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!     

Meat and two veg!

I’m a vegetarian, at heart.

Ah, but there’s my problem. I mention ‘heart’ and immediately begin salivating about a lovely stuffed and roasted lamb’s heart: plump and juicy with a mouth-watering raisin, breadcrumb and herb filling, mmm.

I’m not so sure my wife was impressed when I presented it to her as a Valentine’s Day meal – a heart on a plate. Was that stating my undying love a little too literally?

But I applaud those who live the vegetarian lifestyle. In fact, for a good decade I was one. The trouble was meat always tempted me. That old adage about bacon sandwiches being the vegetarian’s downfall is a particularly accurate one.

The day came when I couldn’t hold out any longer. I was holidaying in France, which is perhaps the least vegetarian nation on earth. Menu choices read something like, ‘roasted meat, fried meat, grilled meat, meat of the day, or a green salad if you are a sissy!’ I ordered duck confit and devoured the succulent shreds with relish (that’s enjoyment, not chow chow) while riverlets of shiny fat ran through my beard.

So ended my life a la vegetarian. But I still had to reconcile one of my main beefs (if you’ll pardon the pun) about meat eating. The waste: that vast proportion of an animal that is discarded while we nibble on the prime cuts. If I were to eat meat regularly then I was going to eat all of it. Roasts, steak, trotter, ear, cheek and fetlock and that’s not even getting to what would soon become my favourite parts, the innards.

My descent into the gluttonous heaven, or hell, of eating what us Brits call ‘offal’ started innocently enough with a bet and couple of fries. The bet, made by my pal Lancton, was that we couldn’t eat fries.

But these weren’t the crispy golden slivers of deep fried potato that you’re thinking of. Oh Nooo! ‘Fries’ is the polite moniker given to the certain part, or parts, of a male yearling sheep’s anatomy that hang between its legs.

Bolstered by the knowledge that fries are a delicacy in the Middle East (or so the butcher told us, funny smile he had on his face at the time, though) and a healthy swig of Dutch courage (read vodka) Lancton and I set about the fries – testicles, if you will. First, we skinned each one (cue pursed lips and crossing of legs by male readers), then marinated, sliced and finally fried them. There were jokes made; about them not needing salt… Male bravado, to disguise our trepidation at what was to come.

When the time came we both drained the last of the vodka, cut into our sliced testicles and bit down hard… We needn’t have. The meat was tender, not unlike a scallop, and mildly flavoured, like the sweetest liver you’ve ever eaten. “I’ll be damned!” exclaimed Lancton. “Sheep bollocks taste great.”

And so began my journey down the least trodden path of carnivorous delights.

Now, while eating innards is not de rigueur in Haliburton, I have had the pleasure of trying local game in the form of moose, venison and duck since moving here. You see, to me, wild meat has something about it that the reared product lacks. That taste of danger, that whiff of “Whoa, that thing could have torn us apart with one swipe of its antlers”, that lingering shout of, “Feck, you nearly blew my head off!”

And so, I looked forward with eager anticipation to the HHOA Game Dinner: the chance to taste almost every animal that walks or swims through my garden, apart from the neighbour’s German Sheppard, that is. Unfortunately, fate was not on my side and so I have yet to sample the delights of beaver.

And, while I ponder wild meaty delights, I might hesitate at chowing down on a pair of bear’s balls. I’m not sure I know of anyone with a pair big enough to go out and get me some anyway!     

Food for thought

I’d give yourself an extra half hour when going to the grocery store in future, if I were you.

Not because of the slippery roads, nor the upcoming summertime tourist trade. No, you’ll spot the culprit holding up the check-out line. They’ll fidget and fuss, ruddy faced and blowing slightly as hubby stacks groceries on the conveyor while the wife frantically tries to make sure that every item they load has its corresponding coupon. Yep, I’d give yourself a while longer at the grocery store because of the coupon-crazy-couple!

The trouble is you can’t blame them. The price of food is rising faster than the water level in my backyard from all this snow melt. Cutting out the coupons will soon be de rigueur as we all feel the pinch.

I forecast a corresponding run on scissors soon, so get your pair quick before they put the price up on them!

But seriously, I’m not talking luxury food items. I’m not down at Foodland hassling the deli counter for foie gras, nor salivating over their lobster tank (lobsters that are very reasonably priced, I must add). No, it’s the bread, milk, butter, cheese and veggies that are costing more.

And, still aghast from my recent trip to the veggy aisle: Celery now costs more than that king of vegetables, asparagus. What? Celery’s nothing more than water in a stick! Turnips are almost as expensive as pork. Funny that, seeing as how the only thing they’re good for is feeding pigs. And leeks! $3.99 for two, come on. Since when have they been gastronomic gold? There’s more leaf than bulb and by the time you’ve cooked them you may as well have used onions anyway.

It’ll soon be cheaper to go eat at Tim’s every mealtime. Oh, but hold on. Mr Horton has recently announced that he’ll be putting up the price of our favourite brew because the cost of coffee has escalated. Forget rolling up the rim, it’s more of a suck it up and fork out more! 

Someone has to be to blame. The Harper Government, I say. Note I use the Conservatives’ preferred method of referring to the Government of Canada. I figure if they want us to use it, we do, especially when they make a mess of stuff.

Trouble is, other than promoting rampant capitalism, Messrs Harper and Co’s only real mistake is supporting the Peoples’ Revolutions now sweeping oil rich countries in the Middle East. So, what say we stamp out the uprisings, bring back the dictators, round up the oppressed masses and squeeze really hard until oil comes out again? Hmm, great for the price of a loaf of bread, not so for democracy: nor the life of the average Libyan.

You see, oil is the culprit. Even when economists spout on about the escalating cost of wheat and other commodities, it’s always the oil required to process and transport them that’s the real killer. Even taking into account the tribulations of Gaddafi and Mubarak, though, the reality is that oil is running out. We need alternative energy sources to bring down the levitating lettuce prices and the wallet busting cost of waffles.

Aha, so Stephen and his chums are to blame, at least in part.

With or without government help, what we have to do is change the way that we source our food. Extravagances such as flying lettuce from California, apples from Egypt, Lamb from New Zealand, will have to stop. What once seemed the easiest option is now costing us as a nation. We need to grow our own. Roll up our sleeves and get down and dirty in the veggy patch.

Now, I know we can’t grow bread and milk on trees. I know we can’t cultivate cans of tuna or meatballs. But we can grow some of our own food, locally. And, if the Harper Government gets its head out of its backside, ceases these futile attempts at rebranding and does some real work… Well, it might just help instigate another revolution: one where Canadians help themselves by helping each other and becoming a little less reliant on imported goods from far away places.

“Sustainable Canada: 20% off the price of life”. I’d clip that coupon any day!

So this is spring, Ontario

Driving the flat lands, the roads south of Lake Simcoe, the colours are flatter still. Washed out and insipid, weary and worn, the landscape stretches out before me.

I speed along poker straight roads, smudged in white and trimmed with a grey brown crust. The wind buffets the car seeking entry into my manufactured cocoon, a chink in my armour, access to my warmth, a way to reinforce the view before me and remind my senses of the bleakness that flashes by.

The bleakness of a land scoured. A panorama wrung dry of life. Picked clean of last year’s lustrous summer, divest of that autumnal treasure trove of reds and gold. Stripped even of the pristine white that is a Canadian winter.

So this is spring, Ontario.

Back in my homeland the summer is bright and warm, mostly. Autumn, winter and spring… they merge and morph from one to the next, a blur of blustery and windswept, damp and downright wet, chilly and brrrr cold. The snow falls but as quickly it is gone, the only real constant is the grey overhead. Sometimes leaden, sometimes plumped by stratocumulus, always a differing shade of monotone, pierced only briefly by watery shards of gold.

Back in England the grass at my feet keeps its green in winter. There’ll be no need to fire up the mower nor rouse the gardener but verdant blades still stretch skywards, drinking in what they can from the weak winter light. The shrubs, too, they hold a modicum of colour, a reminder of their summer pomp. And the trees… even the trees stripped bare of their leafy mantle retain a warmth, a colour in their branches boughs and bark that hints at the life hidden deep within.

But Canada. Your winter takes a heavier toll. Your snow carpeted then blanketed; an impenetrable shroud that descended silently and smothered the land. What beauty it brought. What a glistening immaculate cleansing. But in its wake, once liquefied and trickled back into that land, the snow leaves a barren scene.

So this is spring, Ontario.

Pressed hard into the earth, stripped of green, the grass lies withered. In the flat lands, field upon field, all look to me, dead. The conifers hang on to their sharpened leaves but not their healthy glow, the cold having stripped any thought of growth months ago. Maples, birch, basswood and alder, all stand naked and grey. Cold grey. Bent and bare, branches torn off by the weight of winter white. Beleaguered and embittered by the icy chill they stand waiting like deathly sentries for a changing of the guard.

As I drive nearer to home I see rocky outcrops dressed in static white waterfalls. Icicles drip where water is forced from the very granite shield on which life grips tenuously in this land in between. Like beautiful wounds, these fissures in rock leech the life source into salt spattered gullies.

Life looks bleak at the onset of an Ontario spring. But, in its deathly silence, in its bleached pallor there’s a beauty so subtle that those who don’t look and souls now immune will all but miss it. Look again at your harsh land, take stock of its bleak demeanour and marvel at these scenes that artists fail to paint. Look hard and remember what life will soon spring from this place so bitter, so unforgiving.

Smile Haliburton at your clouds of frigid breath, salt encrusted cars and slowly melting mountains of driveway grey. Take stock of the big land around you and learn again to enjoy nature’s palette of black, bone and grey.

For this is spring, Ontario.

A load of sour milk

Cheese. It’s one of my vices, along with a nice drop of single malt and fly fishing. The latter duo can quite easily be enjoyed together, I find, especially when standing in an ice cold stream on a crisp spring morning. To bring cheese into the mix, too, would be wrong, though. Wrong on numerous counts, the most prominent of which my lack of a third hand and fear of dropping any one of my triad of vices into the frigid waters.

But I don’t mention cheese as a prelude to rambling yarns of whisky soaked fishing adventures: no, I’ll save those for another time. Actually, I don’t merely mention cheese at all. “CHEESE!” I cry with a hoarse yelp that causes my voice to break and reveals my panic. The reason: cheese is so astronomically expensive here in Canada.

When I initially toyed with the idea of immigrating to Canada I weighed up the pros and cons. The low cost of petrol, sorry gas; the wonderful homes I could trade in my tiny London apartment for; the life amongst nature; the friendly people… OK, I got hung up on the pros. I just didn’t see any cons. But that is exactly what Canadian cheese is, a huge con!

Back in London, in a grocery store of the same size and type as your Independent or Foodland, I could buy a block of cheddar for quite literally half the price of a slab of Cracker Barrel. And get this; it was Canadian cheddar. Yep, emblazoned across the wax paper packaging of a piece of cheese the size of a house brick were the words ‘Canadian Extra Strong Cheddar, produce of Canada’.

Oh how I salivated at the thought. How I imagined the vast tongue-tingling mountain of cheddar awaiting me. It all made sense. If Canadian cheese was £3.00 ($4.50 to you folks) in England it must be virtually free in the Promised Land!

My mind was made up there and then in the grocers: “we’re moving to Canada,” I exclaimed to no one in particular. An old lady pushing a trolley, sorry shopping cart, looked at me quizzically. I smiled and wiped the drool from my beard.

Now, I’m no cheese snob. I don’t yearn for mouldy stilton, so blue it could run for Stephen Harper’s job; nor a nose withering fisherman’s sock of an epoisses - I’ll leave that one to the French. That’s not to say I’m a Kraft slice man either: god forbid. And the stuff that comes out of cans! It should be confiscated and burned, for I think it a worse evil than the hard drugs that the authorities dispose of in such a way. No, all I want is a good strong hunk of cheddar. Make that two hunks, enjoyed with a thick slice of homemade bread. 

And so, you can picture my horror, feel my pain, at the moment reality hit home. When, after turning into the refrigerated goods aisle – cheddar flavoured butterflies fluttering in my stomach; my trolley, sorry cart, a yawning empty vessel just waiting to be stacked high with that extra strong yellow gold - I drew up alongside the cheese display…

Where once my use of the word ‘gold’ may have been seen as a Freudian slip, now it is a down hearted, even maudlin (blame that on the Scotch) statement of fact. Why? Because here in my adopted home cheese costs more than freakin’ gold!

While here in Canada a bottle of good whisky – not the crap you folk mix Coke – is on par with prices back in Blighty. While fly fishing gear is considerably cheaper and access to water in which to use it isn’t controlled by some jodhpur-wearing, plumy voiced aristocrat. Cheese, that soured milk staple, has been priced out of reach of the common man; and me!

And so, as I take a break from casting my nymph, from seeking out that elusive trout, I’ll take a dram to warm my cockles. I’ll pluck a hunk of crusty bread from my pack and I’ll ponder my life here in Canada. A life so full of wonder but a life blighted by the price of cheese.