Naming Rights

I have decided to revert back to my true surname and will be taking appropriate steps to amend my legal records so that “Murnain” appears on my records instead of the adjusted, Americanized “Murren” that was handed down once an ancestor of mine landed in Boston and changed the name.

I have written about this in here under a different post that had to do with a cheese bill that put me straight on all of this.

My boat company will henceforth be Murnain’s Dories.

This web spot is hereby named, “Tadhg Murnain’s Blind Channel” as that’s what it is.

Pipe Fish Dreams

I saw a fish I’ll call a pipefish yesterday from Medium Boat. It was massive and had that fluted mouth and a long, two-meter scaly body with little whirling dorsal fins and a long, pointy, forked tail. It came right up to the surface in an area I know to be 50 fathoms deep, at least, and swam around the boat a dozen times or more.

It was whistling a tune I did not recognize.

I asked, “What do you want, anything?”

The pipefish looked up at me through its left eye, stopped whistling and dove straight down into the deep.

Last night the same fish came to me in my dreams and said, “I will return with some news.”

Names For Money and Two Rounds of Cheese

I was blasted awake early today by an oddity at this time of the year, namely a thunderstorm that struck with a vengence. Warmer air hitting the cold outside was at the root of it, I am sure. Or, it was unleashed by my long-dead relatives.

It produced intensely bright flashes of lightning that lit up the interior of the house in a disturbing manner. The experience agitated the dogs and myself. I was not prepared to wake up at 5 a.m. after having turned in at 1 a.m. The whole thing had a rather creepy effect that made me think the banshees might be just outside the door.

When the storm struck, I’d been dreaming about people I’d never met, yet they were very real to me. The dreams were chaotic and senseless. There were some old places I recognized, I think. There were people playing music in the front of a large living room that extended back up a set of terraces that had tables on them, as though the living room were a tiered combination of a theatre and a pub. People were seated eating food that was being prepared by a woman at a bar. I distinctly saw stuffed red and green peppers being served.

Strangers were speaking with me as if I knew them, or they were family. It was a casual setting and the music was good. But, there were unsettling elements. I could not find my wallet and, therefore, I was unable to order a plate of the stuffed peppers. Then, I received a telephone call, but there was no phone. I stepped outside and there was a massively long, curving bridge across a lovely bay that had a very green distant shore backed by mountains. I needed to drive across this bridge, but the car I entered had almost no petrol and I had no wallet, so back inside I went and then, “kaboom!”

The storm woke me up. The torrent of rain and the misty air were illuminated by the brilliant flashes of the lightning and the hairs on the back of my neck got this prickly sensation as I became suddenly very scared of who might be lurking out there. I could feel a presence.

I now suspect, as I write this down while it is still fresh in my mind, that some deep reading about my family’s past in which I am presently engaged has set off these dreams and feelings.

I came into posession a few years back of quite a bit of books and papers that had belonged to my Father and Mother and, before they had them, their parents and their parents’ parents. Within this trove of material exists quite a bit of family records of what I consider to be of an extrodinary nature. These “records,” for lack of a better name, are, in many cases, comprised of strikingly mundane items. For instance, I have read things like running account bills for goods purchased in small shops where the family had ongoing credit. These bills and such are, in a few cases, 150 years old!

It’s is quite humbling to thumb through and read things that pertain to your forebearers’ simple daily lives. Entries like “Cheese, two small wheels,” which, of course, was not written in English. The paper has written upon it “Irish,” which is generally quite hard to read, anyway.

However, I could clearly pick out the handwritten line about cheese on this one document that states, “Cais, dha’ beag cuars.” Which, literally is, I think, “Cheese, two small (little) rounds (wheels).”

This bill was written up by the cheese provider and presented to “Murnain, Killorglin.” Simple as that. Except, not so simple for me, as the bill dates from July, 1875!

All of the sudden, years upon years of my Father’s stories sprung to life. Not to mention the fact that it appears that they were even true! This direct line of my Father’s family had, it’s been told countless times in one manner or another, very nearly been wiped out by the An Drochshaol – the Great Hunger that was approximately 1845 to 1850. Some refer to this as the “potatoe famine,” which is a very simplistic and incorrect description for what actually took place.

What really happened was a genocide of convienence that was conducted under the guise of crop disease against the Catholic Irish speaking population of what was then part of the British Empire.

For many years, my Father, born just prior to the onset of the war in 1932, talked about his father, born in 1901, whose own father was born Padraig Murnain in Kerry in 1874. It was he who changed his and his family’s name to “Murren” due to the fact that his older brother had been admitted to the United States in Boston in 1886. Sometime after that, the brother began going by the name “John Murren” and was making some money in the shipping industry up and down the Atlantic seaboard.

Apparently, the Irish “Murnain” was some sort of a giveaway as to my great grand uncle’s deprived Irish origins (which he was doubtlessly eager to ditch) and, as the family story goes, he changed over to an “American name.” The fact that “John Murren” was making money and sending some of it back across to home was all the still Irish-rooted Murnain’s of the time apparently needed to have them scrap several centuries of their family identity in exchange for the idea that liquid cash beat poverty-striken heritage any day of the week.

There went the name for money.

I never paid much heed to these discussions growing up. They meant nothing to me as I went about my way in Newfoundland. But, Father died four years ago and my Mother is gravely ill and not in posession of her faculties any longer and I feel cut off from my roots, such as they were, because I do not have these stories and the company of family around anymore. My sister is back near Mother and my brother Sean lives in the Liffey River valley outside Dublin.

I gathered up as much as I could of the family’s items that were not wanted by Sean or Emily, meaning virtually all of the massive library, and carton upon carton of papers that had been safeguarded by my parents over all those years, both in Ireland and in Newfoundland. I had no need for the furniture and such and Sean decided to make a clean break of it when he went to Ireland to work for a big technical firm.

Lately, as the quietness has set in here on Blind Channel, I have been digging through all this stuff. I think my interest has clearly been lit by the fact I have been webbing about and this has opened me up to the world beyond my workshop each day.

As it went on my Father’s side of the family, I was told early on that the spelling of my surname was a complete crock. As I have now confirmed, Murren indeed was Murnain.

I have now also confirmed, by reading these cheese bills and whatnot, that “Murren” was hatched for purely mercenary purposes on Da by his father, who in turn suffered what I think is a terrible indignity at the hands of his father, the brother of the newly minted “Jack Murren” of Boston.

It’s no wonder that my inherent dislike of conspicuous wealth and people who pursure cash as a life “goal” has come to me. My Grandfather had to change the spelling of his last name to “Murren” from “Murnain” because one family member got lucky in Boston and thought he’d done so by hiding who he really was and from whence he hailed.

I understand the discrimination my people have faced going back centuries, because it’s all I ever heard about as a boy. Still, Uncle Jack sold himself short, I think. I can’t condemn him, they were hard times, I am sure.

Still, it’s good to know who I really am and I may now go forward with certainty to meet my extended kin, as the Murnain clan also goes by the names “Murnane” and “O’Murnain” over in a part of Ireland (southwest) that was anciently known as the “Territory of Thomand.” This is part of Cork, all of Kerry and most of Limerick, I believe, even up into Mayo.

That storm scared the shite out of me. Many spirits are hereabout today. I’ll offer them a few beers later.

The Biggest Fish In The Whole World

Oh, dear me, I have had too much fun sitting at the computer with French Ferguson today. He’s never been webbing and the entire thing has captivated him and set off an endless string of requests.

I suspect I’ll either get over this electronic sloth that has kept me out of the shop, or I’ll soon be destitute. But, oh, the irresistibility of it all.

French has a difficult time speaking in a way that anyone who does not know him could ever understand. However, I am a trained Frenchologist. We sat side-by-side at the desk and I did not care about his typical odor. I am used to it, I suppose. Instead, I got us beers and I set to showing him this window on the universe.

His fascination with the instant capability of Google to deliver material off of virtually any request he could make was the stuff of a little kid seeing a very good illusionist at work. Rapture, plain and simple.

What a joy to see this moss covered grub of a fine human sitting here with the wonderment of a child, cold beer in his right hand, gesturing with his left, the light of the Angels in his “eyees,” his free hand pushing his unkempt hair back out of his face just before he’d take a healthy pull on his brew.

He would say to me things like, “Ehhhh, Taggs, kin uwe check to see wad da tempersure izz in Chesterfeeeld? (Chesterfield is a place just below the Arctic Circle in Nunavut, Eastern Canada, the Native regions where so many British expeditions insanely searched for the Northwest Passage and perished centuries ago.) My brodder is widd da fish up dere, still, I tink.” (French hails from the east and his brother is a cold water fisheries policeman.)

My God, I got the temperature in Chesterfield and Baffin Bay in 15 seconds and Frenchie was stunned!

“Look, Frenchie, it’s all the way up to minus 16 (celsius, which is minus 3.2 degrees F.),” I said.

“So, izz is preddy dammned cold, eh?” he asked, just shaking his head in disbelief at what he was watching. “Ehh, Taggs, izz dis here for reeel? Dis ting here, how can dis be, widdout no radio for to tell us wadd da tempersure is over dere? Man, cold dere, ehh?”

“Yes, Frenchie, this is real. That’s how cold it is in Chesterfield right now. Pretty damned cold.”

Oh, the bloody wonderment of it all. What a joy, his expression!

My favourite request was this – “Eh, Taggs, wadd is da biggest fish in da whole world?”

I typed in his question and this is what we got:

___________

MSNBC
updated 2:01 p.m. MT, Fri., July. 1, 2005
Thai fishermen netted a catfish as big as a grizzly bear, setting a world record for the largest freshwater fish ever found, according to researchers who studied the 646-pound Mekong giant catfish as part of a project to protect large freshwater fish.

“It’s amazing to think that giants like this still swim in some of the world’s rivers,” project leader Zeb Hogan said in a statement. “We’ve now confirmed now that this catfish is the current record holder, an astonishing find.”

Others have made claims of finding larger sturgeon, but the International Game Fishing Association says the largest sturgeon on record is 468 pounds. That fish has also held the record for largest freshwater fish caught.
________

Pictures accompanied the item. Frenchie leaned forward in amazement. “Ha! As big as de grizzley bear! Ha! Lookie dere at dat. Man, dat’s a big ugly one dere, ehh?”

He laughed so hard, pointing at the huge fish on the screen, I nearly fell out of my seat. Bonefish and Elliefish, the “daags,” as Frenchie calls them, got very excited.

“Oh, damn,” he said, “I sure hope dey eat ‘im so he don’t be goin’ to no waste,” Frenchie said. “But, oh man, bigger den da grizzley.”

He laughed again, slapped his knee, the “daags” spun around and wagged their tails like windmills. We drank our beers and got two more.

We were having a party!

“Okay, den, dats a fresh wadder fish. Waz da biggest fish in da whole sea?” Frenchie asked.

“Well, let’s have a look,” I said.

I typed in “the biggest fish in the sea” and hit the button.

The answer: the whale shark, followed by the basking shark. The largest bony fish is the ocean sunfish.

But, what caught Frenchie’s eye was a description down the Google page of a boy who caught the “biggest fish in the sea,” but then “the fish ate the boy, his family and the boy’s whole town,” according to the little bit of type they have on these Google things that pop up.

“Taggs! Did ya see dat? I wand to see dat!”

I clicked on the item and a web spot popped up.

It turned out to be a description of a child’s book called “The Biggest Fish In The Sea” by an author named Dahlov Ipcar. One could buy the book off this web spot, if one were so inclined.

“Ohhh, Taggs, I got ta reeed dat one, ehh?”

As I said, joy…

French Goes Webbing

French Ferguson has arrived by small boat during a magnificent break in the weather today. I am showing him how to web about for the first time in his life.

I must say, I feel much less the fool and much more the new expert on Internet matters.

It’s all rather exciting.

However, as I watched French earlier, as he looked with awe at all the material we webbed up, I came to realize – he won’t be leaving anytime soon.

Well enough. I have room.

Water Neighbours For?

It is forecast to rain in the greater Blind Channel area all week. Of course, I say “the greater Blind Channel area” with my lower lip secured between my upper and lower teeth (to prevent me from uncontrolably chortling) because, while there is a massive “area” surrounding Blind Channel, the “greater” part might seem to indicate there is something here in the fashion of human settlement.

There are numerous indications by way of hidden ruins and shell beaches left behind by a thousand years of clam eaters that there were once far more Native people dotting this expanse then there are residents of today. For a variety of reasons I’ll write about over time, these crafty, industrious and hearty people were oblierated by the arrival of Europeans, or they have been greatly absorbed into a broader society at what I would say has been a tremendous disadvantange to their magnificent cultures.

I musn’t digress, as I am on limited writing time today. Hereabouts, there are no roads, no stores, in fact, not much of anything except a few fishing lodges located here and there and which are served by float plane and boats. Of course, we have loads of woods, mountains, water and more water.

On top of that water already here, we have the winter rains down low and the heavy snows up high that are now resident and likely to remain so until May. The associated dampness is off-putting to many, as is the darkness that comes with the sun dropping into the sea around 4 p.m. each day.

The weather here is very localized, in that it may be pouring a torrent a few kilometres away and right here, you might be able to see blue sky up above through a tunnel in the swirling clouds, if only for a few minutes. This seemingly would make it hard to guess the daily conditions before they actually happen, but that’s not true any longer. Due to my new webbing capability, I have found the exact Environment Canada web spot that seems to set me up with what the weather pattern will be during the day. For anyone interested, it is the forecast for Sandspit, B.C.

http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/city/pages/bc-88_metric_e.html

I suspect that this location offers up the most reliable expecatations because the weather happens there after it arrives largely unimpeded from the west/northwest and it departs from there largely unimpeded until it cracks or slops, I ought to say, into my area.

The reason I bring this up is that I often am asked, when I am off kicking about in some other place, what it is like up here?

It’s wild, beautiful and, for quite a few months, wet, as I have stated. It is the complete opposite of city dwelling, so much so, that the extreme might be described as being excessive. Wet, wild, lonely, yes, disturbingly lonely and, today, wet, shockingly wet.

However, I view this wetness as a gift from the heavens and I, for one, would never set about complaining, lest our spigott get shut off and we wind up in a situation similar to what I am reading about taking place in certain parts of the U.S.A. at the moment – that being drought of large enough proportion that certain well endowed capitalists are laying plans to make millions by constructing drinking water pipelines along the same thinking as those who have constructed oil and gas pipelines in the past.

Can you imagine the oil industrialist T. Boone Pickens is spending a fortune to pipe water into Texan cities from the north of the state as a way to sustain the populations there? He expects, I read on the Internet, to make large sums off of this. I also read where the City of Atlanta is about to have all of its water shut off entirely due to the fact their huge local lake is empty. I thought it rained excessively in the southeastern United States?

Very scary, when you think about it. Millions of people plucked down in their lives with scarcely any opportunity to simply pull up stakes and go off wandering in search of water the way nomadic tribes of pre-colonization humans did those many eons past. These people are trapped, are they not, with their tract homes and all the rest, including their famously disgraced dog-hanging quarterback and a hockey team that plays as if it belongs to a minor association? Perhaps a harsh God is punishing them for the dog thing, although I read that took place in another state? Regardless, as I sit here next to my two beloved doggies, I can’t help but throw in my two-cents about that subhuman conduct.

Back to the moment. I have been having tea and an egg sandwich while taking a few minutes away from the boat shop and I am admiring the view as the rains come and go and the clouds swirl and every so often, a “sucker hole” opens up and affords a prolonged vista of some distance. Sucker holes are so termed because some ill- informed boaters (and even aircraft pilots, if you can believe it) sometimes trick themselves into thinking these areas of temporary clearing represent some type of break in the weather and, unfortunately, some have set off to try to get someplace, only to have the heavens resume their activity and kill them, or cause them to be rescued. We have many such instances take place up here every year.

Just now, off to my east, I glimpse the towering mountains that catch all this weather. Said weather runs in here off the North Pacific. The runoff from these lusty storms comes cascading down the slopes as rain unable to be absorbed in the saturated ground, or as snowmelt in the warmer months. There are amazing waterfalls at the end of very long, winding fiords that extend in from the sea to the foot of the mountain canyons and cliffs that run up thousands of feet into the snowfields, which are visible from outer space. These areas are simply spectacular, if you are able to come during a dry time when you can see them. The rest of the time, they are mist shrouded, unless the odd sucker hole forms.

These waterfalls and other watercourses feed hydro plants up and down the Coast Range. Thus, even some extremely remote areas, like mine, are able, through much toil and cost, to have electricity. That’s thanks to the bounty of falling water and the industry of those who think even the most out of the way spot deserves some current.

What an effort it has been to distribute the electricity that is afforded by God’s storms! Many brave souls are to be thanked for this difficult and magnificent work.

I have heard many stories about the various hydro and power commission workers over the years. Many years ago, in fact, Boris Karloff, an aspiring actor who went on to become famous for his role as the monster Frankenstien, was actually a trencher for B.C. Hydro. I read his stint with the outfit was short, but he famously went on to make a living off of being repeatedly electrocuted in numerous sequels, didn’t he?

It has also been verbally circulated that some hydro workers operating in excessively remote places along the endless coast and proximate mountain interior have spotted the elusive Sasquatch on numerous occasions. B.C. has a magnificant spot that is officially named Sasquatch Park, although I do not know if it is named in honour of the furtive, hairly giant. I am inclined to believe, that if this creature does exist, it must live up here, because so few others do that staying out of sight would not be much of a hard day’s work.

Well, back to my central idea.

I am afraid this area will eventually become overrun by thrist-crazed water refugees from places that are going to dry up and blow away in the wind. Like Atlanta, Dallas and the entire southwestern United States. I suppose we’ll be expected to share this water with these displaced environmental victims, like the good northern neighbours we are reputed to be.

But, then there is also the problem of the rising oceans from the thawing of Greenland Ice Cap and Antarctica flooding out the lower lying areas of the east and west coasts, forcing all of those people who survive that to get on the move, too.

Eventually, some of them will come up by whatever watercraft they have been able to beg, borrow, build, buy or steal and then, we’ll be having housing developments along the channel. God, what an awful thought. I do not know how far my hospitality can be stretched.

Which reminds me about this time I was on a ship headed into the harbour at Nuuk, Greenland, and we were lining the rail up near the starboard bow and one of the crew says to those of us who hadn’t been to Greenland previously, “You’ll love it here, boys. There is a woman behind every tree!”

Well, of course, once we were at the pier and we disembarked and walked up into the “town” that was largely comprised of what appeared to be many, many prefabricated buildings, one of the boys stopped and said out loud, “Look! There isn’t a single feckin’ tree to be seen!”

That’s when we got the joke.

Well, enough of this for today. Lunch is over. Back to finishing this boat right here before the drought and flood refugees arrive. It’s two weeks past due and the customer is getting edgy.

Half What?

I was having a beer. The beer was presented to me in a pint glass that was filled to near overflowing by the barmaid.

I drank a few gulps quickly, as I was out to slake a budding thirst. This drained about half a pint of beer into me in a relative few seconds. I then set the glass on the bar.

It was not too busy in the pub, as it was mid afternoon and I was hanging about until later when I was due to catch a seaplane to head back home.

So, there I was and this complete stranger to my left said out of nowhere, with nothing from me to prompt this in any way, “would you consider,” he pointed at my drink, “that glass to be half-empty, or half-full?”

I sort of looked at him with a bit of disbelief, I suppose.

“Well, it’s half empty. I just drank half of it a few moments ago.”

I knew where he was headed with this, but I was not much in the mood for philosophical banter. In fact, I was in a bleak mood for a number of reasons.

“So,” he began to say, “having a bad day….”

I cut him off.

“Pardon me,” I said. “This whole repetitive argument about glasses with liquid at the halfway mark and the way they are viewed by people as either half full or empty as an indicator of one’s demeanor or attitude is a crock. It is an argument for people with leaky brains.”

“How’s that?” the stranger asked.

I sighed. “It’s obvious isn’t it?”

“Uh, no,” he said.

“Well,” I said. “I’ll lay it out for you.”

I turned toward the barmaid, who was now leaning in to hear what I had to say.

“Excuse me,” I said to her. “Would you mind telling me your name?”

“Alana,” she said.

“Okay, fine then,” I continued.

“You see, it goes like this. Alana here poured me a full pint, right up to the very top of the glass and then she handed it to me. It was a full beer, as full as this pint glass could be without spillage. I proceeded to drink half of it in a few gulps, as I was rightly parched. Since the beer was full prior to my drinking it, it only stands to reason that as it sits now, it is, in fact, half empty due to the reality that the other half of it is presently in my stomach.

“Now, on the other hand, if Alana had only filled the pint halfway and set it on the bar here, it would be half full. Had she done that, I would have been on about asking her why she’d only provided me with half a beer, as opposed to the whole thing. So, as you can see, it has nothing to do with attitude and everything to do with reality.”

“I never looked at it that way,” the guy said as he turned back to his own beer and began looking at the glass.

Alana said, “I have always wanted to know the answer to that one. Thanks. Next beer’s on the house.”

A Tim Horton’s Too Far

It’s a very long way down to Vancouver from my neck of the water, but I went and just returned.

Van has quite grown up over the past many years, so much so that I have little memory of the place as it was 20 years ago. For example, sections of the city that were once rundown trouble spots are now very high-end tourist destinations.

This would be places like Gas Town, where visitors flock to stand under the steam clock when it goes off, actually vying to get close enough so that the foul runoff from the steam eruption drips on their heads. Many photographs are taken.

I wasn’t in town to site-see, though. It was a trip based on the needs of the heart.

Having somewhat recently witnessed the woman with whom I’d shared my life and place on Blind Channel up and leave on a boat to “go to town” to seek work again in her given profession of nursing, the quiet finally got to me and I cracked. I scrounged up the airfare and took a seaplane all the way down to visit her and to check out if there were any way I could possibly bring myself to forsake the northern winding channels and the dense, roadless woods for a place where I would have to have a land vehicle to move around on roads of rock – not the waterways I drive a boat over now.

Seeing Maddie Higgs, or ‘Mad’, was a very good thing for the both of us. After the first day, though, it was time to go outside and around to look at what was what.

We dropped down to the fabulous market on Granville Island, a little speck of land under a highway bridge that is located on False Creek, a part of the greater Vancouver Harbour area that caters to pleasure boats and a heavy tourist trade.

We bought some groceries that we used to make a wonderful meal in the small flat that Mad has let over on the way toward the University of British Columbia. When I say the flat is small, I mean it’s not much larger than the interior of Big Boat, my 27-foot all around work and transport vessel. One tiny sitting room, a small dining area that is set off the cramped little kitchen. One bedroom, a washroom and a big closet. There is a small back porch overlooking a garden that is shared by all three tennants in the building, which is an old sub-divided Victorian in a good area of town.

But, back to our out and abouting. We went to a few pubs and listened to some live Irish music and that was well worth the trip. I brought my mandolin along on the journey and I was able to sit in for a few tunes with one fine group that was kind enough to ask me to join them.

We went into the main area of the city, not far from where I landed on the seaplane. I avoided the steam clock queue. I did not like Gas Town and some of the other things that have sprung up because they all have some form of commercialization associated, meaning the whole area is aimed at getting people to leave their money behind and I do not have heaps of money to leave anywhere.

A couple of days passed and there was now pressure in the air.

What was I thinking? I could hear her think to herself. Could Mad and I reach an accommodation? I kept looking around at various things, asking myself how I might be able to change my way of life to join, in this sprawling metropolis, the woman I have grown to care for so deeply.

On the plus side, I did see there was a small boatbuilder’s shop over on Granville Island. It was closed when I peered through the window. So, someone was obviously doing some small boat construction locally. I also noted that there were a couple of ski fields not too far away from downtown. I do enjoy skiing very much, so, another plus.

So it was I found myself trying very hard to rationalize how a move, at least for the winter, could be accepted by myself from an emotional and mental point of view.

Then, we went to Tim Horton’s.

For those of you not familiar with Tim Horton’s, it is a chain eatery named after a Canadian hockey player of long ago that was initially established as a donut and coffee shop. Over the years, it grew into a Canadian institution – a much grander version of the Dunkin’ Donuts of U.S. repute.

However, a few years back, Tim Horton’s was acquired by an American company, I believe the fast food chain Wendy’s. When that happened, I vowed to never again set foot in a Tim Horton’s, because I go by the saying, “render unto Ceaser that which is Ceaser’s and render unto God that which is God’s.” Except, in my case, I hijacked the saying and my version goes like this: “Render unto Canada that which is Canada’s and render unto the United States that which is the Untied States’ ” and, in that manner, we can keep it unique for citizens of either country who take a trip across the border.

In other words, I did not think Tim Horton’s ought to have gone into the hands of American corporate owners. This is also why I refuse to drink Molson, due to the fact that Molson is owned by the same company that brews that God-awful American Coors watery stuff that has been alleged to be beer.

In fact, I despise global corporate dominance and, frankly, Vancouver, with its McDonalds and all that horridness, has become much like many other places. What ever happened to the quaintness of cultural differences and adventure that was to be found in travel?

That it has extended to beer is a disaster. Thank the Dear Lord that so many small batch breweries have come up to save the taste buds and the culture, particularly that of Western Canada.

Again, render unto Canada that which is Canadian – like beer with some bite and texture. (Although I have enjoyed many fine American small brewery products, like Full Sail, Alaskan Amber, Sam Adams, Anchor Steam and several more, including Blue Boar Irish Ale from Portland, Or.)

Ah, I have wandered off again.

As I said, we went to a Tim Horton’s out in the area not far from where Mad now resides.

(Prayer is now in order: Dear God, why did you send me there? I suppose to give me the strength I needed to see clearly that I can’t live in the city for any longer than a couple of days at a time. In fact, after the Tim Horton’s experience, I could barely breathe. Thanks, I think, for the trial through which you put me. Amen.)

So, we’re walking in her new neighbourhood and Mad says, “let’s go in there for a coffee (meaning Tim Horton’s).” Neither of us will go into a Starbucks – for reasons already explained above.

I looked apprehensively through the window at the uniformed girl behind the counter, who was speaking with a customer who was purchasing a sack of takeaway donuts.

I hestitated as Mad said, “Come on, Taggs.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Oh, come on Taggs,” she said, pulling on my coat sleeve.

“Oh, alright, a coffee, just that,” I relented.

In we went. The air inside was heavy with the scent of donuts and grilled sandwiches. The place was quite full and it was noisy. It felt very stuffy and I began to get the creeps because I don’t see many people most of the time. We ordered the coffees at the takeaway counter and Mad got a scone, I think. Instead of leaving, which is what I quite wanted to do, Mad wanted to be seated so we could “talk.”

“Let’s have a sit while we have this,” she said.

“Let’s go outside and find a bench,” said I.

“Look, there’s a table just over there,” she pointed.

She won, as usual. We sat down.

Not more than a minute after, I looked up when I heard this sort of grunting sound just as a gigantic man and an equally huge woman came down the aisle and turned butts to our faces as they decided to take the little table directly across from us.

I swear to to you, the way this all unravelled was swift and merciless. I lay it out here for you to take pity on me, even though I have no doubt I would not be able, traumatized as I presently am, to take to heart anything anyone might say to me to try to ease my mental anguish, or to attempt to help me erase these debilitating pictures that keep playing across my mind’s eye.

Let us just say: it was bad.

The equally massive woman and the man tried to seat themselves at exactly the same time. Now, I use the word “massive” as a way to avoid the truth. In this case, the truth being that these people were among the most obese I have ever seen and they appeared to be hungry.

They undertook the effort to seat themselves, laterally schooching and wiggling their rear ends into the bench seats by sliding their rumps along the almond coloured faux wood grained plastic bench backs until they could slide no further because the table edge stopped them both at their respective “gros ventres.” (Canada is multilingual, you know.)

They inched their flabby legs in under the table so that they they were ready to be seated, but for the fact their guts were resting above the edge of the table and actually on the table on either side.

Therefore, the last part of the exercise, the actual sitting down part, proved to be impossible, as they were both so fat that neither of them could create enough room for their protruding guts to clear the table edge as they pressed their massive arses against the backs of the bench seats.

This was a hell of a thing to see.

Both had a gap of a third meter between the seats and their rear ends. There they were, stuck half standing, half sitting, shoving the table back and forth at each other in order to clear enough room so that one or the other of them could get their guts off the table, slide their butts down the bench backs and onto the seats themselves.

“Stop pushing the table, Hal,” the woman hissed at the man.

“You’re pushing at me!” he barked at her.

Meanwhile, they were both using their ramrod TransCanada rears to shove against the bench backs on either side in a vain attempt to locate clearance from those directions. Behind those bench backs were people seated, backs to them, eating.

So, in effect, what was underway was really a four-way crushing exercise involving fat Hal, the fat woman and the two poor souls, both men, who were at the adjacent tables, and who were being rattled as they tried to eat their tomato bisque, or whatever it was they were spilling all over themselves during this fracas.

These two innocents kept turning to look over their shoulders at what was underway behind them.

I whispered to Mad, “Are you believing this?”

She looked at me with that look of hers that said, “Don’t, Taggs, don’t say anything rude.”

Just then, the fat woman’s cell phone went loudly off.

Unbelieveably, whilst suspended between standing and sitting, she began to furiously fish in this sack of a purse-bag thing she had drapped over her right shoulder and under her gross arm in an effort to answer the blasted device.

Mind you, she was as stuck as a beaver in a trap. Now wrestling with her bag, phone going off with a musical ringtone that I think was a rendition of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’, she gave a last mighty, desperate push backward with a reverse pelvic thrust.

There was a cracking sound. She had succeeded in shoving her bench and that of the man behind her back just enough that her massive behind slipped down the plastic and slammed into the seat. This got her gut off the table to just below its edge.

I think the seat had been attached to the tile floor, but no longer, as the loud cracking report indicated.

This gave Big Hal enough wiggle room to shove the table into the woman, where the edge of it got her just below her voluminous sagging breasts, pinning her fast. Then, he too slammed down into the seat with a thud.

The guy behind the woman was visibly irate and he turned and said, “excuse me!”

Hal said, “Mind your own business! These tables are too small.”

The woman got out the musical phone.

“This is Babs,” she shouted loudly enough that half the Tim Horton’s customers looked up.

Hal looked at the menu. Babs began sqwaking, “We’ve stopped to eat. You fix yourself something and we’ll be home later. No, I don’t know where the dog is!”

Mad and I tried to ignore them.

Then, just as the wait person came up the aisle, Hal leaned to his left and released a loud, angry fart.

“That feels better,” he said to no one in particular. Sweat dripped from his brow after the wrestling match with Babs over the table clearance.

“Oh, my God!,” Mad furtively implored to me.

As the waitress arrived to serve the huge two, I stood up suddenly gasping for air, grabbed Maddie Higgins by the coat sleeve and tugged her out of her seat. She came willingly and with haste in her step.

We hurtled toward the door.

The perky, cheerful counter girl said, “Thanks for coming to Tim Horton’s!”

I turned to her and said – “Tim doesn’t own it anymore.”

And we left.

Skulking Writers In Dingle – For J.

This webbing about was recommended to me by a few people as a way to pass the time because I have some to pass, as the person who lived with me has left, so it’s pretty quiet at present. I did it on a whim and expected nothing from it. In reality, the whole thing is totally foreign to me.

I have had a computer for quite a few years, but it was simply hooked up to me and nobody else and I used it to write and keep business. This hooking up to total strangers is new – intimidating? – and I have been made jest of by a few folks for not knowing the terms and things, but, “really,” I said to them, “what difference does it make as it releates to this inane jargon?”

I actually went into a glossary of Internet terms I found on a Google inquiry and I immediately decided I do not want to use them, as they make no sense for the most part.

For example, I have a “spot” on the Internet that these people unknown to me have made available where I can do some writing and maybe put in some of my previous things if I feel confortable enough over time to do that. It is not a “site,” which word implies that I have embarked on building something intentional, which I am not. I think the word “web” applies, however, due to the fact this reminds me of a huge spider web that stretches all across the world. Therefore, I have a “web spot.” Additionally, this term of “surfing” is totally ridiculous, as there is not even a hint of an aquatic analogy present in this endeavour. But, one does move about this web, so, to me, the sensible term is “webbing about,” which is exactly what I am learning to do.

I have been putting some writing in here and I approached this as I have approached the other writings I have done previously on the unhooked computer and, before that, the typewriter. That is, I have written down some things in the same manner as usual. This means I never expected anyone to actually read any of it. I found this place to write by looking on my computer at a web spot belonging to an American baseball pitcher who was recently in the World Series and I wanted to read his views. (I got linked up to his spot from an article in the New York Times that was displayed in the Google News area.)

However, when I tried to write a question to him, this message popped up telling me I had to log in. The message also said I could get a web spot of my own on this WordPress spot, which apparently is the same zone where the pitcher writes, too. So, I signed up to have a place to write, but with no idea it might be found by anyone. I never wrote to the pitcher. I began doing this instead.

When I write, I am picturing that I am writing to someone I know, or someone I may have seen along the way, but with zero intent to distribute the writing. This allows for complete freedom, because I just do not have any reason to write except to just do it.

It helps clear all of these things out of my head, like the fish conversations. I just babble on about all these things that happen that strike me as normal, but that also make me laugh and that are most likely not normal by others’ viewpoints, I reckon.

Mainly, I want to go back and look at the ridiculous life I have led someday and laugh about it again.

Therefore, I have been making some placements in this web spot here.

Then, strangers began leaving remarks!

This has actually startled me. One is a person known simply as J in New York, who wrote a nice note under the bit about my boats and why I have named them the silly names I have. So, I would reply here to J., particularly due to the fact that he made me think of some strange notions in my head with his premise concerning my possible origins and three writers of note who might have tried to rear me up after snatching me away.

This is what J. wrote after I explained to him I exist:

“Sorry – it’s just all very strange. As if Kurt Vonnegut, Franz Kafka and Ismail Kadare together raised a child to adulthood, dropped him off in Canada and said, “your turn”.

As I sit here in my office in New York City, looking out over Times Square, I am much more interested in what’s happening in Blind Channel.”

Thank you.

I reply here –

J,

It’s predicted to rain around Blind Channel through Tuesday, with some chance that the sun might be spotted Sunday sometime. There were a few whales around this morning.

Your second note was of interest to me. It brought back some old memories.

When I was a little kid, there were three men once spotted skulking around in the general area where I was born, which is near a place called An Daingean, which some people refer to as Dingle. They may have been the guys you mention, these Vonnegut, Kafka and Kadare fellows.

Some say the three of them claimed to be writers who were on a sort of romp around the raw southwest of Ireland, behaving like lost souls and mooching food, drink and lodging at every opportunity. Legend has it they were trying to gather some material.

There was in those days a great deal of suspicion aimed at folks like that given the very insulated nature of the area near Dingle and Tralee Bays, extending all the way back down the track to Killarney. It was said, according to my Mother, that the men came “too far” when they wandered out on the peninsula, so they hastily went back up the road through Camp and were last seen headed down the M22 for Cork aboard a sidecar motorbike. The driver reportedly had large, bushy eyebrows.

However, around age four, my parents spirited me off before any itinerent writers could get me, bacause much of my extended family already were/are itinerent writers posing as fishermen, brewery workers, pirmary school teachers and a priest.(Ha! What a crock that is!) My parents thought there were enough writers around not making any money. It was their intent, they claimed, “to not raise another.” That said, both of my parents dabbled in the written word but were extremely careful whom they let know.

We moved to St. Johns, Newfoundland, and then out into the bush and tundra where the old man did surveys looking for mineral deposits. He was a geologist. Oddly, the area of Newfoundland where we went can clearly be seen on a map to have broken off of Ireland at some point and drifted away.

The east coast of Newfoundland and the west coast of Ireland make a perfect jigsaw puzzle fit. Go look for yourself, it’s quite true.

We could reportedly witness the sunset over the sea from where I was born, although I hardly remember. My father, on the other hand, would remember vividly and he described over the ensuing years to me the sunsets when he took us in the car out the Dingle Peninsula to the cliffs overlooking a forlornly beautiful place called Great Blasket Island.

The island was a place about which my Father would tell stories of painfully green spring grasses and huge schools of porpoises that would gambol about in the local waters. It was clear to me that my Father did not like having to leave the area to work elsewhere.

Once we were ensconsed in Newfie, we could see the sun come up from the cliffs near the Marconi wireless station where the first news that the Titanic was sinking was received from the striken ship itself.

Now that is a windy and barren, yet hauntingly beautiful place, where you can, at certain times of the year, see thousands of puffins nesting in the rocks, or massive icebergs drifting past hundreds of feet below. It was as if the sun was being handed right off across the water from one group of Irish broke people to the other group of Irish broke people on the other side.

Father always commented with a degree of irritation it was “just as though we’re looking at ourselves in a blasted mirror.”

I suppose that meant we just may as well have stayed where we were to start, I am not sure. I am sorry to say I can’t ask him as he passed four years ago. I think he had something more like Florida in mind when we left Ireland, however his brother lived in St. Johns and a job was waiting and Florida is not noted for its vast mineral wealth, is it?

I grew up on that side of Canada before I decided to move west in an attempt to learn to speak English in such a way that could be understood by a non-native of Newfie. That means, I had to learn to speak English from scratch, a pursuit in which I remain engaged to the day.

Since you took the time to read any of this, I thought you might like to know.

I have never been to New York, but thanks for reading.

Sandy Chowder

Emmett Walls’ wife used sandy clams in her chowder.

I went across the sound to have dinner with them and my soup was crunchy and had the effect of grinding my molars if I attempted to chew any of the large bits of potatoes, celery or clams in it.

In order to have totally avoided this unplesant sensation, I would have had to simply swallow whole spoonfuls of chowder brimming with pieces of ingredients large enough to choke me to death.

Therefore, it was a must to do at least some cursory chewing. My skin crawls just recalling it, the bits of sand getting into the teeth, the grating, gnashingness of it all.

When you make chowder with fresh clams, you have to keep the clams alive in a big tin vat of clean seawater overnight so they will open up to do their business while nobody is watching and, when they do, all that sand will come out of them.

If you do not “wash” the live clams in this manner, you’ll be in for a sand-in-mouth experience. This applies to clams you intend to eat raw, or steamed, as well. It’s just that the trapped sand effect becomes much more pronounced in chowder. When eaten raw or steamed, the clams are usually slipped right down one’s throat in a single slurp, often with a dip of drawn butter, or a cocktail sauce, or perhaps a mixture of Marie Sharp’s Habenero Pepper Sauce and 100 proof Russian vodka. In this manner, one does not really chew them as much as greet them with a mild squeeze of tooth and gum before allowing them to pass. Thereafter, the trapped sand moves rapidly to the gut, where it may have an overall cleansing effect over a period of hours.

However, when boiled in a chowder, clams shrink and, if they are sandy, you are going to get that hideous sand crunch and grind, oh dear Lord!

Thank God there was plenty of cold beer at the table so that the sand could be washed down as fast as possible after partially chewing a spoonful of the offending chowder. Even if the swishing of the beer in the mouth has the tendancy to cause an inordinate amount of foaming action that can leak out around the lips giving one the appearance of being a hydrophobic dog.

One of the terrible things about all this is that Emmett’s wife is actually named Sandy.

At one point, she got up to go into the kitchen and Emmett whispered to me, “There’s sand in the chowder, eh?”

I said, “Sandy’s sandy chowder.”

I didn’t find the quip that particularly amusing, but it certainly struck a chord with Emmett. He began to laugh like a jackal and, of course, I followed right along in one of those silly moments where you loose all control for no explainable reason.

Sandy came out from the kitchen.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I lied. “Just thinking about something.”

“Then why are both of you laughing?” she asked.

Emmett said, “We think alike.”

I said, “Thanks for the Sandy, chowder. I mean, the chowder, Sandy.”

She said, “You’re welcome.”

Emmett fell over on the floor in tears.