A Tale of Two Cities: The Bullfight Leg

Feet having barely hit the ground in London, I traversed the border into the wilds of Kent to replenish the heart centre with a visit to a dear old friend who recently had a very much needed, wanted and loved baby.  The sweetest cherub with whom my husband imprinted "Twilight-style" on sight.  Have a word!!  Ending with dinner at a 16th century pub - only in Enlgand! - we readied ourselves for the more visceral environment of the Spanish capital - Madrid.  Seething with red passion - my cousin-in-law is a card carrying communist -we decided to keep the fact we are both partial to MacDonald's Happy Meals to ourselves and partisanned our way into the Bullfight leg of this trip.

My family, every single member of, is a Spaniard thoroughbred.  Half hail from the celtic north (Galicia) and half from the very centre of the archipielago (Madrid).  I also have blood relatives in Catalonia, The Basque Country and The Canary Islands.  Tempting as it was to disappear to the islands, it was Madrid we committed to this time. Arriving in 39 degree heat, I was at home, my husband was in hell (why are we not in the Canaries?oh he was mad) and the nipper just very very confused.

My cousin - the communist - had vacated his appartment for us - bless his red socks and had moved with his wife to my aunt's house a few streets away for the week.  Actually it sort of served a dual purpose.  See, my aunt has just lost her son -  another cousin, my favourite - everyone's favourite - who had died in his sleep a few months earlier at the age of 49.  She is beside herself with grief and the company will have done her the world of good, all things considered. 

This recently deceased cousin was a recovering heroin addict, fact is, it was a wonder he'd made it this long.  But he had finally kicked the habit only to kick the bucket.  It's odd and tragic and at once utterly expected that he should die on one of the first nights out in 20 years.  An agoraphobic, obsessive-compulsive, manic depressive finally musters the energy and courage to visit a friend and stay over - to not wake up.  It's like he knew and wanted to spare his mother the horror of finding him dead.  (Of course he lived at home.)

Unluckiest man in Madrid, he never really found his stride and told me once he simply didn't feel like he was of this world.  Very interesting fellow.  He's now in an urn nestled among his mother's prized china in the living room.  Where else? Apparently he was also claustrophic so a casket and ground burial was out of the question.

So it was that kind of week. Tea and sympathy.  Suffocating heat and Himalayan treks across the city to visit Goya and Velazquez at El Prado museum; Picasso and Miro at Reina Sofia; Burlesque street performers in El Retiro park and tapas, tapas and more tapas.  Late nights and free porn on TV.  Delightful.

And visits to a childhood open air pool in south Madrid.  My favourite.

Though I retain and very much honour my Spanish roots, I felt very foreign this time round,  like I have drifted too far from my ancestry and yet it seems very natural.  I'm a nomad - not by design - this was decided by my parents who chose to immigrate to the UK where I was born half human, half Vulcan.  I've always been a foreigner in this sense - in the UK, here in Canada and now again in Spain - it's normal for me now. 

Coming back to Canada then didn't really feel that awful.  I realise that home is where the heart is and the heart is where happiness is.  Happiness is what I make it.  Don't get me wrong - my heart isn't in Canada but I know now that if I can carve a little happiness then I'll always be home. 

A Tale of Two Cities - The Bulldog Leg

Got back to Toronto last night after a two week holiday, split as fairly as I could between UK and Spain given it was my family in Spain to whom I owed a real visit. Yet - like a love affair - I was unable to let the opportunity to visit London pass. Stealing an illicit 3 days in London I wasted no time on foreplay.

Minutes after checking into the Holiday Inn, Camden Lock- despite 10 hours of travel and with jet lag pulling ever more forcefully at my eye lids; tempted as I was to drop like a rock onto the bed, scissor kick the cramp out of my body and surrender consciousness to the cool fresh white linen, I showered the smell of airline off and took my ragged body onto the familiar grey slabs of London's pavements - gloriously bathed in the warm sunlight of a balmy late summer's day.

Camden having been the urban setting for much of my teenage life, provided the stimulus my haggard mind needed (and so much more) with memories stepping out from every corner ranging from the real to the ethereal.


Meandering past The Electric Ballroom, I remembered countless Indie/rock nights and 3am kebabs. Less salubrious were the thoughts that came to me as I browsed the old book and antique stalls of The Stables and Courtyard areas of this vast unique market. Eventually I twisted my way through the back streets of Chalk Farm up Primrose Hill to take the best seat in the house.




Medicine for the soul



There isn't a part of London that doesn't hold an important significance for me. I miss it terribly but I need to be careful not to let nostalgia cloud my mind. It was for a reason I left. That reason would so easily creep back if a return were not to be managed properly. Perhaps this is the way it has to be. Like a ferociously passionate relationship between two people who are just too similar - the only way to be friends is to stay apart. Perhaps that is what London has to be for now - until I can reconcile my wants with my needs and become better at being 'me'. I owe it to myself and all those around me who have ever invested time in 'me'.



I didn't squander the little time I had in town on being maudlin however much I obviously enjoy this state of mind. I met up with all my friends and this time they did see me wave. I satiated my need for culture by visiting the Tate Britain and the Hayward Gallery whilst savouring both the conversation and the wine. I've given up alcohol as of yesterday. It's part of the requisites for achieving this so-called 'life less ordinary'. I have to practice what I'm about to preach.


The next day, we went in for the kill and spent the day by the Thames and all the gems that area has to offer and as the time to say farewell both to the friends and the city I love and miss so much approached, with the pitiless step of a Greek Tragedy, I decided to do that most un-British of all things and openly cry. To my astonishment, my friends cried too.


I felt indescribably better for a person who wanted to do nothing but stay and carry on like I'd never left but I had other responsibilities - this time to the family. And so the Bullfight leg of the trip began: Madrid.

A tale in two parts

PART 1
No, I'm not in Europe yet as I start this post though I'm likely going to have to finish it retrospectively when I get back from my two week break as the taxi to the airport arrives in a few minutes.

I'm surprisingly calm considering I've built the trip up so much. I guess that is what happens when you've been out the night before with work. Calm or hungover? I highly recommend a night of heavy drinking before a taxing day of travel . Especially if you also have a boisterous 3 year old in tow. Ultimately you're in so much pain, figuratively you don't sweat the small or in fact the big stuff. Literally I'm sweating like a fat man on a treadmill.

'The Firm' that takes its pound of flesh from me every day turned 13 this year and the Bar Mitzvah was held on the 6th floor of a venerable old ex rag trade warehouse. Glorious fun. Much as I have decided to expedite the finite rule on my corporate life (more about that later), I do love the crap out of my colleagues who are so much fun. I laughed like a drain at the accountant - a young Jamaican who it turns out dances like everyone's dad at a wedding. I believe he is the only known one to do so in the world. Fascinating boy.

Ok - the taxi is here. I have to go.

Back in two weeks.

PART 2
................Ok so I'm back to finish what I started before I blog about the holiday I've just returned from. I left for a two week break after attending a work function celebrating its 13 years in business. Hungover after drinking irresponsibly at said function and pissed off as I was at receiving possibly the most nonconstructive performance appraisal in the history of deconstructive criticism which possibly led to the extent of aforementioned irresponsible drinking, I was in the mood for a holiday. Which I've now had, thank you very much.

I had I realised much to consider while away though I put in place a deadline after which all thoughts of work would be pushed off an imaginary cliff. I was extraordinarily successful at this.

I found myself more and more comfortable with the thought of quitting the corporate world but I was conscious of the need to project 20 years into the future and be mindful that the decision I make today will not end in my having to tincup for a pension outside a railway station tomorrow - though it is my firm belief most pensions in the future will have to be procured in this way.

And it is this thought that leads me to put strategy and planning behind a career move of the sort I have in mind.

In an earlier post I talk about a life less ordinary where I refer to re-training in something that will allow me to do a job that 'matters'. For the next 4 months I will be but a vapour in my house so intensive is the course I'm taking. For now I'll call it my move towards a life less ordinary and when I'm done I will tell you all about where I plan to take my professional self next.

I will say this - if you want something badly enough you will find a way. I'm banking on it...literally.

Make yourself at 'home'

I'm off to London and Madrid at the end of next week to catch up with friends and family - drink from the fountain of familiarity and friendship - and as always I put myself under enormous pressure to squeeze as much or I should say, many (people) into my time there as possible. So much so, I might have to contact Stephen Hawkins and ask if there is such a thing as a space-time shoehorn. At this rate I won't need a place to stay because I haven't actually factored sleeping into the equation.

It's always a bitter sweet experience returning somewhere where you used to own property but now rely either on the kindness of friends or horror of all horrors - hotels; a stranger in the only land I know (and love). I feel this most in London - the connection is too deep for this set up to to feel anything but...odd. My mum used to have a little holiday home on the east coast of Spain where many a crazy rite of passage and fun fun holiday was had but that house is no more and I feel it there too on occasion.

Generally though, Spain is a different kettle of fish - never having lived there (within recent memory - I know I was there for a couple of years before the age of 5) I don't mind hotels and in fact have a special fondness for a family run inn near the train staition Atocha. But there will be no need for hotels in Madrid this year. The family is falling over itself to accommodate. My cousins are moving out of their flat for the week we're there so that I, the other half and the nipper feel properly at home. I'm eternally grateful that despite the miles of separation - there is nothing to fake in Spain.

It's a wonderful feeling.

London, well, that's a different head case altogether. My friends have mostly escaped to the country and those that remain live in tidy little flats - hardly the place for a gargantuan Canadian and vivacious 3 year old...not to mention the slattern of a wife (that's me). So this time, it's a hotel for us - in Camden - my old stomping ground. It's not all bad and yet...as Coldplay says: "Home is where I wanted to go....home." Ah, one day.

For now, I have pubs landlords to check in with who will wonder why sales have been down for the last 18 months, streets and parks of my youth to saunter through & up & down, shop windows to peer longingly into, markets to float about in and a strong craving to visit The Natural History Museum to satiate. Been reading The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum and HAVE to take a closer look now - despite visiting it weekly for most of my teens - mostly to gawp at the exchange student from Sweden. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2008/january/the-secret-life-of-the-natural-history-museum.html

Cheerio for now my little blogettes. Will send a postcard.

The Beautiful Ones

I went to a fashion show Wednesday night at Uber Toronto scenester mecca – Ultra. What? you haven’t heard of it? It’s only the centre of the universe where the beautiful peeps meet to look pretty on the outside - though I must admit it took me quite some time to locate.

It started with the fiasco that is parking in Toronto. I ended up emotionally blackmailing a kitchen porter into lending me his parking space for a couple of hours or face the wrath of god on judgement day should I be raped and killed looking for a space in one of those god awful municipal 10 storey car parks. What? It was late – like after dark late! and I was tottering about on ridiculous heels.

Turns out I’d have been safer negotiating the slopes of a high rise car park building in those heels than I was clacking up and down Queen Street in unforgiving 4 inch Calvin Klein strappy (slappy) sandals searching for a door so dark and small, professor Dumbledore wouldn’t have fared much better.

I took styling tips from the gossip mags that told me clingy and neon plus heels and gold accessories is how the youth of today ‘be rolling’. Turns out looking like Demi Moore isn't that simple. I settled for Roger Moore in drag and was only glad the lighting was dim enough to put my flaws in soft focus. In any event, I figured people would soon be sporting their vodka goggles - either way I'd be off the hook.

Oh but what Moroccanesque delights awaited me inside! Well worth the permanent lower back damage. Dark, sultry and seductive; a wonderful setting for dinner - had I actually made it to dinner. So now I'm ravenous, my feet are starting to look and feel like beef jerky and the fashion show wasn't starting for at least an hour. Nothing left to do but dance and drink and party.

After locating my friends, a couple of saucy Brits, I spent the night shifting my weight from one foot to the other - much like a horse does in its sleep - exchanging laughs and loves from back home - nothing too cultured and almost all irreverent. The Fat Slags, Buster Gonads and Terry Fuckwit to name a few childhood comedy heroes from the comic book Viz dominated the conversation. If you don't know it...and you think you're hard enough you can find these ground-to-air walking disasters at http://www.viz.co.uk/.

Finally, not that the chit chat wasn't riveting, rumblings of the start of the cat walk show filtered through. Midnight I believe it was. I was on my third vodka red bull for sustenance and suddenly the irritating thought of a 6am start the following day began filtering through the fug of alcohol and leg ache. Shoo!

I watched these waif like creatures, floating down the runway curious as to what a gust of wind would do to them. I imagined them floating down to earth as softly as a duck feather into the path of a car. No! Mean woman - mean jealous woman!!

I wouldn't be able to get a wrist through any one of the trouser legs on stage, notwithstanding (may I be struck dumb with ingratitude) it was a delightful show and a wonderful night out.

I had a sobering thought on the way home - did I really miss London that much or the social life afforded me there by having this sort of night on tap - as I had once had? and if that was the case - perhaps the social life, under the right circumstances can be interchanged.

After a ferocious struggle in the bathroom with my Spanx and the most inconsequential of ablutions, I fat-footed it to bed with all the finesse of a wrestler. Somewhere between a sigh and a turn, I had a sparky little thought that I might be onto something with this socialising malarkey. Maybe it's not Canada and it wasn't London...maybe it's just always been me? At the risk of spending half the night wondering how to solve a problem like me...I let sleep take me. Afterall, tomorrow is another day.

In which rain is cheaper than counselling and just as effective

Say what you like about washout weather such as the stuff we've been getting here in Southern Ontario where it has rained so much recently, Seattle was on the phone to congratulate us - say what you like - crap weather doesn't half make you a) inventive b) personable towards family members who find themselves in the same 'boat'.

I was talking to my immediate family in whole sentences; hell I was talking full stop.

I had planned on a weekend weaving in and out of Niagara vineyards with my other half and nipper, lost in a hazy soft focus ever-so-slightly wine induced buzz followed perhaps by a leisurely and uninterrupted newspaper foray in the backyard the following morning and the most precious of commodities - having hopefully tired the nipper out the day before: a lie-in.

But instead, Monsieur Climate Change, the finicky so & so was having none of it. How dare the human become so smug and complacent as to think that warm weather is the only side effect of the Green House effect? For faffing about on the Kyoto Agreement, North America will be punished in Old Testament style - ungrateful wastrels!

Meanwhile back at pajama centrale, the family sat down for a big breakfast when it might otherwise have been fastening bicycle clips. This was followed by hours of - I believe the technical term is - conversation as we watch animals dash past the window - 2 by 2 on their way to Noah's Ark, or perhaps that was just the effects of too many Strawberry Daiquiris and cabin fever combined.

One brave soul then ventured out, armed with flesh shaved off the buttock area of a sodden corpse, to Blockbusters. Thus started the DVD-a-thon that lasted into the wee hours of the next day.

The following day took pretty much the same format with a wise swap-out of Daquiris for family puzzles, the after effects of which one is still suffering from 5 days later.

All in all, though we lived in the same clothes for 48 hours, it was a thoroughly civil and bonding affair. So rain all you like Ontario.

Ok, maybe not but you get my drift. Off to Spain next. Let's see what the effects of constant sun will be.

Jacked up at The Kool Haus

The Kool Haus http://www.theguvernment.com/ was true to its name last night as Jack White (White Stripes and The Raconteurs frontman) and Allison Mosshart (Singer for the Kills) brought their supergroup side project, The Dead Weather to Toronto.

This time on drums, White's latest blues-punk-rock outfit, which also features guitarist-keyboardist Dean Fertita from Queens Of The Stone Age and Raconteur's bassist Jack Lawrence collectively rocked out like only a supergroup can.

To call it a performance would be to do it a great injustice. This was an experience - the sort that stays with you for posterity. A packed venue on a flat floor (the only criticism - slope the floors please!) usually spells an early departure for a 5 footer like me as after a while I just can't see the stage - but that didn't matter last night. I squeezed every last drop of elixir out of this vessel; glimpses of Mosshart or White felt like what I imagine seeing a panther in the wild would.

Mosshart's sultry disenfranchisement put me in mind of Jeanne Moreau - obliviously self involved against an eery backdrop of tangled tree limps and voodoo imagery, a sense of hopelessness prevailed; doomed to fall under her spell there was no point in trying to fight the inevitable; Her dark and guttural voice permeating to the bone.

Lest you should forget to whom she sold her soul, Jack White steps out from behind the drums seamlessly moving from drums to guitar and insanely talented on both. To me there is nothing more attractive. I don't know what he is like as a person, but I like to imagine he's moody and socially awkward, insecure for sure - where else do you find the substance for art if not gouged out of your personal flaws? But apparently not. Apparently the man is nice. And perfect. It's heartbreaking.

And then as if in mid sentence, it stopped. No-one wanted it to but that is the nature of desire. As I made my way out into the street debating whether to walk or take a cab to the train station, the heavens opened and more dead weather arrived.