on the floor

We're back to the traditional filing system of people in transit; that is, everything's on the floor. Makes it pretty easy to find things. At the moment it looks as if a suitcase threw up in the living room.


Today was clearing out the garden, to show we've been maintaining the property during our time here. This is our grape vine, don't you know.

Sadly, we'll be leaving before they're quite ready, though we've cleared the leaves away from the grapes so they get a bit more sun this week.





And this is a sock of dubious parentage. It contains a bit of every sock I made during 2007. It's a bit funny-looking, but it was created with love, and that's what really matters.

westward ho

Two weeks ago today, I arose at six a.m. to perform a ritual early-morning copy-edit. The rosy fingers of the dawn caressed my computer screen as I sipped the first divinity-bestowed cup of tea of the day. The melodious strains of the bellbirds were just making way for the non-native birds to take up the chorus. Red pen in hand, it's a pretty idyllic way for someone like me to begin the day.


Today, the alarm hauled me from 20,00 leagues under the depths of sleep. I stumbled out of bed and flicked on the computer. The bright electrical-white screen clawed at my retinas and I shied away, wondering what had happened.


It was dark.


The bellbirds weren't even up yet, never mind finishing off for the day and handing over singsong duty to their mundane cousins. I was so fazed I didn't even get round to making tea before I started my edit, which gives a pretty good idea of my state of mind.


It wasn't a hint that winter's coming. It was a sledgehammer.


It's lucky, then, that my time here on the other side of the world is drawing to a close. There'll be a stopover in the Mother Country before hoisting the topsail again for the New World, eta early April.

Since knowing I'll be going back, I've been ridiculously over-excited about - of all things - Saskatoon. I should have arranged to visit either during midwinter (oh wait - April IS midwinter) or mosquito season, just so I wouldn't get a false picture. I am quite irrationally loved-up at the thought of the city. It's like when someone you know goes all idiotic over someone, and gets mentionitis - where they can't stop mentioning the object of their desire just to hear themselves talk about him or her. Or in my case, it. You know: "Saskatoon said something really funny today". "Yes, I think that too, and Saskatoon agrees." "hey, remember that time we hung out in Saskatoon? And it was, like, really cool and everything?" If Saskatoon were to take me out, seduce me, and leave in the morning without even making coffee, I wouldn't care.

It's probably a good thing that at this stage I'm not going back to Saskatoon for good. This intensity of relationship can only go one of two ways if you continue to be in each other's company for any length of time: torrid, doomed affair, or utterly stale. It's good that for now I'll only be visiting. Saskatoon and I can flirt and make suggestive remarks without consequence and then I'll be on my way. Saskatoon. You devil, you. C'm'ere.

yarnlust

Oh yeah. For these babies? Totally.

The thing is, they're not even really "me". They are (I hope) quite "the person for whom I made them". I think they are. Even so I still feel a bit drunk with yarnlust for this beautiful wool.

I was all worried that the turquoisey bit, which was the whole point of buying it, because their new owner is very very turquoisey, would end up unused. But there it is, smack in the middle of the hand, as if I had managed to plan it that way all along. The best part? The turquoise turned to that dark greeny colour quite quickly, and I wasn't so keen on the dark greeny bit. So I broke off the yarn and reattached it further up to get a bit more turquoise right at the fingers. And then I discovered that, if I used the bit I broke off, it was exactly the right amount to make the thumb so it completely matched the gradation to the greeny bit on the rest of the glove.

Seriously, the whole thing just acted as if I had thought it all through, which I hadn't, because, you know, I generally don't. I could lose it for a yarn like this. It anticipates my flaws and gently corrects them so I look smarter than I am. It comes in a bunch of slightly variant colours - there is one that contains both the deep amber of a September cornfield and the purple blush of a handsome Saskatonian's windburned cheek - and I am having to be very careful not to go down to the yarn shop and simply roll in it.

poetry

My friend Paula is competing in the CBC's ``poetry face off`` this week. She has to go to Regina and read her poetry into the faces of four other poets. And they read theirs back into her face. Each province has a competition, and the winner goes into the national face off, and the winner of that is the Canadian Poem of the Year. It's a big deal.

As I can't get there to cheer her on - being on the other side of the planet and everything - here's good luck to Paula. Get in their faces, face them down and Face. Them. Right. Off.

Stopping in Regina on a Snowy Evening

Whose pomes these are I think I know.
Her words are in Regina though;
She will not see me come to hear
Her face-off in the studio.

My body clock does think it queer
`Cos in NZ, the summer`s here
While by Regina`s frozen lake
Are read the Poems Of The Year.

Her voice is steady, without a shake
For there is surely no mistake
That Paula's pomes aside will sweep
The others, and the prize she'll take.

Her words are lovely, dark and deep.
But I must to New Zealand keep,
With miles to go before I sleep,
With miles to go before I sleep.