Plastic glasses start my spider-sense tingling, so I look around suspiciously as I sip my pint of Kronenbourg at the back bar of the Tzar Bar. The wife has moved on to Rum and Coke after the last pint took a long time to go down. Price, £5.60.
It's busy already and we're incredibly lucky to grab a seat near the front bar with a view of the dancefloor, table, and everything. We settle back and watch the young and the beautiful enter.
We take another pint.
'Dark rum?' The barmaid asks.
'Um, okay.' I say.
'That's £6.20.' She smiles sweetly.
I figure that dark rum is more expensive than what we had the first time (I wasn't asked).
Back at the table a crazy-eyed, multi-tattooed man comes over to our table and does a rap in my face. I don't remember the whole thing, but it went along the lines of,
'Fat women, thin women, blonde women, tall women, short women, brown women and white, I want to f4ck them all.'
This rap was positively shouted into my face as the man made all the correct rap-esque gestures. It is difficult to know what to do, exactly, when someone raps in your, in a pub, face out of the blue.
He finishes and I say, 'Great rap man.'
He looks at me suspiciously, 'Really?'
'Yeah, really good.'
He turns to his friends and tells them, excitedly, 'He thinks my rap is really good, he told me, eh, eh?'
I gesture yes and his friends nod indulgently. I bang fists with the rapper as he mutters, 'I used to be a rapper you know.'
'No,' I say, holding his eye, 'you still are a rapper... You still are.'
He brightens up and wanders off.
Third pint.
'Dark rum?' The barmaid asks.
'Um, no, white.' The wife says.
'That'll be £6.90 please.'
I go and find the manager, who listens to my rum-price story and asks me pertinent questions about white vs dark rum, barstaff and times, then punches up the drink on nearby till. He frowns, looks at me, and gives me two pounds.
'Thanks,' I say, staring at the coins.
'I know what's it's like,' he tells me, patting me on the back.
I don't know what he's talking about. Perhaps he thinks I'm really poor. He's right of course, but that wasn't the point.
Back at the seat the wife goes to the bathroom and a young, tough-looking guy wanders over to me.
'You, out of that seat, now.' He says.
'Sorry?' I say.
'You, out of that seat, now.' He says.
I stare at him for a moment and say, simply, 'No.'
He stares back.
'[mumble] ... from the Manor?'
'What?' I say. What is he talking about?
'Are you from the Manor?'
I think about this, and say, finally, 'I have no idea where the Manor is, so, no, probably not.'
He frowns. 'No, no, the Manor, you know, it means like this area - are you from around here?'
'Oh, I say,' feeling like a loser, 'ah, yes, I live just up the road.'
'Oh.' He says, shakes hands with me, then leaves.
The wife returns and it's time for pint four.
'Dark rum?' The barmaid asks.
'The cheapest, please.' I say.
'That'll be six pounds please...'
Before we leave a man that looks like Rocky out of the Rocky Horror Picture Show movie appears. He is sporting meal wrist bands like you would expect gladiators to wear. He fiddles with them self-consciously. Maybe he just bought them.
'You should go to the gym,' my wife tells me as she stares at his huge biceps.
'Hmm.' I mumble.
On the way home I get progressively drunker until I can hardly stand by the time we get to our street. This is confusing, like I'd been slipped a mickey in the bar. By the time we get upstairs I've blacked out and remember nothing until the next morning.
Odd.
Monday, March 07, 2005
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Violence on the Bus
The bus to work from the station is normally quite a sedate experience. We trundle through suburban sprawl, see the odd patch of woodland, a few tower-blocks, some shops. People get on and off, the windows are steamed up so you wipe a small hole and peer through it. It normally rains.
There are a lot of rowdy school kids that get on the bus en route, and if you catch the right bus then you'll be crammed in with them. You can listen to the latest gossip about that cow Sheila and catch up on tinny, bass-free r & b and rap tracks that leak from iPods and cheap MP3 players. The boys look moody, and remain silent, usually with hoods pulled right up, hiding their faces.
Today there's a small scuffle at the front of the bus. This is normal - often some kid will be feigning amazement that his bus pass is mysteriously out of date. And then outraged that he has to pay.
'I've only got a fiver.' [surly youth]
'That's okay, I've got lots of change.' [smiling driver]
Surly youth slams five pounds down on counter and looks like he's being robbed as he rolls his eyes.
But today the drama is more dramatic. There's a lot of movement, and from the back we see a ball of fight appear and then make its way through the bus. There's one white kid flailing around and three black kids kicking him and punching him in the head. One of the attackers grasps two posts with his hands and proceeds to kick violently with both feet.
This goes on for some time. One man next to me starts to shout things like,
'Leave it!' and 'Get off the bus!' But it has no effect.
No one offers to help.
Occasionally snowballs fly in through the open door to hit the victim's head, perhaps thrown by a slightly less aggressive member of the attackers. This seems poignant at the time.
Eventually it all stops and the three punchers go upstairs whilst the bleeding recipient looks a bit haggard and sorry for himself, but just takes a seat and says nothing.
I imagine that the bus driver will call the police, but no, the doors close and we carry on as usual. I peer out of the window and feel unbearably sad.
There are a lot of rowdy school kids that get on the bus en route, and if you catch the right bus then you'll be crammed in with them. You can listen to the latest gossip about that cow Sheila and catch up on tinny, bass-free r & b and rap tracks that leak from iPods and cheap MP3 players. The boys look moody, and remain silent, usually with hoods pulled right up, hiding their faces.Today there's a small scuffle at the front of the bus. This is normal - often some kid will be feigning amazement that his bus pass is mysteriously out of date. And then outraged that he has to pay.
'I've only got a fiver.' [surly youth]
'That's okay, I've got lots of change.' [smiling driver]
Surly youth slams five pounds down on counter and looks like he's being robbed as he rolls his eyes.
But today the drama is more dramatic. There's a lot of movement, and from the back we see a ball of fight appear and then make its way through the bus. There's one white kid flailing around and three black kids kicking him and punching him in the head. One of the attackers grasps two posts with his hands and proceeds to kick violently with both feet.
This goes on for some time. One man next to me starts to shout things like,
'Leave it!' and 'Get off the bus!' But it has no effect.
No one offers to help.
Occasionally snowballs fly in through the open door to hit the victim's head, perhaps thrown by a slightly less aggressive member of the attackers. This seems poignant at the time.
Eventually it all stops and the three punchers go upstairs whilst the bleeding recipient looks a bit haggard and sorry for himself, but just takes a seat and says nothing.
I imagine that the bus driver will call the police, but no, the doors close and we carry on as usual. I peer out of the window and feel unbearably sad.
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Cheese and Onion man
On the train I have my eyes closed. A state close to sleep, but not quite. I hear the noises of the train and am conscious of not having enough knee room. I would like to sleep, but find the worry of sleeping past my stop always prevents me. I have woken up in railway sidings before - an odd experience as you have to wait, alone, for the train to sneak back into the station before you can disembark. The train is cold, silent, dark, spooky even.So, in near-sleep I hear the doors open and a terrible smell enters. Jesus, I think to myself, what a terrible smell. The smell gets stronger and I calculate that the person responsible for the smell is getting closer. Closer. Closer. Closer, and, yes, it sits down next to me.
I pull a long face, keeping my eyes closed, designed to make my nostrils into vertical slits, but it doesn't work and the smell is relentless in its assault.
I try and place the odour. The best I can come up with is bad teeth, cheese and onion, and farts.
How can this man not know that he smells this bad? Does he not have eyes to see the reaction that must come over people as he talks to them? Does he think everyone reacts that way to everybody else? Does he not observe?
I'm always disturbed by people's lack of observation. How oblivious to the world many of us seem. Perhaps I'm too conscious - I'm forever moving out of people's way, stopping making irritating noises, holding open doors, catching bags knocked off tables, ducking under street gossipers' wildly used hands, and so forth. So, to not be able to notice the fact that you stink, to me, is, frankly, a poor show.
I wake myself up and read my book, perhaps visual sensory input will help distract from the olfactory? The first line I read is a man saying the words, 'Ah, perfidious Albion'.
Perfidious is a word that likely to get you into fights in certain pubs in the country. What the hell does it mean anyway? I know it means nasty, somehow, but the exact definition escapes me, I promise to myself to look it up later (disloyal, deceitful, base, low...)
Thinking of rough pubs brings to mind a pub in Carlisle I was once passing through on some long forgotten journey: I was in the bathroom of the pub, washing my hands (some of us do), when a terrier-looking, thin psychopath walked in and stared at me in the mirror. My heart skipped a few times, not for joy, and I ignored him.
He is eyeing up my jewellery it seems, as he turns to me and says,
'Put this in for us.'
And hands me a gold earring hoop with a Christian cross dangling from it.
I stare at him and he turns his head to one side and sticks an ear in my direction. It has a silver stud in the lobe.
Now, intimacy in the bathroom may be something that women are comfortable with, but your average man doesn't generally do anything more personal than stand next to other men with his penis in his hand. Hmm, well, I suppose that does seem quite intimate.
Anyway, with my shaking hands, and eyeing the prison-esque neck tattoos, I manage to pry out the stud. My fingers are waxy. I resist the urge to sniff them.
The hoop is hard to get in and I twist his ear quite hard, reddening it severely. He doesn't seem to notice.
Finally it's in and I tell him.
He merely nods and walks out of the bathroom...
All this thoughtfulness has allowed me ten minutes respite from stink-man, but I'm brought back to reality by another smell. Ah, oh my god it's beautiful. It's the smell of heaven after an eternity in the dunghills if hell.
The stink-man has opened an orange and the smell has flooded the whole train cabin. I sniff it in, greedily.
It doesn't last though, and a few minutes later I'm back in farty cheese and onion land.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Commuters
The train is like a hospital ward. There are the sick, the coughing, sniffing, sneezing, sleeping masses. Whistles, snores, grunts, belches and farts punctuate the rumble of the train. If you are lucky enough to sit next to a toilet you get the odd authentic bed-pan smell. Then there are those that are like the visitors, sitting next to the sickly - those that read, talk, play with their phones, laptops, look out of the window in a bored fashion, or generally entertain themselves. They have the air of peole who would rather be somewhere else, but stoically are resigned to their fates.At East Croydon station the cummuters queue for the doors, on both sides. The inner commuters vacate their seats a good few minutes before the train pulls up, and wait, staring out of the door windows. As they slow to a stop, their eyes meet the outer commuters. Time slows down considerably as the train finally slows to a complete stop and we all wait for the open door button to illuminate. These commuters are seasoned, none of them jab at the button angrily before it lights up - they know it is fruitless.
The doors slide open and its all the outer commuters can do to sto pthemselves rugby pushing their way stright on. It is the hardest tast to stand and wait patiently as the inner commuters exit onto the platform through the single width gap left for them. Even before we're all off the outer commuters are pushing their way on, racing for that precious window seat.
This train is't very busy and that's all the race is for - a window seat, as everyone gets some kind of seat in the end. These commuters don't even play the sitting in the aisle seat game - they just go straight for the window in a way that you wish people on buses would do.
Back on the platform I'm walking up one of the many long ramps that lead up to the station exit. It's quite sedate going up the ramp - the people allplod along, heads down, some smoking cigarettes that were list just seconds after exiting the train. I walk faster and try to overtake the mass, but this is risky as overweight, late commuters are appearing at the top of the ramp and thundering down them to try and catch the train with the closing doors, gaining momentum as they do so, reaching speeds they could never reach on the flat. And completely unable to stop if an obstacle, such as myself, gets in their way. It is safer to simply to duck back into the saftey of the sedate uphill-walking crowd and watch them thunder past, red faced and panting as their train doors close and whistles are blown.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
New Year's Eve 2004
It took an entire day of watching TV and sipping water, along with a Vegetable Thali from the local Indian, to recover from New Year's Eve. The Flight of the Phoenix also helped somewhat.
The evening didn't start off too promisingly - we had no calls from anyone, and so assumed that we'd be spending it alone. We went to Tescos at about 5pm and bought what we could from shelves that had been cleared by panic shoppers.
12 Cans of Kronenbourg
1 Bottle white wine
1 Bottle Champagne
Nuts
Crisps
Humous
Olives
Coca-cola
Also in the house was a half bottle of whisky, given by my auntie as a thoughtful gift. I eyed this bottle early on in the evening, hopeing that it wouldn't be necessary to crack it open.
Caro cooked and I started my fist can at 6pm or so, sipping slowly. Then the phone calls began, and within half an hour there was a plan to have a party nearby. Oz and X were on their way over. Much eating, runing around and two more cans of lager were consumed before we left.
The party was small, but it was what we all wanted. We chatted, drank, pulled party poppers and ate a lot of food. We tuned into Radio 2 for the chimes of Big Ben, but they messed it all up superbly by seemingly miss a chime, confusing us all, and then finishing before all 12 were heard. This resulted in some mild confusion and delayed kissing and champagne popping.
Ah, then the levitation. I don't know how we got onto the subject, but we were talking about David Blaine and I mentioned that I know how he did his levitation.
'Go on then.' Said Mr Beer.
I tried to explain that it took months of practise in front of a mirror, that the slightest miscalculation and the illusion was ruined.
'Go on then.' They said.
By now a crowd was around me, waiting for the miracle. Me and my big mouth, I thought. I was starting to get cold sweats.
'Ralph is going to Levitate!' I heard the rumour pass around.
I gave up. Slightly drunk, I agreed.
'But not here, no space,' I tried.
'Outside!' Went up the shout.
So, then, tne minutes later, a crowd of people watched me in the car park wobble slightly, go onto tiptoes and then return to the ground.
There was a, um, stunned silence.
'Is that it?'
Ah, but how we laughed.
Then, a couple of hours later, I had a phone call from G, who had put his girlfriend to bed and was intent on crossing London to see us. Dissuation didn't work, so I gathered by remaining beers (breaking the party code that you leave behind what you don't consume) and went home to wait for him there. You see, the party was breaking up by 3 anwyay.
G arrived and seemed to have problems following my directions. Either he was drunk, or I was. I wasn't sure which it was. I went to meet him at the station, the long walk doing a lot to clear my head.
Finally, back at the flat we drank beers and smoked cigarettes, the first ones lit up in the flat since our arrival.
It was all going so well, until Charlie put in a appearance and convinced us to go out and look for a party, at perhaps 5am.
Luckily, downstairs' party had finished some time ago, and the windows were black. However, the rastafarians a couple of doors down had lights on. We wandered over and knocked.
A surprised and wary looking man opened the door.
'Hi,' I blurted out, 'we live a couple of doors down. I know S. We wondered if you were having a party. Look, we brought whisky!'
He invited us in. He was alone, all his friends having left some time ago. We (I) rambled on extensively as we drank the whisky and coke with him. I alked a great deal of questons about rastafrainism and looked a pictures of haili selassi on the wall. The guy took this all rather well and witha great deal of forbearance before we left at something like 7am.
To this day, I still don't know how he took our visit. I must admit to feeling a little horror when recounting it to myself.
Ah, but the best is to come. I was lacking out now due to the whisky, and so couldn't find my house.
Ring ring! Ring ring!
'Wife?'
'Yes?'
'Could you come downstairs and let me in please?'
'It's 7am. Don't you have your key?'
'Please, it's very, very important that you come down and let me in.'
Sigh. 'Okay.' Stamp, stamp, stamp.
The evening didn't start off too promisingly - we had no calls from anyone, and so assumed that we'd be spending it alone. We went to Tescos at about 5pm and bought what we could from shelves that had been cleared by panic shoppers.
12 Cans of Kronenbourg
1 Bottle white wine
1 Bottle Champagne
Nuts
Crisps
Humous
Olives
Coca-cola
Also in the house was a half bottle of whisky, given by my auntie as a thoughtful gift. I eyed this bottle early on in the evening, hopeing that it wouldn't be necessary to crack it open.
Caro cooked and I started my fist can at 6pm or so, sipping slowly. Then the phone calls began, and within half an hour there was a plan to have a party nearby. Oz and X were on their way over. Much eating, runing around and two more cans of lager were consumed before we left.
The party was small, but it was what we all wanted. We chatted, drank, pulled party poppers and ate a lot of food. We tuned into Radio 2 for the chimes of Big Ben, but they messed it all up superbly by seemingly miss a chime, confusing us all, and then finishing before all 12 were heard. This resulted in some mild confusion and delayed kissing and champagne popping.
Ah, then the levitation. I don't know how we got onto the subject, but we were talking about David Blaine and I mentioned that I know how he did his levitation.
'Go on then.' Said Mr Beer.
I tried to explain that it took months of practise in front of a mirror, that the slightest miscalculation and the illusion was ruined.
'Go on then.' They said.
By now a crowd was around me, waiting for the miracle. Me and my big mouth, I thought. I was starting to get cold sweats.
'Ralph is going to Levitate!' I heard the rumour pass around.
I gave up. Slightly drunk, I agreed.
'But not here, no space,' I tried.
'Outside!' Went up the shout.
So, then, tne minutes later, a crowd of people watched me in the car park wobble slightly, go onto tiptoes and then return to the ground.
There was a, um, stunned silence.
'Is that it?'
Ah, but how we laughed.
Then, a couple of hours later, I had a phone call from G, who had put his girlfriend to bed and was intent on crossing London to see us. Dissuation didn't work, so I gathered by remaining beers (breaking the party code that you leave behind what you don't consume) and went home to wait for him there. You see, the party was breaking up by 3 anwyay.
G arrived and seemed to have problems following my directions. Either he was drunk, or I was. I wasn't sure which it was. I went to meet him at the station, the long walk doing a lot to clear my head.
Finally, back at the flat we drank beers and smoked cigarettes, the first ones lit up in the flat since our arrival.
It was all going so well, until Charlie put in a appearance and convinced us to go out and look for a party, at perhaps 5am.
Luckily, downstairs' party had finished some time ago, and the windows were black. However, the rastafarians a couple of doors down had lights on. We wandered over and knocked.
A surprised and wary looking man opened the door.
'Hi,' I blurted out, 'we live a couple of doors down. I know S. We wondered if you were having a party. Look, we brought whisky!'
He invited us in. He was alone, all his friends having left some time ago. We (I) rambled on extensively as we drank the whisky and coke with him. I alked a great deal of questons about rastafrainism and looked a pictures of haili selassi on the wall. The guy took this all rather well and witha great deal of forbearance before we left at something like 7am.
To this day, I still don't know how he took our visit. I must admit to feeling a little horror when recounting it to myself.
Ah, but the best is to come. I was lacking out now due to the whisky, and so couldn't find my house.
Ring ring! Ring ring!
'Wife?'
'Yes?'
'Could you come downstairs and let me in please?'
'It's 7am. Don't you have your key?'
'Please, it's very, very important that you come down and let me in.'
Sigh. 'Okay.' Stamp, stamp, stamp.
Sunday, December 05, 2004
Signing On
So I finally decide to call the council and sign on.
It’s been several years since I did such a thing, and I’m pleased to note that I’m not actually going to be trying to deceive (mislead perhaps) anyone this time. I really am looking for work, and aren’t trying to avoid council tax or anything.
I consult the good old yellow pages. You see, I don’t have internet at home any more. So, I’m out of practice. I look up Job Centre.
It tells me to me to look at Employment Agencies and Local Government and Government. Hmm, I start to remember why we developed the internet.
Employment Agencies was useless, as you’d expect, as was Government,
both local and not. I checked Council, but that wasn’t useful either.
Eventually I find a number in the front under ‘useful numbers’.
Hmm.
I dial the Job Club Plus, or something. The cheerful man from
the ‘east’ of England didn’t know London, but he did look up the
nearest job centre for me. I had told him that I wanted to sign on.
‘Seven Sisters Road’, he says, ‘do you know it?’
I do.
‘Oh no, hang on,’ he adds, ‘no, that’d closed. They’ve moved to
Holloway Road.’ He gives me the address.
I ask for a telephone number.
‘Oh, just use the old Seven Sister’s one,’ he tells me, ‘I’m sure
they’ll have redirected it.’
They haven’t though and it just rings forever. I picture a lonely
phone in an empty office, surrounded by dismantled desks and rubble,
ringing forlornly.
The next day I take a trip to Holloway Road and discover that the
office is closed. I peer through the window at the empty office full of dismantled desks and rubble, and sigh deeply.
There is a number on the door, the same number I called the day before. I call it again, from a phone box to save cash. It takes a long time to connect.
Calmly, I explain what happened.
‘Medina Road,’ says a new man, ‘it’s a Medina Road in Finsbury Park
now.’
‘I see.’ I say.
‘But, for that office we make an appointment over the phone. We can do it now if you like?’
We do. Name, age, date of birth, address, phone number…
‘We don’t have a phone. I’m in a call box.’ I say.
‘Mobile?’
There is a pause. A telling pause. I don’t want them to have my
mobile number. Imagine, the job centre calling you on Sunday afternoon to ask what you’re doing, or to offer you a job in a fish and chip shop on Monday.
Now, I’m never a liar. So, what I mean next is, no, not for you I
don’t.
I say, ‘No.’
He says okay.
At that moment, my mobile, in my pocket, which just before going into the phone-box, I had turned up to max-level ‘Outdoor’ setting, so I would hear it, decides to go off. It’s the wife, as it’s her personal ring, ‘Supergirl’.
It’s very, very loud. I fumble for it and turn it off, eventually…
Silence on the line.
‘You can um, answer that if you want.’ He says.
‘Ah, no, I’m, um, fine,’ I tell him.
It’s been several years since I did such a thing, and I’m pleased to note that I’m not actually going to be trying to deceive (mislead perhaps) anyone this time. I really am looking for work, and aren’t trying to avoid council tax or anything.
I consult the good old yellow pages. You see, I don’t have internet at home any more. So, I’m out of practice. I look up Job Centre.
It tells me to me to look at Employment Agencies and Local Government and Government. Hmm, I start to remember why we developed the internet.
Employment Agencies was useless, as you’d expect, as was Government,
both local and not. I checked Council, but that wasn’t useful either.
Eventually I find a number in the front under ‘useful numbers’.
Hmm.
I dial the Job Club Plus, or something. The cheerful man from
the ‘east’ of England didn’t know London, but he did look up the
nearest job centre for me. I had told him that I wanted to sign on.
‘Seven Sisters Road’, he says, ‘do you know it?’
I do.
‘Oh no, hang on,’ he adds, ‘no, that’d closed. They’ve moved to
Holloway Road.’ He gives me the address.
I ask for a telephone number.
‘Oh, just use the old Seven Sister’s one,’ he tells me, ‘I’m sure
they’ll have redirected it.’
They haven’t though and it just rings forever. I picture a lonely
phone in an empty office, surrounded by dismantled desks and rubble,
ringing forlornly.
The next day I take a trip to Holloway Road and discover that the
office is closed. I peer through the window at the empty office full of dismantled desks and rubble, and sigh deeply.
There is a number on the door, the same number I called the day before. I call it again, from a phone box to save cash. It takes a long time to connect.
Calmly, I explain what happened.
‘Medina Road,’ says a new man, ‘it’s a Medina Road in Finsbury Park
now.’
‘I see.’ I say.
‘But, for that office we make an appointment over the phone. We can do it now if you like?’
We do. Name, age, date of birth, address, phone number…
‘We don’t have a phone. I’m in a call box.’ I say.
‘Mobile?’
There is a pause. A telling pause. I don’t want them to have my
mobile number. Imagine, the job centre calling you on Sunday afternoon to ask what you’re doing, or to offer you a job in a fish and chip shop on Monday.
Now, I’m never a liar. So, what I mean next is, no, not for you I
don’t.
I say, ‘No.’
He says okay.
At that moment, my mobile, in my pocket, which just before going into the phone-box, I had turned up to max-level ‘Outdoor’ setting, so I would hear it, decides to go off. It’s the wife, as it’s her personal ring, ‘Supergirl’.
It’s very, very loud. I fumble for it and turn it off, eventually…
Silence on the line.
‘You can um, answer that if you want.’ He says.
‘Ah, no, I’m, um, fine,’ I tell him.
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
The Chemist
Something that has been playing on my mind was the visit when we picked up the notorious stain. We were out in the countryside and decided to pop in on some relatives (theirs, not mine) and met an odd Czech man called Tom who grew a lot of chillis and even had some chilli jam/jelly which he made me try.
Anyway, he was staining the front doorsteps of his porch, well, had just finished, which we spotted when leaving. My mother-in-law exclaimed, 'oh, how lovely!', meaning the colour. Within five minutes Tom has banged a lid on the pot and put it in the boot of our car whilst bemoaning the fact that you couldn't buy creosote in Canada.
'In my home country, everything is painted with creosote,' he tells me, 'when I was growing up our garden had very high walls, all painted with creosote and topped with razor wire.' I looked confused at this and he clarified - 'To stop people stealing the flowers.' Very reasonable.
Now I think back though, I think I have a memory of him saying something like, 'This is a mixture of linseed oil and some other things, it is very good.' Now, add to this fact that there is no linseed oil on the number #81 tin, and the fact that he is a chemist by trade, and you have a home-made stain in a thirty year old tin....
Anyway, he was staining the front doorsteps of his porch, well, had just finished, which we spotted when leaving. My mother-in-law exclaimed, 'oh, how lovely!', meaning the colour. Within five minutes Tom has banged a lid on the pot and put it in the boot of our car whilst bemoaning the fact that you couldn't buy creosote in Canada.
'In my home country, everything is painted with creosote,' he tells me, 'when I was growing up our garden had very high walls, all painted with creosote and topped with razor wire.' I looked confused at this and he clarified - 'To stop people stealing the flowers.' Very reasonable.
Now I think back though, I think I have a memory of him saying something like, 'This is a mixture of linseed oil and some other things, it is very good.' Now, add to this fact that there is no linseed oil on the number #81 tin, and the fact that he is a chemist by trade, and you have a home-made stain in a thirty year old tin....
Thursday, November 25, 2004
The Three Kings
The first big pub night since our return. Venue: The Three Kings in Farringdon. This is an old haunt from out last life in London, and I have memories of standing outside in the street on warm summer evenings, sipping Guinness in the road. The pub is so small that there are never any seats, I reflect as we take the tube there.
A series of slowly awakening memories stir as we exit the tube and I remember the station - the dual stairs that lead up, a pointless redundancy, I always think. Then the streets outside. I thought I'd have to call for directions, as my mind was blank as to the details, until we walked along the street. A map slowly was retrieved from my spider-web brain and we followed it to the pub without incident.
Rounds. I'm having trouble with rounds somehow since I got back. I always feel like I'm in the middle of a pint when someone buys a round. So I'm unable to buy more than one round before the same guy is buying me more beer. I don't remember rounds being so tricky for the first 12 or so years of my drinking life in England. I suppose it is how a tourist feels when obliged to join in with the odd system. I made myself feel better by buying the 11 o'clock half pints at the end of the night.
I find that I'm still in the habit of drifting off into space during conversations, so used to, am I, not understanding the French that they are normally conducted in Montreal. Of course, drifting off during an English conversation just looks plain rude, or as if you're bored to death. None of which is really true.
A few pints of Old Speckled Hen. Mr. Beer pulled a peculiar face at this choice and sucked in air between his teeth.
'I can't drink that, it's too strong. It gives me the shits.'
'Really?' I say, sipping it carefully.
So I'm drunk anyway, but so is everyone else. Mr. Fish pulled out his thesis and showed everyone some interesting quotes, explaining what a neo-Marxist was, as compared to a plain old full on Marxist. From what I gather, neo-Marxists don't demand a revolution exactly, but just generally like to criticize current government policy from armchairs (or barstools). Of course, I'm probably wrong.
I, in turn, drunkenly explain the difference between England, Britain and the UK, as one of the Quebec drinkers didn't know (and nor did anyone else, so it seems). After my explanation, May, the schoolteacher amongst us says,
'Yes, but what's your country then?'
Good question.
The night draws to a close and people wander off to nurse hangovers-to-be.
On the way home we purchase outrageously expensive falafels from a gaff on Stroud Green Road (it shall remain nameless) which was truly, truly awful. The wife, a mayonnaise lover if there ever was one said,
'It almost put me off all mayonnaise for life, the stuff on that.'
At home, apart from the falafel, there was a terrible smell. Much cupboard opening and sniffing was done in order to find the source, but to no avail. It was a truly awful smell, which only served to further the misery of the falafel. We never actually found what the nasty smell was, and the next morning it was gone. To give you an idea (though, it is impossible to describe), it was like a cross between burnt hair, beeswax, old curry and semen. Just imagine.
On other fronts, I'm finding that I can't stop talking English now - asking in shops how much is this, what's that, how does this work, what's the time, is that the 134 to Crouch End? Etc. In Montreal I'd tend to stifle such questions due to the inevitable conversation that would ensue with the Francophone pulling pained faces as I spoilt their beautiful language. The kind of face you'd pull if forced to listen to white noise, at full volume, at 4am.
A series of slowly awakening memories stir as we exit the tube and I remember the station - the dual stairs that lead up, a pointless redundancy, I always think. Then the streets outside. I thought I'd have to call for directions, as my mind was blank as to the details, until we walked along the street. A map slowly was retrieved from my spider-web brain and we followed it to the pub without incident.
Rounds. I'm having trouble with rounds somehow since I got back. I always feel like I'm in the middle of a pint when someone buys a round. So I'm unable to buy more than one round before the same guy is buying me more beer. I don't remember rounds being so tricky for the first 12 or so years of my drinking life in England. I suppose it is how a tourist feels when obliged to join in with the odd system. I made myself feel better by buying the 11 o'clock half pints at the end of the night.
I find that I'm still in the habit of drifting off into space during conversations, so used to, am I, not understanding the French that they are normally conducted in Montreal. Of course, drifting off during an English conversation just looks plain rude, or as if you're bored to death. None of which is really true.
A few pints of Old Speckled Hen. Mr. Beer pulled a peculiar face at this choice and sucked in air between his teeth.
'I can't drink that, it's too strong. It gives me the shits.'
'Really?' I say, sipping it carefully.
So I'm drunk anyway, but so is everyone else. Mr. Fish pulled out his thesis and showed everyone some interesting quotes, explaining what a neo-Marxist was, as compared to a plain old full on Marxist. From what I gather, neo-Marxists don't demand a revolution exactly, but just generally like to criticize current government policy from armchairs (or barstools). Of course, I'm probably wrong.
I, in turn, drunkenly explain the difference between England, Britain and the UK, as one of the Quebec drinkers didn't know (and nor did anyone else, so it seems). After my explanation, May, the schoolteacher amongst us says,
'Yes, but what's your country then?'
Good question.
The night draws to a close and people wander off to nurse hangovers-to-be.
On the way home we purchase outrageously expensive falafels from a gaff on Stroud Green Road (it shall remain nameless) which was truly, truly awful. The wife, a mayonnaise lover if there ever was one said,
'It almost put me off all mayonnaise for life, the stuff on that.'
At home, apart from the falafel, there was a terrible smell. Much cupboard opening and sniffing was done in order to find the source, but to no avail. It was a truly awful smell, which only served to further the misery of the falafel. We never actually found what the nasty smell was, and the next morning it was gone. To give you an idea (though, it is impossible to describe), it was like a cross between burnt hair, beeswax, old curry and semen. Just imagine.
On other fronts, I'm finding that I can't stop talking English now - asking in shops how much is this, what's that, how does this work, what's the time, is that the 134 to Crouch End? Etc. In Montreal I'd tend to stifle such questions due to the inevitable conversation that would ensue with the Francophone pulling pained faces as I spoilt their beautiful language. The kind of face you'd pull if forced to listen to white noise, at full volume, at 4am.
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Finally back
Back. Finally back. After three years away, and seven countries later, we arrive at Heathrow at 7am, after leaving Montreal at, oddly, 7am. I've watched, and god only knows why, a Harry Potter movie, and drank a few Gin and Tonics. I'm feeling rather tired as I stare out at the drizzle and grey clouds.
We pass through customs without too much of a problem. One man had begin to question me about what I've been doing for the last three years, and was getting suspicious, eyeing our oversized suitcases with some anticipation. I was starting to sweat, knowing that my suitcase had taken three days to pack like that, and that no way would I fit everything back in if I removed it now (an entire computer was lurking there, amongst other things). Luckily, an unlucky African man wandered into customs at that point, looked scared, and then tried to walk back out, a move which prompted almost all the customs officers in the area to pounce on him. My customs official thrust my passport back into my hand, and waved us away. We vanished quickly.
A train ride, staing at BBC on a TV, and the drizzle and grey clouds, then a black cab to Finsbury Park. The driver, a cheerful man, told us all about the Royal family, obviously mistaking us for tourists, he drove us in ever increasing circles, all over London on our way there. I was too tired to protest.
Beck was at the flat, ready to greet us. The flat is big and empty. When we unpacked our suitcases, after Beck left us, we realised just how little we brought with us. A few bits of clothing, some bathroom things, a lot of towels and sheets, and nothing else (except for a sewing machine and computer, of course).
So, I wanted to make a note of all that I found odd on my return, so I wouldn't forget later as things started to look normal again.
Leaves. The trees still have leaves here. These things are long gone in Montreal.
Wind. There always seems to be wind blowing here. The trees move. In Montreal, I've come to realise, it is hardly ever windy.
Grey. To be honest, I was imagining it to be much greyer than it really is. The last time I spent any period away from the UK was in India, and upon my return I thought the colour had drained from the country. This time things looked a lot better.
Money. The money (notes that is), however, did look a little pale. And different. Maybe they've changed it?
Damp. The wife used to refer to the English cold as Humid. I have since explained that we only ever refer to humidity and weather when talking about a steamy rainforest. It is damp though. Having been brought up on this moisture-laden weather, I find it easier to handle than Canadians, who find that it penetrates them to the marrow and causes them much misery, no matter how many layers of fleece they wear.
Cold flat. Our flat is chilly. All flats in London are chilly, and even houses (unless they are your parent's or have a roaring log fire in them). Even with the heating on full-time, there is an air of damp coldness every morning. In Quebec they have to endure minus 40 degree winters, so their heating is super-efficient. They find our flats and houses unendurable, I think.
Hot water. It isn't very hot is it? And we have to turn it on in advance. The water in Montreal comes out of the tap at temperatures that cause second degree burns. I'm not simply moaning here, it's true, and even in the poorest of apartments this is true. I think it's the harsh winters that makes this such an essential there, but less so here.
Radio Stations. Hundreds of them. Most of them playing some kind of R n B or Garage type of noise. Good choice, but I find I spend more time scanning than listening.
Shops. We arrived on Sunday and everything was closed. This came as a bit of a shock.
Tubes. My, those platforms are narrow aren't they? I found myself standing with my back to the wall a lot. Then, on the news later, we saw a psychopathic man caught on CCTV trying to push people off the edge.
Beer. My god, bitter tastes good doesn't it? And beer seems to have remained about the same price as when I was last here. It is actually cheaper to drink here than in Montreal. No, really.
Traffic. Fast cars, narrow roads, on the left. We almost got knocked down several times in our first day. We have also been training ourself to look before crossing junctions, and to walk behind cars waiting to pull out. If you try this in Montreal the drivers start to panic and may even try and reverse to encourage you to walk in front of them.
TV. There are more adverts than 3 years ago. 100% sure. And more often too. There still seems to be a bewildering amount of snooker being shown.
Mobiles. We got mobiles the next day. They're the same price as ever, but in colour and tiny. We also managed to get them up and running in the pub within 10 minutes. Quite a feat.
We pass through customs without too much of a problem. One man had begin to question me about what I've been doing for the last three years, and was getting suspicious, eyeing our oversized suitcases with some anticipation. I was starting to sweat, knowing that my suitcase had taken three days to pack like that, and that no way would I fit everything back in if I removed it now (an entire computer was lurking there, amongst other things). Luckily, an unlucky African man wandered into customs at that point, looked scared, and then tried to walk back out, a move which prompted almost all the customs officers in the area to pounce on him. My customs official thrust my passport back into my hand, and waved us away. We vanished quickly.
A train ride, staing at BBC on a TV, and the drizzle and grey clouds, then a black cab to Finsbury Park. The driver, a cheerful man, told us all about the Royal family, obviously mistaking us for tourists, he drove us in ever increasing circles, all over London on our way there. I was too tired to protest.
Beck was at the flat, ready to greet us. The flat is big and empty. When we unpacked our suitcases, after Beck left us, we realised just how little we brought with us. A few bits of clothing, some bathroom things, a lot of towels and sheets, and nothing else (except for a sewing machine and computer, of course).
So, I wanted to make a note of all that I found odd on my return, so I wouldn't forget later as things started to look normal again.
Changes
Wet. Yes, it is rather wet isn't it. The sky is always grey and threatening to drench you. Strangely though, since arriving we've only seen rain once, but the roads and pavement have been saturated the whole time.Leaves. The trees still have leaves here. These things are long gone in Montreal.
Wind. There always seems to be wind blowing here. The trees move. In Montreal, I've come to realise, it is hardly ever windy.
Grey. To be honest, I was imagining it to be much greyer than it really is. The last time I spent any period away from the UK was in India, and upon my return I thought the colour had drained from the country. This time things looked a lot better.
Money. The money (notes that is), however, did look a little pale. And different. Maybe they've changed it?
Damp. The wife used to refer to the English cold as Humid. I have since explained that we only ever refer to humidity and weather when talking about a steamy rainforest. It is damp though. Having been brought up on this moisture-laden weather, I find it easier to handle than Canadians, who find that it penetrates them to the marrow and causes them much misery, no matter how many layers of fleece they wear.
Cold flat. Our flat is chilly. All flats in London are chilly, and even houses (unless they are your parent's or have a roaring log fire in them). Even with the heating on full-time, there is an air of damp coldness every morning. In Quebec they have to endure minus 40 degree winters, so their heating is super-efficient. They find our flats and houses unendurable, I think.
Hot water. It isn't very hot is it? And we have to turn it on in advance. The water in Montreal comes out of the tap at temperatures that cause second degree burns. I'm not simply moaning here, it's true, and even in the poorest of apartments this is true. I think it's the harsh winters that makes this such an essential there, but less so here.
Radio Stations. Hundreds of them. Most of them playing some kind of R n B or Garage type of noise. Good choice, but I find I spend more time scanning than listening.
Shops. We arrived on Sunday and everything was closed. This came as a bit of a shock.
Tubes. My, those platforms are narrow aren't they? I found myself standing with my back to the wall a lot. Then, on the news later, we saw a psychopathic man caught on CCTV trying to push people off the edge.
Beer. My god, bitter tastes good doesn't it? And beer seems to have remained about the same price as when I was last here. It is actually cheaper to drink here than in Montreal. No, really.
Traffic. Fast cars, narrow roads, on the left. We almost got knocked down several times in our first day. We have also been training ourself to look before crossing junctions, and to walk behind cars waiting to pull out. If you try this in Montreal the drivers start to panic and may even try and reverse to encourage you to walk in front of them.
TV. There are more adverts than 3 years ago. 100% sure. And more often too. There still seems to be a bewildering amount of snooker being shown.
Mobiles. We got mobiles the next day. They're the same price as ever, but in colour and tiny. We also managed to get them up and running in the pub within 10 minutes. Quite a feat.
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Stained
Out, damned spot. And so on. I know it seems like all I ever talk about is my bloody decking saga these days - the job I'll be doing in Hell for all eternity, no doubt, but here it is again. Take heart though, it should be over soon.
So, today I arrive bright an early, as it's a sunny day for a change in these days of incoming winter. I sweep the deck and open up my stain tin, only to notice (make that remember) that it's almost empty. Never mind, I think, I'll go and buy another afterwards...
So, I stain away, doing about six foot square and then run out. I extract $100 from my mother-in-law, which is, I must confess, a large sum, but I did give change. And away we're off to RONA, a kind of Canadian B&Q, which is a kind of English, ah well, you get this idea - a DIY store.
I have cunningly written down everything written on the tin, in French and English, to assist in getting another, as I can smell trouble. I search the aisles for about 15 mins without luck, I'm searching for 'Behr' products, and they don't have any.
'Non.' Says the sturdy looking assistant. 'Behr? Reno Depot'. And turns and swishes away.
A fifteen minute drive to Reno Depot, where I suspect I'm well known due to the many, many hours I've spent wandering around the place looking for things and refusing to ask for help. I mean, the place is enormous, it has taken me months to map it out even.
But I know where the stain is, as I've seen in when buying the stripper (kind of ironic eh?). I can't find the product. I'm looking for Number #81.
I approach an elderly assistant, so elderly that he has the right to be insolent to me and I merely smile back.
'Bonjour monsieur, vous avez... cette... ummm... vous parlez anglais?'
He eyed me and literally spat, 'un peut!' Then, 'et vous - vous parlez français?'
'A little!' I tried to spit too, but it doesn't work so well in English.
So, he looks at the paper I offer him like I've wiped my arse with it already and laughs, 'Number 81! Ho ho ho!'
I don't share the joke. 'So you don't have it then?'
'Oh no monsieur, they stopped making that years ago.' At this he actually goes to turn and walk away.
'Is there anything else similar?' I ask, and he almost wobbles his head, a-la Indian style, and walks me to my choices, stopping on the way to balance a heavy can of paint on a shelf, precariously, above an old lady's head.
He sells me a tin called 'Red', when what I wanted was Redwood / Red Cedar. I suspect the match won't be perfect, but what choice do I have?
Back at the ranch, I apply the stain, it looks a little different but not too bad. The mother-in-law comes out to look. She agrees that it looks the same. I'm pleased.
But it doesn't look the same when it dries... oh no. It's dark brown, and the old stain is bright red. Oh bollocks, I muttered, walking up and down to look at it in different lights.
There's also another problem - I neglected to read the tin this time, foolishly assuming that it would be the same in application, but no, oh no.
Apply one coat. The old stain was two.
Paint each plank length to length to avoid 'lap' lines. The old stain didn't care.
Sure enough, there are 'lap' (I assume that's short for overlap, saving the use of four letters) line all over the place.
I decide to fix it in the spring.
So, today I arrive bright an early, as it's a sunny day for a change in these days of incoming winter. I sweep the deck and open up my stain tin, only to notice (make that remember) that it's almost empty. Never mind, I think, I'll go and buy another afterwards...
So, I stain away, doing about six foot square and then run out. I extract $100 from my mother-in-law, which is, I must confess, a large sum, but I did give change. And away we're off to RONA, a kind of Canadian B&Q, which is a kind of English, ah well, you get this idea - a DIY store.
I have cunningly written down everything written on the tin, in French and English, to assist in getting another, as I can smell trouble. I search the aisles for about 15 mins without luck, I'm searching for 'Behr' products, and they don't have any.
'Non.' Says the sturdy looking assistant. 'Behr? Reno Depot'. And turns and swishes away.
A fifteen minute drive to Reno Depot, where I suspect I'm well known due to the many, many hours I've spent wandering around the place looking for things and refusing to ask for help. I mean, the place is enormous, it has taken me months to map it out even.
But I know where the stain is, as I've seen in when buying the stripper (kind of ironic eh?). I can't find the product. I'm looking for Number #81.
I approach an elderly assistant, so elderly that he has the right to be insolent to me and I merely smile back.
'Bonjour monsieur, vous avez... cette... ummm... vous parlez anglais?'
He eyed me and literally spat, 'un peut!' Then, 'et vous - vous parlez français?'
'A little!' I tried to spit too, but it doesn't work so well in English.
So, he looks at the paper I offer him like I've wiped my arse with it already and laughs, 'Number 81! Ho ho ho!'
I don't share the joke. 'So you don't have it then?'
'Oh no monsieur, they stopped making that years ago.' At this he actually goes to turn and walk away.
'Is there anything else similar?' I ask, and he almost wobbles his head, a-la Indian style, and walks me to my choices, stopping on the way to balance a heavy can of paint on a shelf, precariously, above an old lady's head.
He sells me a tin called 'Red', when what I wanted was Redwood / Red Cedar. I suspect the match won't be perfect, but what choice do I have?
Back at the ranch, I apply the stain, it looks a little different but not too bad. The mother-in-law comes out to look. She agrees that it looks the same. I'm pleased.
But it doesn't look the same when it dries... oh no. It's dark brown, and the old stain is bright red. Oh bollocks, I muttered, walking up and down to look at it in different lights.
There's also another problem - I neglected to read the tin this time, foolishly assuming that it would be the same in application, but no, oh no.
Apply one coat. The old stain was two.
Paint each plank length to length to avoid 'lap' lines. The old stain didn't care.
Sure enough, there are 'lap' (I assume that's short for overlap, saving the use of four letters) line all over the place.
I decide to fix it in the spring.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Sawdust
There’s sawdust everywhere. It’s in my hair, under my nails, in the fabric of my clothes, in my nose, my ears, between my toes, and generally settled in my lungs. Not the nice kind of sawdust that you plunge your hand into to grab a prize at a lucky-dip, oh no, the finer kind, the dust and airborne kind. Yes, another day with unlikely sanding machines.
When I met my mother-in-law today she informed me that we were going to hire equipment form another vendor. This struck me as suspicious - had the last people said something about the sander and she had just not mentioned it? As it turned out, she had decided to change as she didn’t want to see me bending over for another five hours with a belt sander, so she had another thing in mind, something she had seen used by workmen in the past - the upright sander.
Imagine a vacuum cleaner, but more severe.
So, another burly, overall-clad, condescending man later, we hauled an extraordinarily large and heavy sander-vacuum-cleaner into the boot of the car. It was very, very heavy. As is (now) usual, the man had shown me how to load the sanding paper onto a large roller in a casual, non-informative way and curtly dismissed us.
True to form, we couldn’t work out how to fir the paper - it involved three screws (which previous renters had mangled terribly), a flat metal bar, and a large cylinder. After some faffing about we managed to mount the first roll. The plug was so old and battered that it kept falling out of the wall, so I had to employ some masking tape in large amounts to secure the connection.
On goes the machine.
It’s not as loud as the belt sander, surprisingly. I lower it to the wood and it makes an angry, snarling, ripping, shredding, end-of-the-world type of noise and spits the sanding sheet out onto the decking, in tiny bits.
We mount another sheet, using a different technique. I lower the revving machine and the same thing happens. We discuss the problem, she seems to think that it is due to nails, so I hammer all the nails soundly further into the wood, although they aren’t proud (so to speak). The next attempt is a little better and I manage to strip wood viciously for about ten seconds before the sheet rips to shreds. We decide that it is due to the uneven wood ends and to stick to the centre of the planks for now. The next sheet mounts tightly, having got the technique right, finally, and I manage to sand for about forty minutes without a problem.
It all went rather well in the end. I got better and better, and I had no more ripping sheets. My mother-in-law retired inside, obviously satisfied that I wasn’t going to destroy the machine.
Anyway, four hour later and most of the decking is smooth and lovely. The edges still need to be done with a belt sander, as do a few patches where the wood is uneven, but it’s a good job.
Anyway, we take the hulking sander back to the shop and wait for half an hour as burly overall-clad men ignore us until we finally get to pay. My mother-in-law mentions that we’ll be back to hire a belt-sander to finish the edges. What? Says the man, Didn’t you use the edge attachment?
What edge attachment?
Well, they are supposed to supply with the machine and add-on which allows you to sand edges next to walls and corners.
Sorry, he said.
The saga continues.
When I met my mother-in-law today she informed me that we were going to hire equipment form another vendor. This struck me as suspicious - had the last people said something about the sander and she had just not mentioned it? As it turned out, she had decided to change as she didn’t want to see me bending over for another five hours with a belt sander, so she had another thing in mind, something she had seen used by workmen in the past - the upright sander.
Imagine a vacuum cleaner, but more severe.
So, another burly, overall-clad, condescending man later, we hauled an extraordinarily large and heavy sander-vacuum-cleaner into the boot of the car. It was very, very heavy. As is (now) usual, the man had shown me how to load the sanding paper onto a large roller in a casual, non-informative way and curtly dismissed us.
True to form, we couldn’t work out how to fir the paper - it involved three screws (which previous renters had mangled terribly), a flat metal bar, and a large cylinder. After some faffing about we managed to mount the first roll. The plug was so old and battered that it kept falling out of the wall, so I had to employ some masking tape in large amounts to secure the connection.
On goes the machine.
It’s not as loud as the belt sander, surprisingly. I lower it to the wood and it makes an angry, snarling, ripping, shredding, end-of-the-world type of noise and spits the sanding sheet out onto the decking, in tiny bits.
We mount another sheet, using a different technique. I lower the revving machine and the same thing happens. We discuss the problem, she seems to think that it is due to nails, so I hammer all the nails soundly further into the wood, although they aren’t proud (so to speak). The next attempt is a little better and I manage to strip wood viciously for about ten seconds before the sheet rips to shreds. We decide that it is due to the uneven wood ends and to stick to the centre of the planks for now. The next sheet mounts tightly, having got the technique right, finally, and I manage to sand for about forty minutes without a problem.
It all went rather well in the end. I got better and better, and I had no more ripping sheets. My mother-in-law retired inside, obviously satisfied that I wasn’t going to destroy the machine.
Anyway, four hour later and most of the decking is smooth and lovely. The edges still need to be done with a belt sander, as do a few patches where the wood is uneven, but it’s a good job.
Anyway, we take the hulking sander back to the shop and wait for half an hour as burly overall-clad men ignore us until we finally get to pay. My mother-in-law mentions that we’ll be back to hire a belt-sander to finish the edges. What? Says the man, Didn’t you use the edge attachment?
What edge attachment?
Well, they are supposed to supply with the machine and add-on which allows you to sand edges next to walls and corners.
Sorry, he said.
The saga continues.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Montreal Decking (1)
Decking
My mother-in-law decided that it would be nice to have her patio decking ‘done’, and what that means is that I’ll be doing it out of the goodness of my heart. Anyway, not content with a new layer of paint, she decides that it would be nicer stripped down to the bare wood and tinted, or stained. This plan was encouraged by my troublesome wife, who agreed that it would be lovely. Okay, not too traumatic so far. The decking is about 17 foot by 10 foot and raised off the ground by about a foot and a half. There is no access underneath, and no way of taking it apart in any way (just in case you are thinking about it). The first problem is that the planks of wood are all set apart by about half an inch, not flush together. So, bright blue paint is all down the sides of the planks, and highly visible.
Solution 1: The paint stripper.
Suggested by my father (who has extensive experience of stripping paint off various surfaces). He said, paint paint-stripper down the sides, then scrape it off with a blade. ‘Should be easy’, he says. It might be worth pointing out here that I was never concerned about the surface of the decking, as I always thought I’d just sand that off with an electric sander. Okay, so I buy a few litres of some super-decking-stripper-without-the-pain from the local hardware store that says it’ll strip a couple of football pitches, or some other equally blatant lie. Anyway, I follow the instructions and succeed, eventually, after hours of backbreaking scrubbing (which the product claimed I wouldn’t have to do), in revealing the yellow paint under the blue, and a few patches of wood. The sides of the planks stubbornly clung to their paint though, resisting all attempts to brush it off. Suffice to say that I ran out of product half way through and started swearing.
Solution 2: Improved strength paint stripper.
Not for the faint hearted this stuff. Guaranteed to contain chemicals that dissolve concrete, or your hands, on contact. This product claimed that I would merely have to hose down the decking after application and watch the paint wash away - absolutely painless, just ensure all pets are indoors type of thing. Anyway, it didn’t bloody work and I ended off scrubbing like hell for hours on end, and getting a similar effect to the first product.
Solution 3: Leave the whole thing half done for a number of weeks in the hope it will go away.
It didn’t.
Solution 4: I had a brainwave.
I cast my mind back to woodworking at school and remembered a tool that we used for just such purposes as removing layers of wood in awkward places - a ‘rasper’. I started to check out all the hardware stores in an effort to find one, but was always out of luck. I had no idea how to say ‘rasper’ in French and my attempts to explain always led to plain old files (which didn’t work, as I had tried this in a moment of desperation already). So, I forgot all about it for a week until I saw a rasper, accidentally whilst buying some carriage bolts somewhere. I rushed (well, maybe not) to the decking and spent three hours rasping away. It worked quite well, produced copious blisters, and quite a good result. The problem was that three hours of work only covered about one tenth of the planking sides. Another thirty hours of the same activity didn’t sound too good to me, and in fact made me break out in a cold sweat.
Solution 5: Ignore the sides and just do the top.
This is my mother-in-law’s idea actually, along with my wife. I think they suspect that the snows will arrive before I finish the sides, which would be bad news for the decking. So, I agree that I’ll just sand the top and tint it, then rasp sides and top up the tint, as and when I have time - perhaps over the next several years. I pointed out (and still do) that you’ll be able to see yellow and blue paint on the sides of the planking, but my mother-in-law claims that she can’t, which is nice of her.
The Sanding Machine
Now, my mother-in-law produces this bit of paper, cut out of the local newspaper, which reviews a new machine for stripping wood ‘without pain’. The actual title was something like ‘Stripping without pain’. I was sceptical. There was a picture of a man, smiling, actually smiling, as he stripped wood off a plank with the new and funky machine, which employed magic, or something equally dubious, to achieve its unbelievable result. Anyway, there was no putting her off, so we set off to the local ‘outils location’ (or whatever) shop, where we would rent tools from burly, condescending types in overalls.
Turns out that they didn’t have the new super-magic-without-pain machine, and the chief (or chef) of the shop actually sneered when shown the article. He said he’d tried one at a trade fair, and that a belt sander was quicker. I’m still confused as to what this magical machine does that a normal sander doesn’t, perhaps throwing a flame or something. At this point I should mention that we did talk about heating guns and scraping tools, but I dismissed it as being longer, or equal in length to the rasper.
Anyway, we took a belt sander. He eyed me and said, ‘Do you know how to use it?’ I had to bite my tongue, as it was about to say, ‘of course’, and instead moderate my reply and say, ‘I haven’t used one of these before.’ Emphasising ‘these’ so he was aware that I’d actually used a sander before in my life.
With a flick of the wrist and slight-of-hand, he mounted a belt in place and locked it down tight, without me seeing.
‘Like this’, he said.
‘Okay’, I lied, ‘no problem.’
He went on, ‘When you start it, the belt will go this way, turn this knob until it comes back this way, then when you start to sand it will go this way, turn the knob to make it go this way. Keep it in the centre.’
‘Right.’ I said. How difficult could it be?
Half an hour later and I’m sanding the decking. When I started the machine, I twiddled the knob and corrected the wobble, then twiddled it again when sanding, and it was all going terribly well. I did a plank, then another, then another. Great. My knees started to hurt, I stood and did another, my back started to hurt. I began to suffer, and did another and another. So after about 4 foot square I was dead and couldn’t hear anything. My mother-in-law insisted on going out to buy me earplugs.
The sanding started to get harder and harder and I realised that the belt was wearing down, so I unplugged it and pulled up the release lever, which relaxed the two wheels that the belt sat on. The belt slipped off okay, and the new one slipped on fine. I pushed the lever back and was quite pleased. Poised to start again I was dismayed when the wheels whizzed round and the belt stayed stationary, flapping a little. I unplugged and examined the mechanism. The belt was too big for the wheels. Damn. I took the old belt and put it on and that was too big too. Okay, the belt was the right size and I was stupid, perhaps. It took me a good ten minutes to realise that turning the mysterious knob that controlled the tilt of the belt also lengthened the distance between the wheels, stretching the belt (curiously, it did this whatever direction you turned it in). The knob was a mystery to me. Anyway, the belt was on.
When started, it shot off the side, like an elastic band. I re-applied it and furiously turned the knob to make it slide in the other direction, and it did, and stayed there, refusing to return to the middle. I stopped the machine, unplugged it again and reloaded the belt. Turned it on and it shot to the side and refused to move. I turned the knob one way about ten turns, nothing, the other way about ten turns, nothing. Well, the band was turning, what did it matter if it was skewed to one side, I reasoned?
I sanded for perhaps ten minutes when I noticed the hole appearing in the top of the metal sheet covering the band. I watched in fascination as it opened up and started to gape wider. I stopped the machine, unplugged it and examined the mechanism. The belt had eaten through the metal all along the side, and also some plastic. My heart sank. Was that really me? Could the sander really eat itself like that? What the hell would the burly, condescending overall-wearing guy say when we took it back? ‘What the HELL have you done to my sander!?’
I showed my mother-in-law and explained that there might be serious consequences upon return of the rented item. She shrugged and asked if I could continue with the decking?
So, I sit down for a serious study of the appliance. I take off the belt and notice that the front wheel is sitting at an odd angle, explaining the reluctance of the belt to move to the centre. I lock the mechanism and it straightens a little, but not a lot. I twiddle the knob. Nothing happens. There are no more controls apart from on and off. I examine the knob, it seemed to be connected to a little rod that hovered meaninglessly in the air. Twiddling it simply seemed to rotate it. On a whim I kept turning it in one direction for a long time and watched it descend slowly until it hit the wheel and then pressed against it, changing its angle. I swore and cursed my stupidity once again. I had obviously unscrewed the knob too far in one attempt at control, and since then it had no effect whatsoever.
Control re-established, I sanded for five hours in the day, getting between a third and a half done. Tired and groggy, I was going to finish at 4:40pm, but decided to push on until 5pm, making a round number. As if in a dream, with heavy hands and aching back I started to sand the last fateful plank of the day. Half way along I heard an odd buzzing noise and stopped to have a look what it was - an unlucky wasp maybe? No, of course not. It was the power cable of the sander. As if I hadn’t inflicted enough damage on the poor machine, I had also now sanded off the outer casing of the power cable. Revealing, rather dangerously, the inner wires.
I packed up an had a shower, warning my mother-in-law that they might be unhappy with the sander when she takes it back. She seemed unconcerned. Perhaps with a few hundred dollars worth of bill, she will become more so.
Sawdust
So, there’s sawdust everywhere. It’s in my hair, under my nails, in the fabric of my clothes, in my nose, my ears, between my toes, and generally settled in my lungs. Not the nice kind of sawdust that you plunge your hand into to grab a prize at a lucky-dip, oh no, the finer kind, the dust and airborne kind. Yes, after another day with unlikely sanding machines.
When I next met my mother-in-law she informed me that we were going to hire equipment form another vendor. This struck me as suspicious - had the last people said something about the sander and she had just not mentioned it? As it turned out, she had decided to change machines as she didn’t want to see me bending over for another five hours with a belt sander, so she had another thing in mind, something she had seen used by workmen in the past - the ‘upright sander’.
Imagine a vacuum cleaner, but more severe.
So, another burly, overall-clad, condescending man later, we hauled an extraordinarily large and heavy sander-cum-vacuum-cleaner into the boot of the car. It was very, very heavy. As is (now) usual, the man had shown me how to load the sanding paper onto a large roller in a casual, non-informative way and curtly dismissed us.
True to form, we couldn’t work out how to fit the paper - it involved three screws (which previous renters had mangled terribly), a flat metal bar, and a large cylinder. After some faffing about we managed to mount the first roll. The plug was so old and battered that it kept falling out of the wall, so I had to employ some masking tape in large amounts to secure the connection.
On goes the machine.
It’s not as loud as the belt sander, surprisingly. I lower it to the wood and it makes an angry, snarling, ripping, shredding, end-of-the-world type of noise and spits the sanding sheet out onto the decking, in tiny bits.
We mount another sheet, using a different technique. I lower the revving machine and the same thing happens. We discuss the problem, she seems to think that it is due to nails, so I hammer all the nails soundly further into the wood, although they aren’t proud (so to speak). The next attempt is a little better and I manage to strip wood viciously for about ten seconds before the sheet rips to shreds. We decide that it is due to the uneven wood ends and to stick to the centre of the planks for now. The next sheet mounts tightly, having got the technique right, finally, and I manage to sand for about forty minutes without a problem.
It all went rather well in the end. I got better and better, and I had no more ripping sheets. My mother-in-law retired inside, obviously satisfied that I wasn’t going to destroy the machine.
Anyway, four hours later and most of the decking is smooth and lovely. The edges still need to be done with a belt sander, as do a few patches where the wood is uneven, but it’s a good job.
Anyway, we take the hulking sander back to the shop and wait for half an hour as burly overall-clad men ignore us until we finally get to pay. My mother-in-law mentions that we’ll be back to hire a belt-sander to finish the edges. What? Says the man, Didn’t you use the edge attachment?
What edge attachment?
Well, they are supposed to supply with the machine an add-on which allows you to sand edges next to walls and corners.
‘Sorry’, he said.
The saga continues.
My mother-in-law decided that it would be nice to have her patio decking ‘done’, and what that means is that I’ll be doing it out of the goodness of my heart. Anyway, not content with a new layer of paint, she decides that it would be nicer stripped down to the bare wood and tinted, or stained. This plan was encouraged by my troublesome wife, who agreed that it would be lovely. Okay, not too traumatic so far. The decking is about 17 foot by 10 foot and raised off the ground by about a foot and a half. There is no access underneath, and no way of taking it apart in any way (just in case you are thinking about it). The first problem is that the planks of wood are all set apart by about half an inch, not flush together. So, bright blue paint is all down the sides of the planks, and highly visible.
Solution 1: The paint stripper.
Suggested by my father (who has extensive experience of stripping paint off various surfaces). He said, paint paint-stripper down the sides, then scrape it off with a blade. ‘Should be easy’, he says. It might be worth pointing out here that I was never concerned about the surface of the decking, as I always thought I’d just sand that off with an electric sander. Okay, so I buy a few litres of some super-decking-stripper-without-the-pain from the local hardware store that says it’ll strip a couple of football pitches, or some other equally blatant lie. Anyway, I follow the instructions and succeed, eventually, after hours of backbreaking scrubbing (which the product claimed I wouldn’t have to do), in revealing the yellow paint under the blue, and a few patches of wood. The sides of the planks stubbornly clung to their paint though, resisting all attempts to brush it off. Suffice to say that I ran out of product half way through and started swearing.
Solution 2: Improved strength paint stripper.
Not for the faint hearted this stuff. Guaranteed to contain chemicals that dissolve concrete, or your hands, on contact. This product claimed that I would merely have to hose down the decking after application and watch the paint wash away - absolutely painless, just ensure all pets are indoors type of thing. Anyway, it didn’t bloody work and I ended off scrubbing like hell for hours on end, and getting a similar effect to the first product.
Solution 3: Leave the whole thing half done for a number of weeks in the hope it will go away.
It didn’t.
Solution 4: I had a brainwave.
I cast my mind back to woodworking at school and remembered a tool that we used for just such purposes as removing layers of wood in awkward places - a ‘rasper’. I started to check out all the hardware stores in an effort to find one, but was always out of luck. I had no idea how to say ‘rasper’ in French and my attempts to explain always led to plain old files (which didn’t work, as I had tried this in a moment of desperation already). So, I forgot all about it for a week until I saw a rasper, accidentally whilst buying some carriage bolts somewhere. I rushed (well, maybe not) to the decking and spent three hours rasping away. It worked quite well, produced copious blisters, and quite a good result. The problem was that three hours of work only covered about one tenth of the planking sides. Another thirty hours of the same activity didn’t sound too good to me, and in fact made me break out in a cold sweat.
Solution 5: Ignore the sides and just do the top.
This is my mother-in-law’s idea actually, along with my wife. I think they suspect that the snows will arrive before I finish the sides, which would be bad news for the decking. So, I agree that I’ll just sand the top and tint it, then rasp sides and top up the tint, as and when I have time - perhaps over the next several years. I pointed out (and still do) that you’ll be able to see yellow and blue paint on the sides of the planking, but my mother-in-law claims that she can’t, which is nice of her.
The Sanding Machine
Now, my mother-in-law produces this bit of paper, cut out of the local newspaper, which reviews a new machine for stripping wood ‘without pain’. The actual title was something like ‘Stripping without pain’. I was sceptical. There was a picture of a man, smiling, actually smiling, as he stripped wood off a plank with the new and funky machine, which employed magic, or something equally dubious, to achieve its unbelievable result. Anyway, there was no putting her off, so we set off to the local ‘outils location’ (or whatever) shop, where we would rent tools from burly, condescending types in overalls.
Turns out that they didn’t have the new super-magic-without-pain machine, and the chief (or chef) of the shop actually sneered when shown the article. He said he’d tried one at a trade fair, and that a belt sander was quicker. I’m still confused as to what this magical machine does that a normal sander doesn’t, perhaps throwing a flame or something. At this point I should mention that we did talk about heating guns and scraping tools, but I dismissed it as being longer, or equal in length to the rasper.
Anyway, we took a belt sander. He eyed me and said, ‘Do you know how to use it?’ I had to bite my tongue, as it was about to say, ‘of course’, and instead moderate my reply and say, ‘I haven’t used one of these before.’ Emphasising ‘these’ so he was aware that I’d actually used a sander before in my life.
With a flick of the wrist and slight-of-hand, he mounted a belt in place and locked it down tight, without me seeing.
‘Like this’, he said.
‘Okay’, I lied, ‘no problem.’
He went on, ‘When you start it, the belt will go this way, turn this knob until it comes back this way, then when you start to sand it will go this way, turn the knob to make it go this way. Keep it in the centre.’
‘Right.’ I said. How difficult could it be?
Half an hour later and I’m sanding the decking. When I started the machine, I twiddled the knob and corrected the wobble, then twiddled it again when sanding, and it was all going terribly well. I did a plank, then another, then another. Great. My knees started to hurt, I stood and did another, my back started to hurt. I began to suffer, and did another and another. So after about 4 foot square I was dead and couldn’t hear anything. My mother-in-law insisted on going out to buy me earplugs.
The sanding started to get harder and harder and I realised that the belt was wearing down, so I unplugged it and pulled up the release lever, which relaxed the two wheels that the belt sat on. The belt slipped off okay, and the new one slipped on fine. I pushed the lever back and was quite pleased. Poised to start again I was dismayed when the wheels whizzed round and the belt stayed stationary, flapping a little. I unplugged and examined the mechanism. The belt was too big for the wheels. Damn. I took the old belt and put it on and that was too big too. Okay, the belt was the right size and I was stupid, perhaps. It took me a good ten minutes to realise that turning the mysterious knob that controlled the tilt of the belt also lengthened the distance between the wheels, stretching the belt (curiously, it did this whatever direction you turned it in). The knob was a mystery to me. Anyway, the belt was on.
When started, it shot off the side, like an elastic band. I re-applied it and furiously turned the knob to make it slide in the other direction, and it did, and stayed there, refusing to return to the middle. I stopped the machine, unplugged it again and reloaded the belt. Turned it on and it shot to the side and refused to move. I turned the knob one way about ten turns, nothing, the other way about ten turns, nothing. Well, the band was turning, what did it matter if it was skewed to one side, I reasoned?
I sanded for perhaps ten minutes when I noticed the hole appearing in the top of the metal sheet covering the band. I watched in fascination as it opened up and started to gape wider. I stopped the machine, unplugged it and examined the mechanism. The belt had eaten through the metal all along the side, and also some plastic. My heart sank. Was that really me? Could the sander really eat itself like that? What the hell would the burly, condescending overall-wearing guy say when we took it back? ‘What the HELL have you done to my sander!?’
I showed my mother-in-law and explained that there might be serious consequences upon return of the rented item. She shrugged and asked if I could continue with the decking?
So, I sit down for a serious study of the appliance. I take off the belt and notice that the front wheel is sitting at an odd angle, explaining the reluctance of the belt to move to the centre. I lock the mechanism and it straightens a little, but not a lot. I twiddle the knob. Nothing happens. There are no more controls apart from on and off. I examine the knob, it seemed to be connected to a little rod that hovered meaninglessly in the air. Twiddling it simply seemed to rotate it. On a whim I kept turning it in one direction for a long time and watched it descend slowly until it hit the wheel and then pressed against it, changing its angle. I swore and cursed my stupidity once again. I had obviously unscrewed the knob too far in one attempt at control, and since then it had no effect whatsoever.
Control re-established, I sanded for five hours in the day, getting between a third and a half done. Tired and groggy, I was going to finish at 4:40pm, but decided to push on until 5pm, making a round number. As if in a dream, with heavy hands and aching back I started to sand the last fateful plank of the day. Half way along I heard an odd buzzing noise and stopped to have a look what it was - an unlucky wasp maybe? No, of course not. It was the power cable of the sander. As if I hadn’t inflicted enough damage on the poor machine, I had also now sanded off the outer casing of the power cable. Revealing, rather dangerously, the inner wires.
I packed up an had a shower, warning my mother-in-law that they might be unhappy with the sander when she takes it back. She seemed unconcerned. Perhaps with a few hundred dollars worth of bill, she will become more so.
Sawdust
So, there’s sawdust everywhere. It’s in my hair, under my nails, in the fabric of my clothes, in my nose, my ears, between my toes, and generally settled in my lungs. Not the nice kind of sawdust that you plunge your hand into to grab a prize at a lucky-dip, oh no, the finer kind, the dust and airborne kind. Yes, after another day with unlikely sanding machines.
When I next met my mother-in-law she informed me that we were going to hire equipment form another vendor. This struck me as suspicious - had the last people said something about the sander and she had just not mentioned it? As it turned out, she had decided to change machines as she didn’t want to see me bending over for another five hours with a belt sander, so she had another thing in mind, something she had seen used by workmen in the past - the ‘upright sander’.
Imagine a vacuum cleaner, but more severe.
So, another burly, overall-clad, condescending man later, we hauled an extraordinarily large and heavy sander-cum-vacuum-cleaner into the boot of the car. It was very, very heavy. As is (now) usual, the man had shown me how to load the sanding paper onto a large roller in a casual, non-informative way and curtly dismissed us.
True to form, we couldn’t work out how to fit the paper - it involved three screws (which previous renters had mangled terribly), a flat metal bar, and a large cylinder. After some faffing about we managed to mount the first roll. The plug was so old and battered that it kept falling out of the wall, so I had to employ some masking tape in large amounts to secure the connection.
On goes the machine.
It’s not as loud as the belt sander, surprisingly. I lower it to the wood and it makes an angry, snarling, ripping, shredding, end-of-the-world type of noise and spits the sanding sheet out onto the decking, in tiny bits.
We mount another sheet, using a different technique. I lower the revving machine and the same thing happens. We discuss the problem, she seems to think that it is due to nails, so I hammer all the nails soundly further into the wood, although they aren’t proud (so to speak). The next attempt is a little better and I manage to strip wood viciously for about ten seconds before the sheet rips to shreds. We decide that it is due to the uneven wood ends and to stick to the centre of the planks for now. The next sheet mounts tightly, having got the technique right, finally, and I manage to sand for about forty minutes without a problem.
It all went rather well in the end. I got better and better, and I had no more ripping sheets. My mother-in-law retired inside, obviously satisfied that I wasn’t going to destroy the machine.
Anyway, four hours later and most of the decking is smooth and lovely. The edges still need to be done with a belt sander, as do a few patches where the wood is uneven, but it’s a good job.
Anyway, we take the hulking sander back to the shop and wait for half an hour as burly overall-clad men ignore us until we finally get to pay. My mother-in-law mentions that we’ll be back to hire a belt-sander to finish the edges. What? Says the man, Didn’t you use the edge attachment?
What edge attachment?
Well, they are supposed to supply with the machine an add-on which allows you to sand edges next to walls and corners.
‘Sorry’, he said.
The saga continues.
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Decking Day
Today was a decking day. A day where I wrestled with wood that really means me no harm, but is causing me some anyway. I'm stripping down the decking and planning to stain the lovely natural wood a nice colour and leave it like that. Presently it is a nasty blue colour, who knows what the previous tenants were thinking?
Anyway, I went to my local hardware store and was assured by a too-young-to-know man that this large plastic container of acidic stuff would strip off all my nasty latex paint in no time. The instructions seem to go along with this, reading, 'Leave to soak for 15 minutes and then rub gently with a brush, the paint will come off.' Hmm.
Well, surprise, surprise, the paint doesn't come off. Some of it does, after heartbreaking rubbing, scraping and hosing (for hours), and reveals the coat of nasty yellow paint under the blue. The reasoning behind painting the thing blue becomes clearer now.
So, I would just use a large sander to buzz the whole thing clean and nice, and I will do that, but the planking is about half an inch apart all the way across, so there is paint in the gaps which would look terrible if I didn't remove it. This is why I bought the paint stripper, I thought it would help (my father suggested that it would).
Now, one eighth of the decking is semi-stripped and displays blue, orange and wood. The sides, the inaccessible sides, display the same levels of paint.
Oh, strength, do not desert me.
Anyway, I went to my local hardware store and was assured by a too-young-to-know man that this large plastic container of acidic stuff would strip off all my nasty latex paint in no time. The instructions seem to go along with this, reading, 'Leave to soak for 15 minutes and then rub gently with a brush, the paint will come off.' Hmm.
Well, surprise, surprise, the paint doesn't come off. Some of it does, after heartbreaking rubbing, scraping and hosing (for hours), and reveals the coat of nasty yellow paint under the blue. The reasoning behind painting the thing blue becomes clearer now.
So, I would just use a large sander to buzz the whole thing clean and nice, and I will do that, but the planking is about half an inch apart all the way across, so there is paint in the gaps which would look terrible if I didn't remove it. This is why I bought the paint stripper, I thought it would help (my father suggested that it would).
Now, one eighth of the decking is semi-stripped and displays blue, orange and wood. The sides, the inaccessible sides, display the same levels of paint.
Oh, strength, do not desert me.
Monday, November 01, 2004
Risk
Cause | Risk per 1 Million people | % Chance of death in a year | 1 in every how many per year deaths |
| Smoking 10 cigarettes a day | 5000 | 0.5 | 200 |
| Heart disease | 3400 | 0.34 | 294 |
| Cancer | 1600 | 0.16 | 625 |
| Car accidents | 225 | 0.0225 | 4,444 |
| Flu | 200 | 0.02 | 5,000 |
| Work accidents | 150 | 0.015 | 6,667 |
| Home accidents | 110 | 0.011 | 9,091 |
| Murders | 93 | 0.0093 | 10,753 |
| Leukemia | 80 | 0.008 | 12,500 |
| Nasty Falls | 68 | 0.0068 | 14,706 |
| Car vs. pedestrian collisions | 42 | 0.0042 | 23,810 |
| Drowning | 36.5 | 0.00365 | 27,397 |
| Fires and burns | 29 | 0.0029 | 34,483 |
| Lung cancer from passive smoking | 20 | 0.002 | 50,000 |
| Inhalation and ingestion of objects | 15 | 0.0015 | 66,667 |
| Poisoning by solids and liquids | 11.5 | 0.00115 | 86,957 |
| Guns, sporting | 10.5 | 0.00105 | 95,238 |
| Railroads | 9 | 0.0009 | 111,111 |
| Eating beef on the bone | 8.3 | 0.00083 | 120,482 |
| Civil aviation | 8 | 0.0008 | 125,000 |
| Poisoning by gases | 7.35 | 0.000735 | 136,054 |
| Pleasure boating | 6 | 0.0006 | 166,667 |
| Electrocution | 5.3 | 0.00053 | 188,679 |
| Tornadoes | 0.6 | 0.00006 | 1,666,667 |
| Floods | 0.6 | 0.00006 | 1,666,667 |
| Lightning strike | 0.5 | 0.00005 | 2,000,000 |
| Venomous animals and insects | 0.2 | 0.00002 | 5,000,000 |
| Aircraft falls from sky | 0.1 | 0.00001 | 10,000,000 |
| Nuclear power plant leak | 0.1 | 0.00001 | 10,000,000 |
| Pressure vehicle explodes | 0.05 | 0.000005 | 20,000,000 |
| Meteorite hit | 0.00001 | 1.0E-09 | 100,000,000,000 |
Sunday, October 03, 2004
Another party
Ah, another party, and one I remember this time. How novel.
The party is supposed to start with a game of football in the park at 4pm, leading onto lengthy shower-queues at the party venue, followed by drinking large amounts of alcohol whilst eating BBQ.
The best laid plans of mice and men, and all that, so a thunderstorm appears and flashes great bolts of lighting as it throws down sheets of rain.
We sit inside our house, at 3.30pm, and look out of the window. We have the lights on. We decide not to go to the football, and instead just turn up for the post-match party.
So I drink just one beer before we leave, at about 7pm. We take a bus, and then walk. The rain has stopped, and though there is a damp chill in the air, it is pleasant. We meet Leaf in the area, and enter the party with him.
Pristine, pearly white walls shout their non-smoking origins, in a tidy, comfortable lounge, African style voodoo masks adorn the walls, but not in a scary way. It's the kind of apartment that looks tidy, and not in need of a glass of red wine on the sofa.
New people, all interesting. I just brought six beers, in an effort to not drink too much and / or stay too late. Interesting strategy.
There is a BBQ after all, and we watch Bjork cook sausages until they are blackened and charred. Consumers stare at their plates, prodding their elongated charcoal with forks, in a forlorn manner.
MC explains to me, 'It is how Germans cook meat, apparently. Every time he cooks meat it is like this. He's always saying, "I don't think it's quite cooked enough.." and then blackens it.'
In the end, others are sent to seize control of the BBQ and sausage browning. There are sighs of relief. It is Bjork's birthday, so I suppose he should be allowed to burn the meat if he wants to.
Once the variously-shaped bits of animal have been consumed, and the blood soaked up with bread, the drinking begins in earnest. There is a lot of beer in the fridge, so much so that a great deal of it waits patiently outside for its turn to be chilled. But in the end it all vanishes, of course.
No shots in sight. I'm very glad.
'I was bought a bottle of whisky,' Bjork tells me, as he lights his cigarette, outside, with a new zippo. He points to an ominous bottle of single malt, on the shelf, high above the milling crowd.
'Ah.' I say.
'Maybe later, we can have a small glass?' He suggests.
'Ah.' I say. 'Maybe not, I don't really drink spirits any more, especially at parties.'
'But if it is the end of the night, and your last drink before you go home?'
He is the devil, and I listen to his bargain, as all lost souls do.
'Hmm, perhaps,' I concede.
The wife finds me and asks me, too many times, if she is red in the face.
'No, why?' I ask.
It turns out that there is a 'famous person' at the party. Famous in Quebec, that is, as I've never heard of him. I ask not to have him pointed out. I don't want my behaviour modified by knowing. In fact, I take a perverse pleasure in knowing that I'll probably talk to him and not know that he is supposed to be famous.
I drink more beer and lecture people about how to give up cigarettes, as I smoke outside.
I wander around inside and watch people dance to cheesy 80's anthems, screaming and shouting their hearts out.
I smoke some more and talk about how hard it is to learn French in Montreal, and how easy it is to learn English (in English).
I then spend a considerable amount of time with Xena, extracting all the English words from the French magnetic poetry on the fridge, and then making nonsense phrases out of them:
'Metal bras excite' and so forth.
I finish my beer and go to the depanneur to buy 2 more bottles, and another bottle of wine for the wife. At the time I'm don't contemplate that perhaps two bottles of wine is a lot to drink
Back at the fridge, drinking, I talk to a pretty girl whom I had noticed earlier showing off her cleavage to her girlfriends. She is surprised to hear that I'm married. She looks disappointed, and thinks about this for a moment.
'Can I French kiss you then?' She asks.
I think about this.
'No,' I say, 'I think my wife would be upset if you French kissed me.'
'Hmm.' She says, and thinks some more. 'Maybe at another party then?'
I think she is missing the point.
Suddenly the fridge is empty and the whole world is looking for beer. I spy a bottle, unopened, hidden away behind some boxes, and take it, free of guilt as I do so.
We stay for another fifteen minutes and then leave, not, for once, the last people to go. And, thankfully, without a glass of malt whisky for the road.
The party is supposed to start with a game of football in the park at 4pm, leading onto lengthy shower-queues at the party venue, followed by drinking large amounts of alcohol whilst eating BBQ.
The best laid plans of mice and men, and all that, so a thunderstorm appears and flashes great bolts of lighting as it throws down sheets of rain.
We sit inside our house, at 3.30pm, and look out of the window. We have the lights on. We decide not to go to the football, and instead just turn up for the post-match party.
So I drink just one beer before we leave, at about 7pm. We take a bus, and then walk. The rain has stopped, and though there is a damp chill in the air, it is pleasant. We meet Leaf in the area, and enter the party with him.
Pristine, pearly white walls shout their non-smoking origins, in a tidy, comfortable lounge, African style voodoo masks adorn the walls, but not in a scary way. It's the kind of apartment that looks tidy, and not in need of a glass of red wine on the sofa.
New people, all interesting. I just brought six beers, in an effort to not drink too much and / or stay too late. Interesting strategy.
There is a BBQ after all, and we watch Bjork cook sausages until they are blackened and charred. Consumers stare at their plates, prodding their elongated charcoal with forks, in a forlorn manner.
MC explains to me, 'It is how Germans cook meat, apparently. Every time he cooks meat it is like this. He's always saying, "I don't think it's quite cooked enough.." and then blackens it.'
In the end, others are sent to seize control of the BBQ and sausage browning. There are sighs of relief. It is Bjork's birthday, so I suppose he should be allowed to burn the meat if he wants to.
Once the variously-shaped bits of animal have been consumed, and the blood soaked up with bread, the drinking begins in earnest. There is a lot of beer in the fridge, so much so that a great deal of it waits patiently outside for its turn to be chilled. But in the end it all vanishes, of course.
No shots in sight. I'm very glad.
'I was bought a bottle of whisky,' Bjork tells me, as he lights his cigarette, outside, with a new zippo. He points to an ominous bottle of single malt, on the shelf, high above the milling crowd.
'Ah.' I say.
'Maybe later, we can have a small glass?' He suggests.
'Ah.' I say. 'Maybe not, I don't really drink spirits any more, especially at parties.'
'But if it is the end of the night, and your last drink before you go home?'
He is the devil, and I listen to his bargain, as all lost souls do.
'Hmm, perhaps,' I concede.
The wife finds me and asks me, too many times, if she is red in the face.
'No, why?' I ask.
It turns out that there is a 'famous person' at the party. Famous in Quebec, that is, as I've never heard of him. I ask not to have him pointed out. I don't want my behaviour modified by knowing. In fact, I take a perverse pleasure in knowing that I'll probably talk to him and not know that he is supposed to be famous.
I drink more beer and lecture people about how to give up cigarettes, as I smoke outside.
I wander around inside and watch people dance to cheesy 80's anthems, screaming and shouting their hearts out.
I smoke some more and talk about how hard it is to learn French in Montreal, and how easy it is to learn English (in English).
I then spend a considerable amount of time with Xena, extracting all the English words from the French magnetic poetry on the fridge, and then making nonsense phrases out of them:
'Metal bras excite' and so forth.
I finish my beer and go to the depanneur to buy 2 more bottles, and another bottle of wine for the wife. At the time I'm don't contemplate that perhaps two bottles of wine is a lot to drink
Back at the fridge, drinking, I talk to a pretty girl whom I had noticed earlier showing off her cleavage to her girlfriends. She is surprised to hear that I'm married. She looks disappointed, and thinks about this for a moment.
'Can I French kiss you then?' She asks.
I think about this.
'No,' I say, 'I think my wife would be upset if you French kissed me.'
'Hmm.' She says, and thinks some more. 'Maybe at another party then?'
I think she is missing the point.
Suddenly the fridge is empty and the whole world is looking for beer. I spy a bottle, unopened, hidden away behind some boxes, and take it, free of guilt as I do so.
We stay for another fifteen minutes and then leave, not, for once, the last people to go. And, thankfully, without a glass of malt whisky for the road.
Friday, October 01, 2004
Party of Leaf and Xena
I wondered for a while if I should, in fact, write a review of this party, mainly because it didn't end so well for me, personally. But, life is life, and it does deserve a write up, in reality. I also took no pictures during the evening, but I've had some sent to me since, and so I'll use one of them... I'm sure Karloff won't mind.
The error of my judgement on this day can perhaps be traced back to the two pints I drank at 4pm in Grumpy's Bar after a day of shopping downtown. I was waiting for the wife at the time. After receiving a phone call to the bar from her (amusing image of the barmaid holding up the phone and shouting my name), I then went to meet her and Marty at the Barbare.
When I arrived they were already a few bites into burgers, so I ordered a cheese platter, as I thought it would be quick to prepare. I ordered a beer - a 5 a 7 special of some alcoholic orange liquid.
The cheese platter was obviously designed to be shared amongst several friends. There was a huge wedge of Camembert, a mountain of cheddar cubes, and a large slice of goat cheese. When I finished, which I did, I sat back and my stomach shouted angrily at me for filling it with so much dairy, on top of three pints of beer.
I felt a bit odd from this point onwards in our story, dear reader.
We returned home, to relax and change, and I drank a rather nasty bottle of Milwaukee Dry, which happened to be in the fridge. This beer always makes me feel strange, and often brings on stomach cramps or burning sensations. Anyway, beer is beer, I reasoned.
Feeling a little tired, I decided to have an espresso before leaving, but realised that we didn't have much coffee left. No problem, I thought, I'll top up the coffee with cocoa powder and make an espresso-mocha.
Hmm.
Well, with added sugar, I thought it was great, though the wife wasn't convinced, and in fact pulled an odd face when she tried it. Anyway, I drank it all down and proclaimed that I felt great.
I only had six beers with me to take - Belle Guelle - and had bee told by Xena that there would be plenty of Gin and Tonic if I wanted more later at the party. The wife took a bottle of red wine.
Time passes. We arrive.
Very jolly beginning it was too. I talk to a lot of people, and drink a beer. Good atmosphere, plenty of laughter, this is the part of the evening that everyone recalls clearly the next day.
Then Xena arrives with a tray of shots. Vodka perhaps.
I pull a face. I have been avoiding shots since they were linked to my blackouts in the past.
'Ooh, I don't know,' I say. But I'm talked into it - just one to celebrate various things that seemed like they needed toasting, desperately, at that moment.
'Okay,' I say, 'just one.' And descend into murkiness. 'But,' I add, seriously to Xena, 'don't let me drink any more, eh?'
'Sure,' she says, and wanders off to ply spirits on more people.
So, suffice to say that during the rest of the evening, it was never long before a tray of shots was thrust under my nose for sampling. And, worse, I would often help Xena finish the last few on the tray before she went to create something new.
'What goes with Gin?' She would ask, desperate to make new and more interesting shots for the masses.
So we spend a lot of time on the roof, as we can smoke there. To get there you have to travel in the lift/elevator each time, then walk through darkened corridors and up spooky, gloomy steps. There are a few stumbles. Of course.
I'm having fun at this point in the evening, and have had, perhaps four or five of my beers. One of my final memories of the night is X's (who's name I shall not mention) girlfriend telling a large crowd of people how she shaves his balls.
'I can't stand that hair!' She cries.
'Well, we've all been there,' I say, and the men in the group thoughtfully nod.
Then it's all over. A few flashes, but no real memories. I wake up the next day, in bed.
I have managed to re-create the rest of the evening from various sources:
Downstairs I'm drinking strong German lager that someone has given me, slurring, and swaying. My wife sees this and brings me some water, which she thinks will do me some good. I'm of the opinion that it won't do me any good, and don't want to drink it. She is insistent, and I become excited in my refusal. This escalates into me tossing my empty beer bottle onto the table - the ultimate 'no' symbol.
I am manhandled into a small room, as I'm now considered a threat to society. And there various people come in and try and make me drink water, as I sit on a small chair, alone. I become more and more agitated as I perceive the world massing and conspiring against me, all of them wanting me to drink water, that I don't want to drink.
Then the wife begins to shout at me. She told me later that this once worked for her - when I was drunk, she shouted at me to pull myself together, and I did. However, this time, it did not, and I remained resolutely drunk. Then an idea came into her head - perhaps a slap across the face, like on the TV, would do the trick. Kind of shock me into sobriety?
She tells me that she is going to slap me.
I fix her gaze and say, 'Go on then.' But, I can't help imagine that I meant it in the sense of, 'no, don't.'
She tells me three times that she is about to slap me, and then wham! She lets rip.
A second later I have hurled a cup across the little room, and it has smashed into many bits. At least I took out my anger on an inanimate object, and not a live thing, I later thought.
We leave soon after, at 4am or so. The wife is upset with me, for some reason.
In the morning I'm simply told that I threw beer bottles around and smashed a cup against the wall.
'What?' I say, 'why would I do that?'
'I don't know,' said the wife.
During the evening I also managed to break my antique gold watch, the 1960 Longine Grand Prix. That watch is precious to me, so that when I saw the top fall off, in the bathroom that morning, and the little second hand bent into a 'U', I could have almost cried.
New resolution: No more shots.
The error of my judgement on this day can perhaps be traced back to the two pints I drank at 4pm in Grumpy's Bar after a day of shopping downtown. I was waiting for the wife at the time. After receiving a phone call to the bar from her (amusing image of the barmaid holding up the phone and shouting my name), I then went to meet her and Marty at the Barbare.
When I arrived they were already a few bites into burgers, so I ordered a cheese platter, as I thought it would be quick to prepare. I ordered a beer - a 5 a 7 special of some alcoholic orange liquid.
The cheese platter was obviously designed to be shared amongst several friends. There was a huge wedge of Camembert, a mountain of cheddar cubes, and a large slice of goat cheese. When I finished, which I did, I sat back and my stomach shouted angrily at me for filling it with so much dairy, on top of three pints of beer.
I felt a bit odd from this point onwards in our story, dear reader.
We returned home, to relax and change, and I drank a rather nasty bottle of Milwaukee Dry, which happened to be in the fridge. This beer always makes me feel strange, and often brings on stomach cramps or burning sensations. Anyway, beer is beer, I reasoned.
Feeling a little tired, I decided to have an espresso before leaving, but realised that we didn't have much coffee left. No problem, I thought, I'll top up the coffee with cocoa powder and make an espresso-mocha.
Hmm.
Well, with added sugar, I thought it was great, though the wife wasn't convinced, and in fact pulled an odd face when she tried it. Anyway, I drank it all down and proclaimed that I felt great.
I only had six beers with me to take - Belle Guelle - and had bee told by Xena that there would be plenty of Gin and Tonic if I wanted more later at the party. The wife took a bottle of red wine.
Time passes. We arrive.
Very jolly beginning it was too. I talk to a lot of people, and drink a beer. Good atmosphere, plenty of laughter, this is the part of the evening that everyone recalls clearly the next day.
Then Xena arrives with a tray of shots. Vodka perhaps.
I pull a face. I have been avoiding shots since they were linked to my blackouts in the past.
'Ooh, I don't know,' I say. But I'm talked into it - just one to celebrate various things that seemed like they needed toasting, desperately, at that moment.
'Okay,' I say, 'just one.' And descend into murkiness. 'But,' I add, seriously to Xena, 'don't let me drink any more, eh?'
'Sure,' she says, and wanders off to ply spirits on more people.
So, suffice to say that during the rest of the evening, it was never long before a tray of shots was thrust under my nose for sampling. And, worse, I would often help Xena finish the last few on the tray before she went to create something new.
'What goes with Gin?' She would ask, desperate to make new and more interesting shots for the masses.
So we spend a lot of time on the roof, as we can smoke there. To get there you have to travel in the lift/elevator each time, then walk through darkened corridors and up spooky, gloomy steps. There are a few stumbles. Of course.
I'm having fun at this point in the evening, and have had, perhaps four or five of my beers. One of my final memories of the night is X's (who's name I shall not mention) girlfriend telling a large crowd of people how she shaves his balls.
'I can't stand that hair!' She cries.
'Well, we've all been there,' I say, and the men in the group thoughtfully nod.
Then it's all over. A few flashes, but no real memories. I wake up the next day, in bed.
I have managed to re-create the rest of the evening from various sources:
Downstairs I'm drinking strong German lager that someone has given me, slurring, and swaying. My wife sees this and brings me some water, which she thinks will do me some good. I'm of the opinion that it won't do me any good, and don't want to drink it. She is insistent, and I become excited in my refusal. This escalates into me tossing my empty beer bottle onto the table - the ultimate 'no' symbol.
I am manhandled into a small room, as I'm now considered a threat to society. And there various people come in and try and make me drink water, as I sit on a small chair, alone. I become more and more agitated as I perceive the world massing and conspiring against me, all of them wanting me to drink water, that I don't want to drink.
Then the wife begins to shout at me. She told me later that this once worked for her - when I was drunk, she shouted at me to pull myself together, and I did. However, this time, it did not, and I remained resolutely drunk. Then an idea came into her head - perhaps a slap across the face, like on the TV, would do the trick. Kind of shock me into sobriety?
She tells me that she is going to slap me.
I fix her gaze and say, 'Go on then.' But, I can't help imagine that I meant it in the sense of, 'no, don't.'
She tells me three times that she is about to slap me, and then wham! She lets rip.
A second later I have hurled a cup across the little room, and it has smashed into many bits. At least I took out my anger on an inanimate object, and not a live thing, I later thought.
We leave soon after, at 4am or so. The wife is upset with me, for some reason.
In the morning I'm simply told that I threw beer bottles around and smashed a cup against the wall.
'What?' I say, 'why would I do that?'
'I don't know,' said the wife.
During the evening I also managed to break my antique gold watch, the 1960 Longine Grand Prix. That watch is precious to me, so that when I saw the top fall off, in the bathroom that morning, and the little second hand bent into a 'U', I could have almost cried.
New resolution: No more shots.
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