Wanna hear a secret?

I stood staring in wonderment. The mist drifted across what could only be described as a twenty acre mirror. Not a ripple. The sun, just up and rising slowly from behind the verdant maples to the east, shot arrows of brightness out over the placid surface of my lake.

Yes, my lake. My lake because the only reflection I could see upon it was my own. My lake because I had been granted what amounted to exclusive access to fish upon it. My lake because standing on that shore at six in the morning there was not a human sound to be heard: it could have been my entire world for those precious moments.   

And my lake because I had been sworn to secrecy!

Oh yes, I’ve got a secret fishing hole, aren’t you all jealous now! No? Hmm, I suppose not. There are after all about a billion lakes, ponds and rivers to fish in Haliburton County and I’m sure you local fisher-folk almost all have a favourite water, a go-to bay, a secret spot that is never boasted about, never mentioned, not even when you’re recounting tales of epic piscatorial conquests whilst, how shall we put it? You are buoyed up by a nip or two of the hard stuff. 

To me though, a boy from the city, a fly fisherman used to jostling for a spot around a muddy puddle with a rabble of rubber clad urbanites, the picturesque idyll that I stood before on that morning was nothing short of a miracle.

Picture this: (I’m gonna go all statistics-mad on you now but stick with me) my previous home, London has the highest population density in Great Britain. Around 4700 people live in every square kilometre. Compare that to Minden Hills, which has a population of about 5500 squeezed tightly into 847 square kilometres. You can see where I’m going can’t you. Every time I swung my fly rod I’d catch someone in the eye with a size 14 barbless hackled nymph!

I’m not saying that I couldn’t fish in London, or that I didn’t enjoy it but one thing’s for sure, there were no secret fishing holes. I fished local reservoirs and lakes with the fly and I dipped a bobber and worm into local canals and dykes. I even waded up the remoter urban stretches of the River Wandle, a supposed favourite angling haunt of Admiral Lord Nelson, no less. But even his ghost had got tired of the constant interruptions and upped and left.

I did find one or two quiet spots: little havens of tranquility where vehicle noise and pedestrian traffic were mercifully forgotten for a few moments. I treasured them. I noted their exact whereabouts. Then I returned, only to find someone else fishing in them.

And so you see, my lake, which is not my lake at all but a small piece of heaven loaned to me by a very gracious owner, is something akin to paradise on earth.

As I stood there in the first light of morning a loon beckoned me into my boat. I took a moment longer to linger then slipped out onto the water, almost ashamed that my ripples ruined the plate glass perfection of the lake surface.

I paddled quietly for a while, just looking. An osprey dipped towards the surface and then changed its mind; a beaver bobbed sedately past; a motorboat sputtered into life and four guys clutching beer bottles careered into view! Only kidding.

I made my first cast into paradise and a small bass flashed at my dry fly. I made a second and got another fish, bigger this time. And so the next two hours passed in similar fashion. Two hours of perfect peace and fabulous fishing.

Yes, this lake is my secret lake. I won’t be telling all my fishing buddies of its charms. I won’t be boasting about it when drunk. I’ll even take a different route each time I go, just in case I’m followed. And, if that sounds kind of selfish to you, I say: Go find your own uninhabited utopia, there’s sure to be one out there in our wonderful wilderness.     

Murder never tasted so good

Warning! This column contains scenes of graphic violence and death. Those of a nervous disposition should read no further.

“It was when we dropped the bodies in boiling water. The smell of them scolding made me feel faint.”

“I couldn’t get the stench of death off of my hands for two days. It made me retch whenever I tried to eat.”

“Their eyes just looking at you, even when their heads had been cut clean off. Whoa!”

Testimony from serial killers? Sort of. Chicken murderers to be precise.

The twelve weeks were up and for my small flock of white rock chickens it was time to meet their maker. Together with friends who had birds of their own, we had a chicken plucking party. Sounds harmless doesn’t it but plucking means killing and killing means neck breaking and head chopping but that’s not the worst. Then comes the dressing and I don’t mean choosing the right outfit for the event. They call it dressing to make it sound nice; when what it really means is cutting a hole in the chicken’s ass and ripping its innards out with your bare hands.

Thankfully, yes I say thankfully, yours truly was on killing duty. I’d wander around to the coop, talk gently to the assembled chickens waiting for my moment. The moment when one of the unsuspecting birds ventured close enough for me to scoop it up and carry it to its doom.

The flock soon became wary; their numbers slowly diminishing, their brethren being taken but never returning. Me? I became desensitised to the whole coax it, catch it, carry it, kill it routine. I actually started to enjoy it and that’s a little worrying. But I put my enjoyment down to the chickens and the dignity with which they went to their deaths.

I’d pick up an unsuspecting bird and pop it under my arm for the short walk to the chopping block. A few strokes of its back and the chicken would be clucking pleasantly. At the block, said chicken was swung upside down to be held by its feet. This was usually taken in the bird’s stride – a few chucks and a quizzical look upwards at me.

It was only when my fingers fastened around the chicken’s throat that it began to think something amiss and by that time it was way too late. A sharp jerk, some flapping and then a swift swing of the axe and the chicken was dispatched. Job done, for my part at any rate.

Then came the dirty part. Plucking: my companions went industrial on our chickens’ asses, quite literally. A dip in a vat of boiling water was followed by being tossed into what looks something like a spin dryer with dozens of rubber clad fingers fixed around the drum. The headless bird would whizz around, tumbling this way and that, as the fingers knocked off the feathers. Not a pretty sight but wholly idyllic compared to the job that fell to the third member of our murderous crew.

Yep, you guessed it, the hand up ass moment. Cutting a neat hole in the chicken’s backside – just big enough to insert a hand – was followed by a swift and brutal shove, grope, grip and yank. Out came all the bits you don’t see when you buy a pre-packed bird from the grocery store.

“Save the livers,” chimed the wife. “We gotta find ‘em first, what they hell do they look like?” barked back my companion, staring horrified at the insides of the first bird, which were now lying very definitely outside.

And so the day went on: coax, catch, carry, kill. Dunk, pluck, cut, grope, grip, yank. And repeat. And repeat and repeat and repeat… By the end of the massacre I had slaughtered around 30 chickens (I lost count at some point after 20 and at around the same time that bouts of hysterical laughter began to grip me!) and my compatriots had plucked, gutted, portioned and bagged them with an efficiency that would have you thinking we’d been murdering helpless hens for years.

The upshot of this is that I now have a stack of chickens in the freezer and my friends back in England think I’ve turned into some kind of rural raving lunatic with a penchant for decapitating farmyard animals.

To them, I say: “The chicken tastes mighty fine and it’ll soon be time to do the same to the pigs, too!”

HOHOHAHAHAHAAAAAA!

Sorry. I slipped back into killin’ mode there for a moment.

Outside forces at work

The impossibly dashing image of The Outsider that you see at the head of this column is a false likeness, a sly fake or slight of the eye, today at least. I’m not implying that the good looking fellow you see before you is not me, author of this missive, but I am saying that I definitely don’t look like that at the moment.

The reason: my darling son, Little Z and some strange nocturnal goings-on.

Some unexplained motive caused him to wake from deep sleep last night at around a quarter after midnight. First he snivelled, then he moaned and finally he yelled: “DADDYYYY! DADDYYYY!”

“I think he wants you,” said the wife. I couldn’t really argue, could I.

And so it began, the longest night of my life, or that’s how it feels on the morning after. Initially, Little Z was upset; a bad dream may be. Then he became belligerent; a reaction to my forcibly trying to put him back in his bed, possibly (I guess the veiled threats muttered under my breath didn’t help either). Finally, he woke up properly – the type of waking up that normally comes at breakfast time – looked me in the eye and politely said, “downstairs please, Daddy.” I did not concur.

And so, we spent the next three hours ‘playing’ (for playing read me bumbling around in a foggy haze of half slumber trying to get him to lie down while he joyfully threw all manner of toy, cuddly and otherwise, at me).

At around 3.30am Little Z figured that I didn’t really want to join in with his night time games and so called his Mom. Then, promptly fell asleep.

Now, those of you who don’t have kids yet have probably stopped reading already. However, if you haven’t I suggest you read on, there could be some good advice or at least weary warnings of what to expect in the future should you embark on the rollercoaster ride that is having a family.

For the folks who have already had kids and managed somehow to raise them and then get them to leave home, it’ll all be quite a laugh I’m sure. But, stifle your mirth for a moment please and think back to those golden poop-encrusted-diaper years, and, if there’s an answer to my next question please let me know it!

What strange force, what bizarre influence, was at work upon the toddlers of the county last night?

On talking to friends (the ones with little angels just like mine) I found that almost all of them had woken at just gone midnight and proceeded to happily deprive their hard working parents of sleep for up to three hours. Then, just a quickly as it started, they all went back to sleep.

What the hell!

It wasn’t a full moon and I could detect nothing in the water. There were no storms raging over Haliburton County and if there was an earth tremor it failed to rattle the crystal chandelier that hangs above my bed (only kidding).

I can only shudder at the possibility of the paranormal! Have you seen the movie ‘Children of the Corn’? I have; hence my insistence on locking all the sharp implements away first thing this morning and then mowing flat our acres of maize. I’ve also confiscated Little Z’s tricycle, even though he’s not riding around shouting REDRUM REDRUM just yet. And, after shaving the back of his head, I can safely say Z does not have a birthmark in the shape of three sixes in the nape of his neck!

But horror movies aside; this isn’t the first time that it has happened and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Explanations, theories, anecdotes that might shed some light upon ‘the notorious night of no sleep’ would be greatly received.

And, while explanations are in the air, so to speak: I apologise if this missive does not have not the usual ‘it’s not like that in London’ Outsider vibe. I see it as more of a bemused, ‘what outsider forces are ruining my beauty sleep’ plea from a decidedly dishevelled and definitely sleep deprived Wanting-to-lie-downer.

I’ll be back looking my gentlemanly best next week. Hopefully.

Fighting talk

I blame Vancouver. Not the city per se but the adrenalin (read alcohol) fuelled idiots who trashed the place after their ice hockey team was roundly beaten by the Bruins in the Stanley Cup a while back.

What do I blame them for? The riots in London, England, of course.

They should have known that this outward display of aggression; this show of brute strength against such formidable foes as shop windows and stationary vehicles could only have ended badly. Not only did they trash the stores that they regularly shop in and the very cars that they drive (clever, eh), they also unleashed a beast: a snarling venomous devil that lives across the Atlantic in good old Blighty.

I could almost hear the murmurings as the Vancouver riot took place: the “Cor blimey guvnor, who the bleedin’ ‘ell do they think they are? We’re the best rioters (in the western world, of course. We can’t discount the folks in the Middle East, who take it to a whole new level and over throw governments!), we’ll show ‘em!”

And so they did. The unfriendly masses of middle England, so long kept quiet, dormant almost, by a fix of low interest rates, infinite credit and rabid consumerism, finally reared up to reveal their drool soaked, TV dinner encrusted, maniacal leering faces.

Now, media commentators in the UK will tell you that the riots were sparked by the police killing a Tottenham man. And, I don’t want to take away from the seriousness of this incident whether it was right or wrong. But, and it’s a big ‘but’, when you see the supposed protesters carrying off TVs, DVD players, toasters, even a safe from a local bookmakers, you have to think that some folks decided to have a riot not out of a sense of horrific injustice but simply for a riot’s sake, a laugh even.

And, the trouble with that is the disenfranchised face of English society (whether it be the unemployed, football hooligans, or just plain bad tempered idiots) is very good at making trouble. We have a track record of urban burning, sporting mayhem and plain old looting, you see. And, I won’t even mention the crusades or slavery!

Perhaps subconsciously that’s why I got the hell out of Dodge last year (for Dodge substitute North London, just a few blocks from where the stench of burning police cars hangs heavy in the air at the moment) and escaped to the sedate little community that is Haliburton.

But even here, I struggle to shake off old fears and hang ups. I still lock and bolt the doors at night. I’m wary of strangers and I post a sentry to guard the property when I’m away. Trouble is he’s only two and tends to get distracted by chipmunks and digging in the dirt. Still, a little discipline and we’ll knock him into shape… Or is that slavery? Damn it!

But, my message to you Haliburtonians is never get too comfortable. Always expect the unexpected. We may live in this rural idyll but we should never take our safety and sanity for granted. It only takes a few agitators to start trouble. Imagine if the turkeys decided that Thanksgiving was not a reason to run and hide but a call to arms! Just think what would happen if the mosquitoes actually coordinated their attacks (some would say they already do, I’m sure)? What if the local art community got sick and tired of painting landscapes for cottages and rose up to form a guerrilla force of wild eyed watercolourists hell-bent on disfiguring local beauty spots!!!   

This column might seem to make a mockery of the trouble in Vancouver. Yep, I’m afraid a group of drunken hockey fans deserves nothing less. It may make light of a serious incident in England but then again the majority of the folks who caused the riot seem far more interested in pyromania and shopping sprees courtesy of their brick-sized credit cards. I hope you’ll note that I do not cast aspersions on the uprisings in the Middle East because these folk are fighting for a bigger cause, democracy. Although they might want to check out where democracy got the folks of Tottenham! OK, OK I’ll stop there.

But then again, I need to come back to my initial statement about Vancouver. I realise that it may have been unfair: I blamed the alcohol!   

Be thankful for your quiet life in Haliburton, I am.      

Hot topic

The evening was still, the sky blue, turning slowly pink. The moon had already risen and was tracking slowly higher in the cloudless atmosphere. Cloudless that is, apart from the thin wisp of smoke that broke the tree line and rose up straight as a flag pole into the evening blue.

I smiled and wondered what the penalty was for lighting a fire during a summertime ban. I didn’t really care to tell you the truth, and that’s not because I’m some crazy law-breakin’ son of a gun; it’s just that the fire wasn’t mine.

Every evening the same thing. A near neighbour of mine lights his fire, takes up residence in an armchair conveniently set under a tree and wiles away the evening hours with a bottle of beer in hand and a long stick, with which he pokes at said fire.

I don’t get the attraction. Or rather I do get that this guy is relaxing in the best way he knows how and I respect him for that. But I don’t get the need to light up on a hot summer’s evening; then again, I’m not a proper Canadian, yet.

In the year and a half that I’ve lived here, I’ve been lucky enough to meet a whole range of folks, from intellectuals to hillbillies, environmental activists to artists and bear hunters but the one thing that almost all of them have got in common is that they like a good bonfire. In fact, it seems that you Canadian folk are addicted to fire.

If there’s a party there’s a fire be it in April, July, October or January.

I’ve been ice fishing and they built a fire, on the ice no less. I stood a long way away from it. They weren’t catching this limey with their crazy winter humour!

I’ve been to a wedding and they built a fire – from marriage vows to marsh mallows in the space of minutes.

I’ve been to countless barbeques and guess what, one flaming heat source was just not enough. “You gotta have something to poke your stick at,” said the host (and he wasn’t my near neighbour).

And so, when I bought my house one of the first things I did was build a fire pit in the garden. A fine ring of rocks it was too. We had a house warming, quite literally. A big fire in the new pit, lots of friends around, too many beers and a stick or two to poke while we set the world to right.

That was last year though and now the grass has grown up around those rocks. The fire pit looks forlorn as it slowly disappears into the lawn because we’ve not had a burn in it yet. The recent fire ban helped assuage my guilt at not keeping up a Canadian tradition. But, now that the ban has been lifted the fire pit haunts my waking moments and pervades my dreams.

“Come warm me. Come burn. Come stare into the dancing orange flames that lick at your poking stick…” Whoa! Sorry. You see it got me then. This damn fire pit is talking to me, it’s driving me crazy.

The trouble is my reserved English character just doesn’t cut it as ‘fire master’, ‘flame father’, ‘bilious burner’ you get the idea… And, the friend who introduced me to the Canadian tradition of fire starting has since moved to Vancouver.

Without him there is no impish charmer to control embers. And alas, I don’t have his crazy hair, outlandish sideburns, baseball cap and laceless boots – the uniform of any self respecting red-ne…sorry, flame fetishist – to indulge in his mad fire dances.

What do I do?

I guess if I am to truly integrate into Canadian life, I have to learn to burn more stuff. Either that, or resign myself to being forever English.

Perhaps I should trundle an armchair over to my near neighbour, sit down, clink a bottle and see if he can lend me a poking stick while he enlightens me during a nice fireside chat. Best do it while the fire ban’s not in force!

Life on a plate

Life on a plate

By Will Jones

Defining moments in life are few and far between for most of us but when they turn up they aren’t necessarily what you expect.

There are the obvious ones, of course: the birth of your first child, buying your first home, catching that monster fish (OK, some of these defining moments won’t resonate with everyone!), all drastically alter the way you look at the world. But, there are also the ones that sneak up on you. Those that are far less significant but which when they happen stop you in your tracks and make you take a good look at yourself. And, you guessed it; I had one of those moments just a day or so ago.

It was the end of an ordinary day and as my lovely wife, Little Z and I sat down for dinner the defining moment struck me. I didn’t even notice at first but as I finished speaking it hit me like a sideswipe from a grizzly.

This is how it went. As I looked down at my dinner plate, a modest meal of small mouth bass fillets, new potatoes, baby carrots and fava beans, a satisfied smile came over my face. I leaned back put my hands on the table either side of said plate and exclaimed: “Everything you see before you has been caught or grown by our family.” 

It’s hard to explain how I felt at that moment. Smug, hopefully not. Proud, possibly. Far superior to everyone who tucking into grocery store produce, most definitely. But then, I realised I had heard those words before.

I cringed because I knew at that moment that I was turning into my Dad.

Now, my childhood was a sunny one. No hardship, no toil; lots of love, play and happiness. A great home, big garden and friendly neighbourhood. My Dad earned a modest wage but he saved and spent it wisely. He also prided himself on growing all of our own vegetables and raising a few animals for the table.

But this pride manifested itself in what I as a young boy considered the most ghastly of ways. Leaning back in his chair and folding his arms, Dad would announce to the assembled audience at the Sunday dinner table (no matter whether it be just his immediate family, relations, friends or complete strangers): “Everything you see before you was grown in our garden.”

Nothing wrong with that, you might think, but, as a young boy I groaned each time he said it. I longed for shop bought instant mashed potato, plastic encased TV dinners, fizzy pop that was blue, desserts made from chemicals rather than freshly picked fruit.

I would shrink low into my chair, cringing as the smile spread across his face when guests exclaimed their surprise and awe. I scowled at him from across the wonderful spread, willing him to realise what an embarrassing Dad he was being. And, I vowed never to put my kids through that kind of mental torture.

I failed. The defining moment had snuck up on me and slapped me across the face with a wet kipper, or small mouth bass, as it were.

And so, it is by opening up and baring my soul to you that I hope to stave off any further onset of Dadness. I am, as you know, a Dad now and I suppose a degree of Dadness is attached to that responsibility. I now love the idea of harvesting home grown food and I have also grown to appreciate and love my old Dad dearly, so turning into him wouldn’t be such a bad thing really.

But, my Dad, almost all Dads, are far too sensible, always too careful. They are the quashers of every boy’s crazy ideas – “no you can’t leap off the garage roof onto a trampoline and bounce over next door’s fence into their pond. I don’t care what you saw on the TV stunt show!” They are the deliverers of discipline, and, despite every protestation from young boys, they are never wrong.

And, I’m turning into one!

Hold on though, I quite like that last Dadness. May be I’ll take solace from my defining moment and assume the Dad mantle of always being right from now on.

And, you know what, everything we’ll be eating tonight has come from… DOH! 

Showers, sovereignty and the meaning of life

First it ran to a trickle, then a drip and after that nothing.

Midway through a shower after a hard day’s toil at the keyboard; all lathered up and ready for a cool rinse off and what happened, the water just stopped, that’s what. I scraped soap suds off my personage, in much the same way as a German bartender knocks the foam off the top of a glass of lager, all the while grumbling to myself that someone was going to get an earful about this.

And then it dawned on me. There was no one to give an earful to. No water company to call. No emergency hotline to be put on infinite hold by when calling to report a problem. There was no one else to lambast about my lack of water other than me and my now dry well.

Water, that life giving elixir, is something that far too many in this world take for granted. And I was one of them. Living in England, where all but a tiny minority of households are linked to the mains water supply, we all expect there to be water when we turn on the tap. Just like we expect there to be a pub on every corner, a traffic jam on every motorway and a few folks in every country of the world who don’t like us because we conquered and enslaved them at some point in the distant past.

The thing is, we may have colonised many places but us Brits never bothered to learn the local culture. And, it was as such that I came to Canada and showered long and luxuriantly, oblivious to the fact that my well could and would run dry if I used its precious content wastefully. Never again shall I take water, my water, for granted like I did when I lived in Londinium.

And this is the moral of my meandering words in this week’s column. Not water use, because you’re all well used to wells and their workings. No, I’m harping on about taking things for granted.

While I didn’t appreciate my water supply until forced to flick foam rather than rinse off, I am acutely aware of the wonders bestowed upon me in my new home here in Haliburton. Absolute blessings such as the mile after mile of verdant wilderness and the cobalt blue lake around every corner. Roads that are not choked with traffic and exhaust fumes and people within or without car, who smile and take the time of day to say hello. Even the pesky racoons, veg stealing white tails and chicken chomping foxes are something to rejoice about because so many people in this world get little or no chance to see and appreciate them: let alone get annoyed by their presence in our lives (or should that be our presence in their lives!). 

And so I gently remind you Haliburtonians, those things you see and experience everyday, those quirks and quibbles of life in the Highlands, take a moment to step back, reappraise and enjoy them because to many, including myself, they are a rare and unique pleasure.

But back to my water. The well filled up again, thankfully and I’m now much more conscious of the amount of water I use and the relative fragility of the supply. I even went so far as finding out a little more about the other idiosyncrasies of homes in rural Canada. There’s the family of chipmunks living in the floor space that every house comes equipped with. The grills in the floor that I think have something to do with the heating but which more importantly are employed by little Z as postage slots for toys, money and partially chewed meals. Hmm, may be he’s in league with the chipmunks.

And then there’s the septic tank; that subterranean cauldron filled with what I believe you laughingly refer to as ‘honey’.

I just hope its sweet in there because I’m not looking forward to jumping down inside and shovelling it out this fall. That’s what you do, right?