Five Years a Writer

The other day, I went for a walk and packed for a trip. The walk was real, the trip was fantasy, but both activities left me refreshed and renewed. As I was walking, I made plans to travel to France to volunteer in a chateau, where I would exchange my hard work for room and board -- and the experience of a lifetime living in a castle, eating delicious food and enjoying the appreciation of my host (possibly an ex pat Brit ) who would be in awe of how quickly I could dispatch a mess of weeds or tidy up an old shed or...whatever, it wouldn't matter. I was just enjoying my fantasy of packing.  T-shirts and work shorts. Socks and work boots. Long pants and rain gear, just in case. Linen blouses and capris. Sandals and little jackets, perfect for an evening on the terrace, while sipping wine and enjoying the view after a day out of doors in the French sun and breeze.  After a while, I realized that, probably, a working holi...

Lockdown over the holidays has given me the time for an immersive trip to France, and it’s been glorious. The countryside is beautiful, the chateaux gorgeous. I highly recommend it as a cultured escape from the mundanity of COVID and the Canadian cold.   I stumbled across the opportunity while searching for something to replace the delightful distraction that has been The Great British Bake-off . I was sad when I came to the end of all 10 seasons of that tv series, and I was yearning for something equally gentle and nice: No murder or mayhem, no mind-numbing angst. Just nice people transforming a few ingredients into something delicious.  I found my replacement in Escape to the Chateau: DIY edition . I fell down the metaphorical rabbit hole through its Christmas special and then sprawled headlong into the adventures of an astonishingly large number of ex-pat Brits spending enormous amounts of money on a wide variety of very big French country homes. Well, castles, really. By a...

No matter your world view or belief system, Christmas Day 2020 will be unlike any other December 25th we've experienced. I'm going to try to remember my friend Dee's advice from many years ago when my old relationship was in the final stages of ending.  Dee counselled me, "This Christmas will be different. It won't be the best you've had. And it will pass. Just go with it as it comes."  It was good advice. That Christmas came and went, and I carried on and moved into a new relationship that thrives to this day.  COVID-19 has knocked us all for six and kept us isolated for months now. The new normal is really just normal, at this stage. Whatever makes sense to you on this day, do it. Mark it or don't. Eat, read, watch, connect at a distance. Get dressed or don't. Go out or don't. If ever we've had licence to 'just be', this year's Christmas Day is it.  The day will pass. Boxing Day will dawn and we can get on with counting down t...

For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.  That is the model for how to tell a story in just six words. Ostensibly, Ernest Hemingway invented the form; he, the master of lean writing. The point is that the few words written belie the depth of the story told.  My local newspaper recently asked for 6-word submissions on the topic of the pandemic. Mine was published on Friday, September 18th: Separation unmasks our need for touch. Later that day, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.  In her honour and because no number of words can give her the credit due, I offer this: Woman diminutive. Robes supreme. Justice notorious.   May she rest in peace and in power, and may her memory be a blessing and a revolution.  #RBG #MFGP  Photo credit: Blogtrepreneur / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) 

Val and I have been together for 27 years, and today is our seventh wedding anniversary. Wedding day : Amanda, Randa (friend and marriage commissioner), Val  VOICE RAISED Tension had been building in me all day, though I wasn't aware of it until conversation at the supper table took a turn from which I could not reverse. My voice got louder. My comments more cutting. My delivery more animated. Finally, I crashed the container onto the counter and left the kitchen, saying over my shoulder that I'd be back in an hour.   I went for a bike ride, releasing emotional steam as my legs pumped the peddles and the miles disappeared beneath the wheels. I reached the local baseball diamond and stopped. I turned my attention to the innocent though fierce competition between the two teams and, within not very many minutes, recognized that I had overreacted, that my behaviour was unbecoming an intelligent woman, and that, having realized this, I was able to return home.  I practised ...

If a genie were to grant me three wishes, I would be satisfied with having only one, my first wish: To be safe, to be always safe. If I knew that life would neither bring me harm nor put me in danger’s path, I would happily walk down any street, talk to any stranger, accept any offer. What I fantasize about is the safety characterized by Cat Deerbon’s farmhouse kitchen, warm from the Aga and cozy with Mephisto the cat, sleeping on the sofa; by Jill Crewe’s cottage kitchen with potatoes cooked over the fire and the ponies settled outside in their snug stable; by the unhurried Sunday lunches in a Joanna Trollope novel, where time is made for good food and conversation.*  I read fiction only marginally for the plot; it is the characters I really care about and it is their development that keeps me engaged. Write me a character who is smart and sensible, kind and generous, brave and capable — write me that character, and I am your reader for life.  In my own real life, however, ...

Missing. Lost. Gone. Found is better, of course, but often GONE is the result. When people go missing in the wilderness and stay missing, it’s called a ‘cold vanish’. The stories of some of these people have captivated me in recent days as I read my way through the accounts of men and women, younger and older, who ventured into the North American wilds — sometimes on beaten trails through the bush, sometimes on paved trails within sight of the park’s visitor centre. Written by academic, journalist and outdoorsman Jon Billman, The Cold Vanish weaves stories of loss of human life underpinned by the call of the wild and matched by the fantasy of a mere person being able to survive in it. Billman’s writing moves us through some of North America’s most beautiful, most rugged, most dangerous national parks and forests, and pulls us into the hearts of those who hike and bike it — but not into their minds: When the missing become the lost, the gone, their minds and what was in them as they cl...