of the sap. Forty gallons of sap makes one gallon of syrup, or so I gleaned, before we got onto the bark thing and my teacher stalked out, face like thunder. It seems patience is of the essence: you just have boil and boil and boil till hey presto, syrup.

Friends of mine (less antique, more, beautiful young things) decided to try their hand at making syrup this year. They tapped the trees. I told them: “hit ‘em harder so they bark good and loud.” They ignored me. They collected sap. They started to boil it down a week or so ago. I think they’re still doing it.

Last I heard they’d got through two bottles of barbeque gas and were threatening to throw the whole shebang - the vat of still bubbling sap, barbeque, taps, spiles, buckets and brand new unsullied syrup jars, the lot – in the lake.

My advice, leave it to the ‘antique’ gents; they seem to know what they’re doing. Before my wizened mentor departed in a huff, me woof woofing quizzically in his wake, I had sat listening to him and his fellow maple experts recounting syrup making stories. I gained much useful knowledge. I also learned that a boiling vat of sap and squirrel doesn’t mix well.

I now tend to suck my syrup through my teeth, just to make sure there are no hairs left in it.   

The fifth season

As I stroll nonchalantly into this new season, the sun is shining, the birds voice my happiness in shrill song and small scurrying creatures appear to chatter hello from every nook and cranny in my garden.

Tis spring: winter is finally gone and this land and its inhabitants are thawing out, gradually. I feel the urge to relax, to slide gracefully into the good weather, taking my time to soak up the first warmth of the sun or spend a moment or ten savouring the first buds, the nest builders, the very buzz of life.

The trouble is I can’t.

All around me, amidst this glorious outpouring of nature, are you folk, rushing around, bustling from one job to another. As I drive around the county I see gardeners busy raking lawns, digging flower beds, burning debris in a haste almost verging on panic.

Homes suddenly have large piles of tree trunks or logs dumped on their front lawns. Log splitters are the garden ornament of choice for the month of April, it seems.

Split, chop, stack… and repeat.

Handymen hammer, plane and paint. Contractors scurry up and down ladders putting the finishing touches to homes started before the snow came. Everyone seems so intent on getting stuff done that they take no time to appreciate the beauty of spring. But why?

And then it dawns on me. Contrary to my previous life in Blighty, where there are four seasons - winter, spring, summer and autumn (I feel silly for listing them, but you never know…) - here in Canada you have five, not counting fall!

I’m still trying to work out where fall goes: between summer and autumn? Autumn and winter?

Yep, you have five seasons. Summer, autumn, winter, spring and bug.

BUG SEASON!

I panic. I can almost hear the droning hummm, the whining bzzzzzz. The approaching apocalypse, as a vast plague of tiny insects, which has already spotted my pink English skin, sniffed my sweet foreign blood, lock on, stingers set to maximum itch, just waiting for their season to start.

The revelation sends me reeling. I rush out into the garden. Perhaps the opposite reaction you’d expect of a man petrified of the oncoming insect feast that he’ll become but I’ve got to put the screen room up, and fast.

I have a coop to build for the chickens we have yet to buy.

I have to erect the swing set so that little Z will be able to peer at it from behind closed patio doors, as millions of mosquitoes throw themselves at the glass in an attempt to feed on his tender young skin.

I have a veggie garden to dig, so that we can feed the best organic crops to the local wildlife.

I have a hoop house to complete – an adhoc heated growing room that creates the perfect environment for even more biting insects to thrive, I’m sure!

Oh jeez! Sliding nonchalantly into spring has turned into slipping and falling on my ass while all around me folks prepare for Canada’s equivalent of Colonel Kurtz’s, ‘the Horror, the Horror.’

And so, my spring has transformed, from joyous delight at the rebirth of this beautiful land, to a blind panic at being prepared to fend off a million tiny marauders, all intent on inflicting an itching hell upon me.

I’m off to stock up on bug repellent, bug zappers, bug nets, bug suits, bug magnets! Bug swatters, bug sprays… Boy, I love the smell of Deet in the morning!

Lost in translation, eh!

Oscar Wilde once said: “The Americans are identical to the British in all respects except, of course, language.”

I know what he means! You guys certainly fox me with your lingo at times.

As far as I knew before I moved to Canada, hoods and trunks were items of clothing, the former donned in order to not get wet, the latter in anticipation of completely immersing ones self in water. Here, I find they apply to either end of my car.

But then again, let’s flip that same scenario. If I asked a Canadian to show me his bonnet and boot he may well doff his cap and wave a hefty piece of footwear at me: when all I wanted to do was check out his hood and trunk.

Our common language is not so common after all. Every aspect of my new life in Canada is interesting to me but none more so than the local vocabulary peculiarities, eh.

I hope I put the ‘eh’ in the right place there. It seems you folk say ‘eh’ like friends of mine in London use, ‘knar wot ah meen’. It’s sort of an affirmation that their opinion, their point of view, their useless interjection, has been registered by their peers. ‘Eh’ on the other hand is what an ill-mannered English yob will blurt out after miss-hearing part of a fellow’s conversation: ‘Eh, waja say?’

I myself would behest the speaker repeat his remark by asking, ‘Pardon? My good man, please re-enlighten me with your undoubted wisdom, for I fell asleep during your discourse!’

On inviting Canadian visitors into our home recently, my lovely wife looked over to me (I was studiously sorting dry flies from wet ones in anticipation of the upcoming fishing season) and accused me of faffing about. Now, I knew what she meant, and, while disagreeing entirely with her assessment of the situation, I strolled over to greet our guests only to see them looking quizzically at her.

The ensuing explanation of ‘faffing’, and its eventual translation as ‘doing something but not achieving much’ (it’s in the dictionary, I kid you not) enabled me to sort a fair few more flies before being called again.

Similar questioning looks have resulted from the use of words such as cot (read crib), nappy (diaper) and dummy (soother) when the ladies with babies meet at our house. Stringing them together: “Little Z’s got his dummy in the cot but his nappy needs changing or else he’ll get mardy,” my fair wife completely befuddled an entire room of mums. The generic baby items were explained easily enough, but ‘mardy’?

How to explain mardy, hmm? I guess if you put on a diaper, do what babies do in it, and then see how you feel. Crabby, fed-up, grouchy? Now start to vocalise your frustrations by whining loudly about being left sitting in a pile of your own crap. That’s mardy!

And while pontificating on the nether regions, let’s not forget ‘cottaging’. To Haliburtonians this is an innocent pastime that involves folks from the city invading our space in order to enjoy the outdoors. However, to gay men in the UK ‘cottaging’ is a whole different way of quite literally getting together alfresco (and invading each others’ spaces, so to speak)!

But a word of warning gay men of Britain who visit Canada. While, in England the phrase ‘popping outside to smoke a fag’ means having a crafty cigarette, do not, I repeat do not, leave the bar with a pistol-packing redneck here in Canada if he invites you out, then looks back and utters those words to his buddies!

Come to think of it, how did Oscar Wilde die?

Room to manoeuvre (hide)

I’m finally getting it all organised, ship-shape, comfortable so to speak. Yep, just six months and a whole winter since we moved into our new home, I’ve got my tackle room just the way I like it.

Now some may scoff but this ‘man space’ is very important to me and, I’d like to bet, almost every other male on the planet. I imagine ladies feel the same way about how the throw cushions are stacked on the bed! They have to be right or they may as well not be there at all.

Is that sexist?

It probably is but then again how many women do you know who own their own tackle room, shed or workshop?

No, you’re not allowed to count all of the female craft folk round these parts; nor the artists; nor the… Hmm, I seem to be backing myself into a corner here.

You know what I need? A bolt-hole, hiding place or panic room to retreat to: just so long as my fly tying gear, a few outdoor magazines and some of Norm’s beef jerky is stashed there.

Back in Blighty a chap’s lair of choice is his shed. Suitably distant from the main home (at the bottom of the garden, no matter how short or long said garden is), the shed is usually a diminutive affair, often only a little larger than the average Haliburtonian’s ice fishing hut. However, within it feels like Dr Who’s Tardis. Or to be more precise it has as much stuff in as the Tardis; all that is lacking is the rest of the space!

Lawn chairs, bicycles, tools, pieces of timber that have been saved just in case they come in handy. The BBQ (for English BBQ read: a small, blackened, grease and mouse infested grill, filled with spent charcoal and spiders), a moth eaten tent, partially inflated football and a workbench piled high with half finished projects. And yet, amidst all of this ‘Very Important’ junk, there space enough to fit a comfy chair, armrests stacked with magazines, plus a box of matches and pipe set neatly in its stand. Oh, and a small crate of India Pale Ale.

An Englishman’s shed is his castle. It simply lacks the turrets, moat, drawbridge, keep, towers, knights, courtiers… It does have a bolt on the inside of the door though, rendering it sanctuary when all about is a battle ground. Lads, you know what I’m talking about!

In Canada though… Well, a mere shed is not enough is it. As mentioned, you guys go fishing in sheds, so the bolt-hole you retreat to when the ice is out has to be somewhat more substantial.

I overheard a conversation in a realtor’s office a while back between a female realtor and lady client: it went something like:

Client: “It’s really lovely but does it have a good sized workshop?”

Realtor: “I’m afraid not. There’s a wonderful landscaped garden, an 80 square foot deck and it’s set on the shores of Heaven Lake.”

Client: “Hmm, sorry but if there’s no workshop my husband won’t look at it…”

Realtor: “But there’s…”

Client: “And if he’s under my feet all day I would probably kill him within six months! What else have you got?”

Workshops, that’s what you call them. Industrial size buildings that are home to all manner of boys toys – skidoo, circular saw, beer cooler, trail bike, chain saw, ice fishing tackle (although those tiny little rods don’t take up a lot of room!), gun locker, kayak and the list goes on.

Bigger space, bigger toys but I guarantee you there’s a corner amidst all of this ‘treasure’ with a comfy chair, stack of magazines and a half finished crate of Molson in it.

Every workshop is different in size, shape and content. The one thing that almost all have in common though is that they are very rarely used as shops to work in. Hence I call mine the tackle room.

There can be no misunderstanding that I’ll be doing any work in there!