h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I defo was getting better. But I can't say that for today.

Not sure why.

But some of it is good. I can't get enough music. And the world seems a wonderful place.

It really did all start when I got those Olympic tickets...

Just out of curiosity . . .


Whatcha listnen to?




Remember I mentioned a while back how hot and dry the summers usually are here? Well, June and July have seen very nearly every day a rainy one, and most of them have been cold. Garden is a jungle mix of weeds and crops, all growing like mad.

On top of that I'm having a piece of the house replaced (two years of official net income). At this point, the rotten part is gone and I'm waiting for a gas line and meter to be relocated before the reconstruction can begin. For now, I have to crawl under a tarp to get to my temporary back door. Gardening just doesn't seem a huge priority. Record mosquito populations in the city offer little encouragement, either.

I did manage to get a little painting done today, and I spent a brief time at the local brewery, putting bottles on the line and snapping shots for possible 'Village' paintings.

But I just feel like the time -- my time -- is shooting past.

It didn't help to see the announcement from Mr. Layton (Leader of the Opposition) yesterday: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/07/26/pol-layton-cancer.html He's only about ten years older than me. Compare the picture accompanying that article with this from just last month: http://www.cbc.ca/photos/galleries/884/884_13094_web_4column.jpg




I better get working on things: one never knows what the next day holds . . . or how many are left.

Hey thanks for replying.

Things in myself really are pretty out of control...hence all that nonsense I posted about MI5 and 6 I suppose.

I really shouldn't have listened to the Cure's, 'It's Friday I'm in love earlier'


But I can't get enough of all sorts of classical music I love.

Everything is completely chaotic. And I know without the knowledge I have now to do with medication, I'd be in hospital.

It's nothing like that first episode when I thought I was on a spaceship...that was before I was diagnosed and medicated.


I'll maybe post more here in a rambly way if that's okay? It's such a relief.

It seems ridiculous this was all triggered by those tickets.

I think it's also because the move of hootoo is such a reminder of that move I had as a kid from the countryside.

That really was the biggest tragedy of my life.

'a reminder of that move I had as a kid from the countryside. '



I can just imagine!


When I was four, we moved from Ottawa (which I little remember) to Sudbury, which, despite it's reputation as an ugly mining town was actually a beautiful patchwork of lakes, forests and small urban bits pretending to be a city. I spent the next few years learning to swim and canoe in the lakes, spending the summers wandering about in the woods, walking through the woods to school, and playing hockey and British Bulldog on the outdoor rink all winter.

When I was about eight or nine we moved to Windsor, which at the time was depressingly warm year round and quite urban, although I still managed to find woods to wander in. After three years (and before the economy of the town followed nearby Detroit into the toilet) we moved to Greater Edmonton, and quite soon after arriving moved again to what we call an 'acreage', a plot of land of a few acres about a mile outside of an urban area. Ours was three acres of aspen forest, very much like what this area was before Europeans arrived. Next to our property was a dairy farm, hundreds of acres of pasture and forest on which I wandered freely.

When I was twenty-one and almost finished University, the family business came along and I spent the next 21 years working in the middle of about 140 acres of forest and golf course just down the road from the dairy farm.

And then . . .

We sold the business, leaving us all very comfortable financially, but . . .

Everything I remember -- the dairy farm, the forests, the golf course (mostly) is now ugly monstrous houses for rich people.

I don't go out there anymore.


Fortunately, here in the middle of the city, I live in a forest next to a huge forest. A few days ago I took a bunch of pictures of what the absolute centre of this city looks like, meaning to post them. If I get a chance later tonight I'll put them up and post a link. It's truly unbelievable.

I absolutely loved the place we lived in up until the age of 7. It was right on the edge of much farmland. Kent is called the 'Garden of England'. Hops and apples were the main crop in our vicinity. I was hardly at home. I was out with the gangs. We got up to all sorts of fun.

Then we moved to a hell hole...apparently going up in the world.

I never properly made friends again. They utterly destroyed my culture.

And i wasn't allowed to talk about it.

It was a kind of rape.

That was sort of like how it was for me after we left Sudbury. In High school I had one or two good friends but I also had the woods. I'm still in touch with a few people from university days, but now it's mostly the slowly changing 'Village'.

I expect the transition from Kent (the first night I spent in.the UK was in Kent -- sheep bleeting and teachers snoring) to London (it was London?),was more disruptive than any of my sometimes transcontinental moves.

I finally got those pictures uploaded. So, these are snaps from the High Level Bridge Streetcar which runs from a few blocks from home in Old Strathcona (which was once its own city) across the top deck of the second oldest bridge over the North Saskatchewan river, past the site of Fort Edmonton to downtown. These are pictures of the middle of the city. If it were London, it would be sort of like going from Lambeth to Westminster.

http://public.fotki.com/anhaga/from-the-high-level/from-the-high-level/

I can never get over how green it is.

Thanks.

And I love the ending of the last two that is all overgrown on the tracks.

I uploaded a few pictures from my outing today. Nothing special: http://public.fotki.com/anhaga/from-the-high-level/from-the-high-level/jasper-terminus.html and the few after that one.

Sorry about the angle of the first one and the backlighting of the others.

These people who operate, maintain and restore the streetcars are all volunteers. The car we rode today took seventeen years to put back together. The City stopped running the cars in the Fifties. These guys started running them again in the nineties, ransacking farms for old car bodies that had been used as chicken shacks, etc. and then restoring them in meticulous detail. They run from May to October and are *always* packed. Four dollars for an open ended round trip between the two downtowns (the official system, the LRT, is about three bucks a 90 minute ticket). These volunteers provide a very useful service and get to run the biggest model railroad around.

I love that first funny angled one.

And it's kind of strange for me here from myperspective seeing the others. Almost like a science fiction film

I like nothing special.

It's interesting that you suggest science fiction. If you look at this one http://public.fotki.com/anhaga/from-the-high-level/from-the-high-level/p1090217.html you see what is actually a fairly modern-modern curvy concrete bridge (the LRT) with a bright blue `pedestrian/cyclist bridge suspended beneath it and the edge of the hundred year old riveted iron girder bridge which carries hundred year old street cars across it. It's a pretty huge range of transportation and bridge technology in that one little picture. And just below the bridges is the location of the old ferry crossing and the ford which was used for thousands of years. A really huge span of human activity is continuing in this little bit of river crossing.


Sorry, I'm rambling.