As you finally get rid of them (Rid of them!)

It's the Ninth Day of Christmas, not the Second, but it's been about sixteen years since I last posted the lyrics to this Elvis Costello ditty (co-written with Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains), and it's been playing in my head a lot this holiday -- not that anyone got drunk, I hasten to add, and we finished the tourtières days ago:

I knew of two sisters whose name it was Christmas,

And one was named Dawn of course, the other one was named Eve.
I wonder if they grew up hating the season,
The good will that lasts til the Feast of St. Stephen

For that is the time to eat, drink, and be merry,
Til the beer is all spilled and the whiskey has flowed.
And the whole family tree you neglected to bury,
Are feeding their faces until they explode.

There'll be laughter and tears over Tia Marias,
Mixed up with that drink made from girders.
’Cause it's all we've got left as they draw their last breath,
Ah, it's nice for the kids, as you finally get rid of them,
In the St Stephen's Day Murders.

Uncle is garglin' a heart-breaking air,
While the babe in his arms pulls out all that remains of his hair.
And we're not drunk enough yet to dare criticise
The great big kipper tie he's about to baptise.

With his gin-flavoured whiskers and kisses of sherry,
His best Chrimbo shirt slung out over the shop.
While the lights from the Christmas tree blow up the telly,
His face closes in like an old cold pork chop.

And the carcass of the beast left over from the feast,
May still be found haunting the kitchen.
And there's life in it yet, we may live to regret,
When the ones that we poisoned stop twitchin'.

It is a far, far better thing

Over the past couple of decades, what passes for Christmas television programming has bemused me.  As far as I can tell, some underpaid minion, saddled with slapping some sort of viewing schedule together, had assumed that, since Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, anything connected with Dickens is Christmassy:  Great Expectations, Bleak House or even A Tale of Two Cities.

With that in mind, I can pompously intone:  "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times . . . . " when talking about this year's Christmas, can't I?

(Well I can.  You weren't there.  Lucky you.)

It was the worst in the sense that I knew it was going to be stressful, took steps to prepare and plan against that eventuality, and it was all exactly as stressful as I feared anyway.  

A house guest (delightful, courteous, and omnipresent).  

Extended family with temperaments diametrically opposed to the introverted temperaments in our household. 

An unusually deaf Demeter, plagued by a small and stubborn ball of wax in her so-called "good ear", and totally bamboozled by aforementioned temperaments. 

A daughter on the autistic spectrum, to whom Christmas is vital, abandoned for a few heart-wrenching minutes, by her panicky father on a holiday carousel.  (It's a long story, please don't make me repeat it.)

And the Resident Fan Boy, whose instinctive defence is shutting down his brain, whenever something emerges from left field, which happens a lot at Christmas.

It was the best of times in the sense that I didn't kill anybody.  I didn't yell at anybody -- except the Resident Fan Boy, and only a couple of times, at that.

The shopping was done on time, and the presents seemed to go over well.  There are still three Christmas cards to mail.  (For those of you not resident in Canada, we had a postal strike from mid-November to mid-December.). What food I managed to produce has been edible, even marginally festive.

So I really have nothing to grumble about.  My expectations weren't overly great, and my house is, in no way, bleak.

Besides, there has been very little Dickens on the telly - apart from A Christmas Carol.  The specialty channels are jammed with scores of Christmas-themed romantic movies, in the vein of Harlequin and Mills & Boon.  They play them year-round now.

Oh, joy.

Merry Eighth Day of Christmas, to you and yours.

We're on the Titanic, but we think it's the Ark

 This song, by Brandy Clark and Adam Wright (featuring Clark's singing with Randy Newman), has been on my mind since rising this morning.

It was written in 2020 and is, alas, as pertinent as ever:

Chocolate and ice cream therapy, I should think.

I wonder why nobody don't like me

Steering clear of news from south of the border, I'm taking refuge in happiness and humour.

When elder daughter was less than a year old, I had a cassette tape of Harry Belafonte's 1959 appearances at Carnegie Hall, and fell madly in love with the quirky "Mama Look a Boo Boo".  

The only trouble was, when I was pushing my baby around in her stroller, doing errands downtown, I'd catch people giving me brief, alarmed sideway glances, and realise that I'd been singing it under my breath:  "Shut your mouth, go away..."

Last week, I stumbled across this 1965 gem from The Danny Kaye Show.  

Excuse me while I shut my mouth and go away.

A prayer to the better angels

 Doom-scrolling is a crummy thing to do before bedtime.

This was brought home, once again, to me about three weeks ago, when I made the mistake of checking my newsfeeds as I lay down to sleep, and stumbled across a veteran American meteorologist named John Morales breaking down as he analysed the approach of Hurricane Milton towards the Florida coastline.

You don't want to see a grown scientist cry.  It's really unsettling.

Last night, the Resident Fan Boy and I watched John Oliver wrap up the latest episode of Last Week Tonight with a passionate plea to American voters to keep that guy from getting into the White House again.  I was startled to see that his eyes were moist.

You don't want to see a British political satirist cry, either.

My American cousin and her son have spent the past few days phoning voters in the swing states.  I'm doing my bit by steering away from newsfeeds.  I'm rather grateful that Facebook blocks news items in and out of Canada.

The RFB and I will be watching Stephen Colbert tonight.  John Oliver will be a guest.  Are we crazy?  Well, the results are unlikely to be known soon, because, after more than eight years of this nonsense, and for reasons that overwhelm and depress me, the vote is likely to be close.   

Another Republican, standing on the edge of the abyss of an American civil war, made a plea to the "better angels of our nature".

I hope I can sleep tonight.

Possibly the best thing I've ever seen on television

In a week of losses, both great and small, I offer a jewel of comfort-viewing. 

I didn't necessarily love everything Dame Maggie appeared in.  (I loathed Downton Abbey; sorry, but I did.)  However, she was usually one of the best things in any production.  

In the following, she is the only thing in the production.  Aside from the crew, the director, and the writing of Alan Bennett.  Other actors have played this role, and beautifully, but this is definitive.  As she was.

If you have the fifty minutes, treat yourself.

Informed consent

The barista asks me if I want a pain au chocolat:  "So you don't look predictable."  (A lot of mornings, I arrive at the counter and the pastry is sitting there on a plate, because they saw me coming.)

"Well, getting consent is always a good idea," I tell her.  She's laughing so much, that she forgets to get the chocolate croissant and hand it to me, even though I've paid, and is momentarily confused to see me still standing there.

"You had my consent and everything!"  I declare in mock indignation.  

I get mock-indignant so often, that I think real indignation would go unrecognised.

Things change

It was my first attempt to run down to the shops on an errand, when I spotted the two neighbourhood boys strolling up my street, clad in almost identical black teeshirts with roomy black trousers billowing out from their long legs.

I've seen them several times over the past year; one of them lives in an apartment building around the corner, and I've seen his pal at the ancient glass entry door in the morning, before they head out to middle school.  (I've also seen them hogging the courtesy seats on buses and scattering ice cream packets on the sidewalk, but, heck, thirteen is thirteen.)

That's the thing.  They don't look thirteen this late summer afternoon.  They've shot up a couple of inches, and their shoulders have broadened.  High school for them, this year, I think.

Then I discovered I'd left my wallet behind, doubled back, and decided to seek a cooler way into the village.  The sun was just bordering on uncomfortably warm, but the shadows were deliciously pleasant, with a light breeze wafting up from the strait.

So I nipped around another corner, and skidded to a halt.

For years, the City of Victoria has covered the utility boxes with historical photos of the surrounding area: landmarks -- such as hospitals and schools -- shown as they were decades before, and houses that are no longer there.

This is startling different, and the reason for it is what had been there before:

That's Joseph Trutch, the first Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia, and on at least one list of "The Ten Worst Canadians in History", for his reprehensible policies toward indigenous peoples.

I had an inkling that the former utility cover wouldn't last long, so snapped this photo in 2022.  

That was the spring that Trutch Street changed its name.  The original idea, I believe, was to rechristen it "Truth Street", but then it emerged that the Lekwungen word for "truth" is "Su'it".

It's pronounced something like "SAY-it".  For over a year, the voice prompt on the #7 bus dutifully announced it, until a few months ago, when the name of the bus stop was changed to "Fairfield and Chester".  To be fair, that's the closest cross street to the actual stop.

Blossoming

Oh, I love younger daughter's watercolour paintings.

I know I'm her mother.  They're just so lush, and light years ahead of anything I can manage.

Younger daughter's art lessons ended yesterday, for another summer.  She's been taking them with the same teacher for the past dozen years, with a few exceptions for logistics and pandemics. 

As she left, she embraced her teacher.  The Resident Fan Boy told me the teacher seemed a little surprised, but that younger daughter scoffed, on the way to the bus stop:  "I always give her a hug when lessons are over!"

It's a rare thing just the same.

Just like her paintings.

What kind of music is "Pumpkin Spice", for pete's sake???

I have come to the conclusion that Spotify just makes stuff up. 

During elder daughter's last Christmas visit, she introduced me to Spotify's "Day Lists" (as opposed to "playlists" - naturally, it took me some time to pick that up).

They're often pretty nifty, based on rather random themes.  Some are simply wonderful mixtures of unusual folk-tunes, or bracing Broadway musicals, or soaring choral works, or really strange and spooky selections. 

I don't mind; it's the kind of music experience I'm looking for, in other words:  new to me, but listenable.  They often send me what they call "medieval music".  It's usually early Renaissance mixed in with Celtic folk.  As I said, they just make stuff up.

I get waaaay too many "day lists" with "Laurel Canyon" as a theme word, though.  Don't mind that type of music, but I've heard most of it, so I'm battling the algorithms again, by listening to the more-off-the-wall things in self defense.

However, what am I supposed to think when I turn on the Spotify app and am informed:  You listened to modern rock and pumpkin spice on Fridays in the afternoon.  Here's some:  father's day, labour day, jangle, heartland rock, and college.  

This was in July, by the way.  

Is it AI - or is it because Spotify is Swedish? (I think it's because they're Swedish.  I had one or two Swedes as students in my teaching days.  They were delightful enigmas.)

And then Spotify kept offering me "goblincore".  What the hell is goblincore?  A Google search seems to lead mostly to Reddit discussions.  They're not sure, either.  The playlist, which I saved, changes from day to day, and seems to be indie folk, with the occasional bit of jazz, classical music, and even British pop from the sixties.

I mean, it's fine, but what on earth, Spotify?

I'm not sure if the following video answers the goblincore question - I gather it's a spoof on "Cottagecore", something I don't quite get either, never having had a cottage - although this song may explain how people in Ottawa obtain their cottages....