When Life Gives You Lemons …

… eat ice cream!

My introduction to lemon ice cream – real ice cream, not sorbet – happened at Vancouver’s Pacific Centre Mall in 1985. Ter and I were over for yet another rock concert and always spent time shopping whenever we were in the city. It was also our first encounter with a Baskin-Robbins outlet. Never had we seen such a variety of flavours in one freezer. The options are countless these days, but back then, choosing from 31 was mind-boggling. I don’t recall what Ter picked, but they had me at “Lemon Mousse”.

It was creamy and sweet and tart and I’ve always remembered it. Perhaps memory has embellished the delight in taste and texture, but no matter. It took decades for me to find another ice cream joint that featured lemon anything other than sorbet. Not that I have anything against dairy-free, but that B-R Lemon Mousse was unlike anything I had ever tasted. I never got past it.

Artisan ice cream shops are ubiquitous forty years later. I have steered clear of dairy for some years on account of arthritic flares, but I have consumed more ice cream in the last two months than I’ve eaten in decades. The summer’s been hot, I’ve been happy, and exploring the neighbourhood has revealed an alarming number of small-batch retailers in dangerous proximity, each of which features a unique spin on lemon ice cream.

Better Acres “Italian Lemon” set the bar last year. Then I discovered Parachute’s “Lemon Cream” this summer. Last week, I happened on 49 Below’s “Lemon Swirl” and I am here to tell you that one knocked the others out of the park. I’d never have gotten through the ridiculously misnamed single scoop without Ter’s help – it was huge – and once the burn wore off, my tongue hurt like it had been sandpapered but, oh man, was it worth it!

Best of all? They sell it by the pint! And online! Click!

Buckle Up

 

Last week my chiropractor asked me if I was planning any trips to Vancouver now that BC is thisssss close to achieving herd immunity. I said no way; even before COVID, I was done with Vancouver. These days, I think Victoria is too crowded! Besides, as I get older, the hassle of travel outweighs the benefits of being there.

The doctor didn’t disagree—but he’s also booked a golfing trip to Arizona next March. He’ll get there in three days, driving a “doable” (so he says) 900 kms a day, and will enjoy the trip more on the road than being squished into a fully loaded airplane for a few hours.

“Hey,” I said brightly, “in two or three years, if you’ve got two hundred thousand dollars, you can book a seat on Virgin Galactic’s sub-orbital flight from YVR to Phoenix and get there before you leave!”

He paused in rearranging my vertebrae. “What’s that?”

I explained about the FAA approving Richard Branson’s company to begin commercial operations in the next few years. “They flew the prototype last weekend,” I said. “Now they just have to build the actual space plane.”

My chiro was amazed, not just about the concept, but that I actually knew about it.

To be fair, I only know about it because Ter was already glued to CNN when I got up last Sunday morning. The test flight was airborne—with Sir Richard aboard—and I missed the part when they reached zero gravity, but at least I was able to watch the landing in real time. I love flying and I love going fast and I love aerodynamically designed anything, so I felt the rush of history being made when the plane landed safely.

Pretty darned cool, before you start thinking about it. I mean, billionaires floating around in the stratosphere for fun seems like a gargantuan waste of money, possibly environmentally irresponsible, and yet another example of the increasing disparity between the rich and the rest of us. At least Branson isn’t reserving seats solely for those who have more money than sense. He’s partnered with a non-profit to cover the cost for some ordinary people to take a trip beneath the stars. So there’s hope for some little kids who dream of getting there but who could never afford it on their own.

I say “beneath the stars” because it seems the intention here is to establish a sub-orbital commuting service, albeit a hella expensive one, rather than visiting space itself. One small step for a billionaire philanthropist may actually be one giant leap for inter-continental travel. So, if I had the cash, would I sign up for this once-in-a-lifetime über-experience?

No, thanks. Despite the thrill of travelling faster than the speed of sound, I doubt my body would respond well to zero gravity. Though I wonder what kind of in-flight snacks would be offered ...

Oh, I know! Fast food!

Ghost Story (Preface)

I’ve heard it said that we don’t have history in Victoria. We have nostalgia. Whichever it is, we definitely have ghosts. I know because I lived with them at Rockland. For seventeen years, Ter and I shared our heritage suite with phantom freeloaders who probably considered us to be the interlopers until they got to know us. Okay, until they got to know Ter. She’s the more attuned of we two; I lived in blissful ignorance for almost a year before she confessed to encountering the red-haired kid the day after we moved into Number 16. Completely freaked out, I demanded to know why she’d said nothing at the time.

“Because I didn’t want to freak you out,” she replied.

I’m fairly sure my Freak-O-Meter would have hit the apex no matter when I was told, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because we’d signed a lease, but I was grateful that she had seen the little guy first. I didn’t see him until sometime later, when we got new neighbours and I spied him flitting into the kitchen from the corner of my eye. I’ll always remember the shock of that bright red hair.

There were other entities, too, though I never saw them. They felt more comfortable revealing themselves to Ter, who respectfully acknowledged their presence and went quietly on her way. As well as the red-haired kid, there was a young girl in the long dress and an older boy with dark hair. We called the three kids “Harry”, “Ron” and “Hermione” after the trio in the Harry Potter books. The house had served as a girls’ school, then a boys’ school, so we reckoned they must have been students. Some years in, we learned from a neighbour that the house had also been an old folks’ home. “That explains the old woman,” Ter remarked, at which my Freak-O-Meter spiked again.

“What old woman????”

“I don’t know who she is, but she’s pretty bitter,” was the nonchalant reply.

Yeah. Ghosts. Whether by history or nostalgia, Victoria has them.

A co-worker’s mother recently sold her house. It’s not a heritage house, but it’s the house my colleague has known for her entire life, so there was a legitimate fear that the new owners would tear it down for development since that’s what seems to be happening in this city of late. It bothers me for more reasons than the architechtural oddities popping up like mutant mushrooms throughout the neighbourhood; and while I sympathized with the potential loss of a colleague’s childhood home, I am most distressed by what happens to the ghosts.

Where do they go? What do they do? Are they tied to the structure or the land? I guess it depends on the ghost, but the conundrum sparked the writing exercise that is tomorrow’s post.

Enjoy.

Shadow the Sun

Everyone was talking about it. The news constantly updated us on where to go, what time to be there, and what degree of eye protection was required to view last week’s solar eclipse. It was such a significant event that I almost took the day off to watch it from the beach across the street. I would have done it, too, had Monday been Ter’s scheduled day off. As she’s been an integral part of the HQ wildfire response all summer, taking an errant vacation day wasn’t likely to be approved, so off we went to our respective workplaces, me trying to convince myself that it wasn’t such a big deal, it was only an eclipse, for Pete’s sake, the world was not going to stop just to watch a shadow fall over the sun.

Only it kinda sorta did.

Happily, the timing for totality in Victoria coincided with mid-morning coffee. If I couldn’t experience the event with Ter, I decided, the next best person was my wee sister. The library courtyard where she takes her breaks (and where we have coffee on Thursdays) faces east. The sun would be in full view when it all went dark.

Only it didn’t all go dark. At around nine-thirty, the sky went a little weird, like the planetarium light before the show starts. Half an hour later, I headed to the library, where wee sis was indeed parked in place on the wall. The light hadn’t changed much. In fact, the sun seemed as bright and furious as ever—to the naked eye, anyway. People had gathered in groups for the momentous occasion, equipped with NASA-approved dark glasses, projectors made of cereal boxes, or the infamous paper with a hole poked in the middle (I’ve never understood how that works). Wee sis and I were unarmed. I had my phone to track the timing, but she only had her coffee. She seemed less excited about the event than I was, though she smiled when I said I wanted to share it with someone I love. I wasn’t so driven to see the eclipse itself; I wanted to feel it. You know, to feel the wonder of dwindling daylight on a mid-summer morning, and to experience a rare and extraordinary event in the company of my fellow humans.

Canada was outside the so-called “band of totality”; in Victoria, the sun was only ninety percent obscured by the moon. As peak time neared, wee sis shaded her eyes and risked a peripheral glance in the general direction of the sun. “It doesn’t look any darker to me,” she said.

I concurred. Despite knowing we wouldn’t get a total eclipse, I’d hoped for something more dramatic in the light department, like a ninety percent drop from what’s normal for the time. I, too, chanced a glance at the sun, but all I glimpsed was the usual glare. “It’s gotten cold, though,” said the friend who had joined us.

She was right. A definite chill had descended though the light remained the same. In fact, the temperature plunged in those few minutes. It seems obvious now, but I hadn’t anticipated a chill. That was—literally and figuratively—cool!

Back at the office, folks were a little disappointed that complete darkness hadn’t dropped on the day. A couple of my co-workers were discussing it when I stopped in the kitchen to make tea. After listening to a minute of them puzzling over why it didn’t go darker outside, I suddenly said, “It’s a good metaphor, though, don’t you think?”

They looked even more puzzled. “How do you mean?” one of them asked.

“Well, the moon blocked out ninety percent of the sun, yet the light was as bright as if it had only blocked ten percent. So, metaphorically, one bright spirit will shed more light than nine cast in shadow. ‘How far that little candle throws its beam’, you know?”

Admittedly, I got a couple of odd looks, but after they thought about it, they also got my point. It was later said that, for a couple of minutes on August 21, the violence and hatred stopped as everyone looked up at the sky in a shared moment of purest awe. We are all connected. We are all rays of light. Ninety percent of us can falter in the shadows, but so long as the other ten stay strong, the world will not go totally dark.

With love,

Snow What?

photo courtesy of Ter

I am a snowmantic. I love the idea of snow. A pristine blanket of sparkling white, evergreens draped in a thick layer of frosting or a cityscape glazed in royal icing—any or all of these images will excite my creativity and set me to fantasizing. I am often inspired to write snowy scenes. I adore the mental images of winter furs and dappled grey horses in a black and white wood. More compelling is the comfort of a scene in a cafe, of Christmas shoppers taking refuge from the weather over steaming eggnog lattes or peppermint hot chocolate.

Snow at night is even better than snow in sun—it’s a joy to be bundled in your jammies or wrapped in an oversized sweater, cradling a mug of spiced apple cider or sweet milky tea while snow falls thick and soft outside the window. Creating the mystical glow that brightens the dark and makes the stars seem sharper in the sky.

The crunch of your boots breaking the crust on that first foray outdoors. The bracing scent of Arctic cold and the shock of it reaching your lungs. Skating outdoors on a frozen pond. Slinging your skates over your shoulder and hiking home in deep drifts of snow. (Okay, I’ve never done that, but Ter did when she lived in Alberta.) Brightly coloured parkas and Nordic patterned mittens, striped scarves and tasselled toques, sleds and toboggans and snowball fights in the schoolyard.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

What I tend to forget is ... snow is cold. It is usually accompanied by a colder wind. It might be fun as it gathers on your hood, but once inside the drugstore where you’ve trudged to get batteries for the flashlight in case the power cuts out, don’t lower your head or melted snow will pee all over your summer sneaks because this is Victoria and who needs winter boots out west?

Chances are, a pair of good ones won’t pay themselves off because it’s so rare, but when snow does arrive in the Garden City, it is not the snow you knew when you were a kid in Alberta or Quebec. It is wet, heavy, slippery, stubborn snow with a mercifully short shelf life but a brutally obstreperous nature. It melts fast and freezes solid. Walking an icy sidewalk becomes an extreme sport unless you have cleats. Driving is okay if you have proper tires (Tiggy’s were upgraded to all weather from all season last year) and no one else is on the road, otherwise it’s demo derby on the highways and byways. As little as two centimetres will stress us out and shut us down.

I had the idea for this post before the winter hit us last week. We only endured a few days of light-by-Canadian-standard snowfall, but it was rougher than it was a pleasure and all I can say with any certainty is our plan for retiring to Canmore has been relegated to the Hall of Doof Ideas.

Merry Christmas.

Pool Party

The winning roster for 2014/15!

Draft day at the office – at 12:15, doors closed all over the 8^th floor and things got very quiet as this year’s hockey pool draft got underway.

My strategy this time out relies more on projected stats than beauty – “Ruthie’s Rogues” were a good-looking gang in 13/14, but pulchritude only got me to 7^th spot by the end of the regular season.

“Ruthie’s Rebels” is this year’s group and, may I say, they appear to have a good mix of looks, youth, experience and potential. I did nab hometown boy Jamie Benn from Dallas. Used to be I wouldn’t pick a Star, but those days are apparently done. I doubt I’ll ever say that about the Bruins, Islanders, Devils or Rangers. I’ll quit pooling before I pick anyone, superstar or no, from any of those hellspawn teams.

Now, if we can get the Flyers to win a game sometime before Christmas, and if Voracek can rack up a few pool points for me in the process, I’ll be happy. I mean, really. Four games into the season and they’re 0-2-2, garnering a don’t-spend-them-all-in-one-place 2 points and sitting in 27^th spot. Out of 30.

%^$#*&

Gracepoint-By-the-Sea

How strange to see Victoria dressed up and masquerading as “America’s Last Hometown”. 

The “television series event” called Gracepoint started its run last week and I’m pretty sure that every TV in town was tuned to channel 8 for that hour. Gracepoint, y’see, was filmed in Victoria and area earlier this year. Based on the UK miniseries Broadchurch, the US version also stars David Tennant, this time sans British accent, and anyone who remembers Twin Peaks will experience a similar sense of déjà vu regarding the story. A smalltown murder victim is discovered on the beach—but who did it? I haven’t seen Broadchurch and I don’t know David Tennant except as my tea fairy Treena’s time-travelling crush from Dr Who, but hey, I saw the film crews setting up across the road from my house. How could I not watch the series?

What an odd feeling. Truly, I was so distracted by Oak Bay Avenue pretending to be Gracepoint’s main street that I missed all the dialogue in the opening scene. Then there’s the beach where the body was found—right below the cliffs where I indulge in the occasional Sunday morning flânerie. Ter and I guessed at Island View Road and maybe Beaver Lake Park, and the waterfront in Sidney figured more prominently than anywhere else as the cop shop was set up in a vacant retail space at the marina.

The GP police crest is still stenciled on the glass doors. I dunno if the series is a one-off or aiming to be picked up (Twin Peaks made the mistake of going fulltime in the 1990s), and I’m not usually so giddy about six degree brushes with fame, but while on Ter’s birthday trip to Sidney, I just had to take this picture. Thank God I don’t have an i-Phone, as a selfie might have been in order.

Gushing notwithstanding, by the end of the first episode, aside from wondering if the interior shots were also filmed locally—the former Blethering Place tearoom, for instance, plays a hotel lobby/lounge—I was absorbed enough by the plot to forget for a moment that while living in the Canadian city of Victoria, British Columbia, I also live in Gracepoint, in Oak County, California, in the good old continental USA.

Does this qualify me for dual citzenship?

Saltspring Swag

I went with a mission: to find matching earrings for my chakra pendant. Mission accomplished—twice! I also found a silk scarf to accent my new faux leather (you don’t dare wear real leather to Saltspring Island) jacket. Looks like burgundy figures in my winter wardrobe palette this year.

With nothing much else to attract us in the little town of Ganges, Ter and I shopped. The earrings were my prime directive and neither of us was confident enough to stray off the beaten path on our first visit. It was a lot like driving the Saanich Peninsula or north of the Malahat. Silly me. If you squish Vancouver Island and all the Gulf Islands together, you’ll get one big rainforest island. The native flora doesn’t change from rock to rock. Only the fauna does, and the vibe we got from the locals was pleasant enough but I live in a tourist town. I know what the natives think when a stranger shows up in September, and we were most definitely strangers.

The ferry trip was fun; pausing for breakfast was delicious (doesn’t look it, but my toast was GF!); poking around the shops was fruitful, though I wish I’d pulled out the Canon at Black Sheep Books, a shop plucked straight out of Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter stories. Didn’t buy anything, but there is no better place to hang out anywhere than a vintage book store.

Best of all, on returning home, we agreed that Vancouver is too big, Ganges is too small, and that makes Victoria juuuuuust right!

For now.

The trip in pictures:

Ter and Tig in lane 31

the boat we're on

the boat we're usually on

the boat I'd have liked to be on

a perfect day to be on any boat

the wee kirk on the water

pulling in to Fulford Harbour

brekkie at ...

the Tree House proprietor

a tight fit through the front door

the view gets no better than this

Steampunk Rampant

These are not the people I work with - honest!
I "borrowed" this pic off the Internet

I spend a lot of time in the sci-fi/fantasy section of the local bookstore. Ter can visit the magazine rack, the cooking section, the new releases section, the biography and history sections and the kids’ section, and return to find that I’ve reached the authors whose surnames start with the letter H. I pick up a lot of books, scan the back covers, study the artwork, maybe read the first few paragraphs, and then return them to the shelf. I’m not sure what prompts me to start reading in earnest. It’s one of the great mysteries in my life.

Apparently steampunk has been around for years, but has only recently become popular in the mainstream – or at least in the sci-fi/fantasy section. I don’t get it. I wish that I did. I think that I should, given that it’s usually set in the Victorian era and features magic, otherworldly critters and the ubiquitous star-crossed romance. Back in the day, I was deeply inspired by the Victorian age. My vampires flourished in that setting, as did just about everyone else’s. I love the clothes, the culture, the trappings and even, to some degree, the science. It was, after all, the time of great industrial advancement and of literature, come to that. H.G. Wells and Jules Verne were probably the original steampunk authors. Not that I read either of them, because I didn’t. But I saw The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau at the movies and thought they were pretty cool.

So now works of steampunk fiction are sprouting on the shelves beside urban fantasy, high fantasy and science fiction. There’s a whole fashion industry based on the genre, and there’s a steampunk convention held somewhere in Victoria every year. I guess that’s only proper, given that the city is named for the applicable Queen. Last year, a gang from my office attended an absinthe tasting party at the Union Club and I might have gone, except that you had to wear steampunk duds and are you kidding? I have problems pulling together business casual. Corsets, bustles, goggles and ray guns are not in my repertoire – and if they were, it would be for private entertainment only. I saw the photographs, though, and the group looked absolutely authentic. They were having a ball into the bargain—and the pics were taken before the tasting.

Eventually, I’ll succumb and read a steampunk novel, just to see if I’ve gaffed and may be missing out on something ultra-fabulous. I doubt I will ever write one, though, and that may be my first hint. If the best writers write what they want to read, then I’m unlikely to go there … but I’ve also learned never to say “never”.

Grave Expectations

I live a few blocks from Victoria’s oldest cemetery, and while it’s generally taken as a shortcut home from the store, the other day it was part of a spontaneous shot at flânerie. I hiked along the waterfront and up to the main road, but the traffic noise was bothersome so I took a hard left into the historic graveyard and promptly came toe-to-toe with a stone plot bearing my family name.

I know that my immediate kin is not the lone offshoot from the clan MacGregor tree; we’re more of a twig from the larger branch called “Greig”, so it got me wondering who the plot’s occupants were and how/if they may have been connected to my father’s father’s father. The graves are overgrown and unmarked within the stone boundary. They could be empty for all I know. If so, they’re definitely not being held in reserve for any of my folk. Mum and Dad have other plans.

On a winding path between the stones, I met one of the cemetery caretakers. He was pushing his wheelbarrow toward me and I prepped my passing nod-and-smile, but he spoke to me as he approached.

“Are you looking for someone?”

“No,” I replied, “but someone found me. I just saw my family name on a plot back there.”

He asked what it is, and nodded when I told him. “We have a few of them around here.”

“I know a few myself,” I said, “but they’re still moving.”

He produced a brochure from his back pocket and showed me the map. The Greigs aren’t listed among the high points, but I can call the City Archives or the Old Cemeteries Society to ask for specific locations. Then he pointed out a spot on the path and said, “You’re about here. If you want to see the important ones, they’re up along this route.” He meant Emily Carr and Sir James Douglas, among other notable Victorians who had the cash to buy waterfront real estate for their final resting place.

I thanked him for the brochure and proceeded with my flânerie. Some years ago, I had seen another Greig family plot in the cemetery but couldn’t recall exactly where, so I kept an eye out as I walked. I passed tablets and obelisks and memorial markers, some articulately detailed and others worn blank by time and salt wind. There were family plots and single headstones. English, Scottish, German, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, Italian – families from all over the world were represented. None of the names meant anything to me … but then I recalled what the caretaker had said. If you want to see the important ones …

A few of the graves were adorned with fresh flowers, evidence that someone remembers and still misses the departed. The important ones.

The Ross Bay Cemetery may harbour a few famous Canadians and members of Victoria’s founding families, but it also holds the bones of ordinary people, of mothers and husbands and soldier-sons and infant daughters whose names aren’t in the history books. It occurred to me that every single person buried in every single cemetery in the whole wide world meant something to someone somewhere at some time, and that makes each of them—each of us—important.

Don’t think for a second that you have to be famous to be important. All you have to do is be loved.