Dear Friends,
Someone asked me last week what I thought was the biggest single difference I’ve noticed between my old life and my new one. I talked briefly about living in a country so large that there are parts of it four and a half hours ahead of us, which is strange indeed, but probably not the biggest single difference.
Since than, I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no one single thing which is the biggest difference; the change we have experienced is really the combination of a thousand small differences. But it is the small differences which you notice; the things which affect your everyday life.
For example, I was in the supermarket this morning doing our weekly shop. In itself, that is a difference, since we were used to the convenience – you could say luxury – of doing the weekly grocery shopping online. I’m not aware of any Canadian stores who offer online groceries, but even if there are, I can’t see how it could be made economically viable in a community as isolated as this. But that in itself is not such a big difference – it was still a normal thing for us to go to the supermarket for food; we just didn’t have to do it every week.
But there is a difference in the shopping experience. Whole categories of food are either missing or so different as to still cause disorientation even after all this time. Imagine the ‘biscuit and cake’ aisle in a British supermarket. Now take all the cake out, and replace most of the biscuits with cookies. You see my problem; even now, I still cannot understand why there is so much tomato juice, and why almost all of it appears to be flavoured with clam.
So, despite the fact that I have been doing this trip every week since we arrived, I can still be disoriented enough to walk off with someone else’s trolley, as I somehow managed to do this morning, if I can’t find what I want where I expect it to be.
And that ‘trolley’? It’s probably a ‘buggy’ or a ‘cart’ – I haven’t yet sorted that one out.
I still haven’t got used to the idea that my mail (and my daily newspaper) is delivered into a box on the front wall of the house. Mailboxes at the end of the driveway are not uncommon, either, but I’ve yet to encounter (although I’m told they exist) a British-style mail slot, so that the mail is delivered both dry and inside the house.
And there are no Sunday papers – at least not out here; I’m sure there are in the big cities. This means that Sunday can be freed up for all manner of other interesting things – like doing the grocery shopping.
There is a definite difference in the shape of the working day, as well, although since I am not in full time work, I find it hard to pin this down. There certainly is no ‘rush hour’ as most of you would understand it; I hear locals complaining about traffic in the morning, but it just causes me to laugh – at worst, you might have to wait for two cycles of the traffic lights on Highway 97 in the morning. The working day seems to start early, and finish early – I know for a fact that the school day does, since I have to collect the boys at 2.31 each day, which used to be just after lunch for me, and often still is if I have been busy, although I see people going to lunch at 11.30 in the morning, so I’m clearly out of step with the Canadian day.
No, I don’t know why it’s 2.31 and not 2.30, although there’s no good reason why the school day has to end on a round number.
The garbage is collected on a ‘moveable feast’ system, which is actually rather efficient – the collection day moves forward by one day every time there’s a public holiday (which there is every month save February, which is presumably already short enough). This means that you have to keep an eye on the calendar – I think we’re about to move to Wednesdays, but I should check that – but is strikes me as perfectly sensible once you get used to it. Certainly, in England having the collection every Thursday was no guarantee that I’d remember about it, so keeping it moving keeps me thinking about it, which is no bad thing.
Despite all these minor domestic differences, there is one big thing which is preoccupying us right now. Winter has arrived, and while I know I will have more to say on this subject, I can observe the differences as I can see them now.
I haven’t seen the grass on the lawn since the last week of October. The snow came quite suddenly, and when I asked around, the popular opinion seemed to be that it could well be here until April. This has come as something of a shock to us all – in the last three years, I think we may have had an average of one day’s snow per year. Certainly the cats aren’t at all pleased with it, and keep giving us accusing looks. Little do they know that this is just the start…
Apparently, we have had snow earlier this year than for some years, which at least meant that we weren’t the only ones scrambling to have winter tyres fitted after the first snowfall.
But apparently, it isn’t cold yet. It has been down to about ten degrees below, but that’s not cold, so I’m told. I think, in the end, the cold may be the biggest difference. We’ll see.
I’ll let you know how winter progresses, as long as I am not frozen to my keyboard.
Richard
November 2006