Down the Bog

Those outside the UK probably won’t be aware of two guys there known as Ant and Dec. They are primarily a TV act that front up various shows, one notable one being Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeway

This show somehow escaped my attention when I was still living in the UK but I caught a glimpse of it recently and it just reminded me of how much I miss british television. I know that there’s a lot of US shows scheduled but I miss the good old BBC and ITV along with all that’s great about the TV there. It’s difficult to put into words but there’s a homliness about it, a personality that is so lacking here in Canada.

In England I felt like I could sit down for an evening of TV and share the experience with the announcer that would keep me informed as to what was going to be on next. It felt like a cosy arrangement. There’d be a lot of rubbish on of course but also some gems, some shows that were very british and made me feel a part of things.

Ant and Decs Saturday Night Takeway reminded me of a show from the nineties called Noel’s House Party. The whacky format is similar and I just can’t imagine anything like that over here. Not in a million years did it occur to me before I moved that I’d miss all this stuff but I do.

Not long after we arrived in Canada, Jake’s Aunty Carly and Uncle Paul bought for him an interesting toy. I’m not sure what it’s called but it has either an Elmo or Sesame Street kind of theme to it. You can see that I know what I’m talking about can’t you?

It’s definitely featuring Elmo because as the device is spun around I can hear his voice amidst all kinds of other “whoops” and “Yoo-hooing”. So anyway as I say the toy can be spun around and makes a lot of noise and it now amuses our nine-month old daughter Abby.

But there was a time when we had to take the batteries out because the noise was a little to randomly generated for my liking. We’d be in bed at 2am and be woken up by Elmo without anyone being anywhere near the toy. What was going on? A pattern developed where we just couldn’t count on this thing keeping silent so for a while we left it at the furthest point from the bedrooms just to stop it from disturbing us. Finally, after it got too much I did what I should have done to start with and got a srewdriver out and took out the batteries. I’ll admit to experiencing a bit of paranioia at that point and wondered if we’d still be woken by this apparent Elmo-possessed toy. But it fell silent. We’d put it to sleep.

But now it entertains our baby daughter. We got it out of a box and put new batteries in and she loves it. It was well behaved to start with and we were still able to sleep at night but now it’s beginning to find it’s way again. At 6am yesterday without any prompting from anyone Elmo started to whoop and whoop again thoughout the day. It’s been silent today but I’m wary of it and I’m ready with my screwdriver.

Aunty Carly and Uncle Paul just had a baby of their own and I’m thinking about finding a new home for Elmo and co.

It’s been quite a week in the world of Formula One racing with the McLaren team being thrown out of the championship whilst leading it. In Formula One there are two competitions running side by side. First the constructors championship which the teams are trying to win and then the drivers championship which each individual driver hopes to win at the cost of everyone else including his (or her?) own team mate.

So McLaren were found guilty of spying on the Ferrari team because it’s claimed a now former member of Ferrari, Nigel Stepney sent a large amount of technical information to Mike Coughlan in the McLaren team and it’s been proved (apparently) that McLaren have attempted to use this data to assist their own progress throughout the 2007 season.

I suspect that what McLaren are really guilty of is having been caught doing something quite naughty. Am I being cynical or just realistic when I say that I think that all politicians lie, that newspapers report how they’d like the news to be rather than the actual facts and that every team in the Formula One pit lane would welcome confidential information from any other team if it was offered to them secretly on a plate? Perhaps I’m wrong to think this.

Still, McLaren were caught and they are paying the price except they aren’t actually. It’s true that they’ve been hit with a large fine and are no longer in the constructors championship but their two drivers are still in the drivers championship driving around in McLaren cars with all those lovely adverts on the car from sponsors for a world wide fan base to see on television. One of their drivers is likely to be crowned champion in a few weeks time and to all intents and purposes McLaren will have won. Yet it’s been proved (again apparently) that the team tried to use the Ferarri data to gain an unfair advantage so the cars being used are tainted. How can they continue to take part even if the drivers, Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton aren’t being held responsible for their team’s bad behaviour? The cars are still part of a banned team.

So, I just don’t get it but I do really. The drivers championship has been a close run affair this year and Formula One needed it. I’m still attracted to the sport but little overtaking action takes place where it really matters at the front and it’s more of a colourful spectacle than rip roaring racing. There are only two points that separate the two leading drivers who just happen to be the McLaren drivers, Alonso and Hamilton and those in charge just knew that there was no way that they could tamper with that.

So we’re now watching a tainted championship that doesn’t mean too much. I tried to watch the Belgium Grand Prix yesterday but my heart wasn’t in it because Formula One is yet another example of how the fans end up being treated badly by those who run professional sport. The fans who make the whole the thing possible. The paying-too-much public who let grown-up people get to kick a fooball, skate on ice with a hockey stick, drive very fast cars or whatever and get paid handsomely for it.

It was a pleasant day today and there was a lot of activity from the birds visiting our feeder, the chipmunks scurrying round for anything dropped by the birds and Jake looking out for cookies. Everyone was hungry!

I had no idea that when we bought our new car that we were in fact buying a great big magnet. What happens when we first take the car into the Walmart car park? While loading up our shopping the cart goes flying into the front side door. We’ve now got a dent as big as a football pitch. Well, it’s at least an inch long anyway.

Some would say it was the wind as it was quite a stormy, wet evening but it’s not the first time I’ve seen a cart make straight for an innocent car. So either the car has magnetic qualities or the shopping carts are demon possessed. Either way something has to be done!

We’ve been saving quite a lot of money recently by not going shopping like we used to since our vehicle, a Dodge Caravan, gave up on us. For a while we were getting by on using it for short trips but then the engine really started to struggle and smoke so it was time to say thank you and goodbye.

That was a couple of weeks ago and since then we’ve only gone out when we had to and despite relying on cabs and public transport we certainly saved some money because we just weren’t going anywhere to spend it! I cycled to work and maybe I got fitter although I swear it was actually killing me.

Still, it’s all in the past now because we picked up our replacement vehicle yesterday. A Ford Taurus LX 2002 model. So it’s five years old but with our budget we were limited by choice and this doesn’t seem a bad vehicle at all. It’s very early days so I’m sure there might be a surprise or two along the way but hopefully nothing too unpleasant. It seems to be well equipped with everything working but feels so low to the ground after driving around in a mini-van for the best part of three years.

To be honest I’m already missing the van but it is nice to be back in a saloon again (or a sedan as they’re known over here) and the main thing is that we’re fully mobile again. Oh, and back to being poor too. Ho-hum such is life.

If we didn’t know it already the world is going down hill fast and by that I mean the lack of personal responsibility for anything bad that happens. I’m referring to things like a dying smoker feeling justified in taking a tobacco company to court or such similar thing. But this story really gets me.

It’s a dreadful account from Britain of how a young girl, Ellie Lawrenson just five years old, was savaged to death by a pit bull terrier (an illegal breed in the UK) in the new year. She was in the temporary care of her Grandmother who was baby sitting. The BBC website report says that the Grandmother, Jackie Simpson had drunk two bottles of wine and smoked 10 cannabis joints prior to the attack. She was charged with manslaughter through gross negligence by allowing the dog into the house. This dog, who belonged to her son had been involved already with two previous attacks.

Anyway the jury found this woman not guilty and I guess that happened because the law is fashioned in a way that didn’t allow them to find her guilty. I mean, that surely has to be the case doesn’t it? Otherwise where’s the difficulty? She was looking after her granddaughter, she allowed herself to be under the influence of alcohol and drugs, she allowed a dangerous dog into the house. Was she neglectful? Would the dog have killed the girl by staying outside the house? Would her senses have been more intact if not under the influence? How did it come to be that little Ellie suffered such a terrible death and that no one is held accountable?

The son, Kiel Simpson was jailed for eight weeks earlier in the year for owning the illegal dog but not for Ellie’s death. So you see, Ellie Lawrenson has died in terrible avoidable circumstances and through the due process of the law no one is responsible for it.

I’ve just been watching a show from Britain called Traffic Cops which is one of those documentaries following the traffic police in their daily duties. It’s a very interesting show and highlights just how much these officers have to deal with alongside their regular traffic duties.

As you might imagine alcohol plays a big part in what they see and it never ceases to amaze me just how dumb people can be. The program featured a guy who was found at the wheel of his car completely intoxicated and virtually unable to stand of his own accord. He was so out of it, although amazingly he hadn’t managed to kill himself or anybody else while he had been driving.

There was also a case a man who fell over a barrier into a waterway after he’d been drinking at a nearby bar. Tragically he was in the water too long so that after he was rescued from the water the emergency services were unable to revive him.

The irony of the two accounts is that one drunken man paid the ultimate price for drinking too much whereas the guy found at the wheel of his car was banned from driving for a year and was fined sixty british pounds. Which means that someone like him has every reason to believe that he’s got away with it and has no serious incentive to not do it again. Which also means that if there’s a next time then it might well be he or someone else that pays the ultimate price of death for his drunken driving.

Isn’t it about time that the law was changed to no driving with alcohol. If a person has one drink then he or she must not drive and if they do then ban them for ten years with a hefty fine.

Both Abby and Jake were spending time on the deck this morning and I could see Jake but not Abby although I could hear her chatting away to herself. So I went and grabbed the camera to take a few pictures of them outside but decided to take just the one because as you’ll see from the picture I had to stop an escape bid!

I was going to say that it’s actually not quite as dangerous as it looks because of the log rack by the side of the deck stopping a fall but that assumes that she doesn’t fall off of the table. I was horrified because I felt like I was keeping a careful eye on them but I wasn’t careful enough.

Nicola had warned me to watch out for Jake trying to climb over the deck sides but not Abby although she had said that Abby could now climb up the slope side of the slide. I don’t know how the slide came to be positioned next to the table but from the picture Jake appears to be giving Abby every encouragement.

I’ve now rearranged things to avoid a repeat but isn’t it amazing what kiddies can get up to in the space of a couple of minutes. To my shame I feel like I’ve learnt a timely lesson.

Following on from my previous post regarding the Canadian Citizenship Test my Canadian friend Christina reports a 70% pass mark on the practice test which I suspect represents a pass but I’ve also heard that in the real test that some questions are on a must-know basis and to get those wrong will result in failure. I must emphasise though that this is all conjecture on what I’ve heard and not on what I actually know. For official government information regarding the citizenship test go here.

There was a poll taken recently as to how Canadians would fare with the test and it suggested that about half of all Canadians would fail if required to take it. I think that’s misleading though because it was probably based on there being no preparation ahead of time. Citizenship applicants are sent a book that gives them all the information they’ll need to swot up on the test and I’m sure that Canadians with the same resource would do just as well.

There’s a citizenship test now in the UK and I suspect that the situation is the same there in that a fair number of Brits would probably not do as well as expected without preparing ahead of time.

Still, either here or in the UK I do wonder at the value of such a test. I can’t specifically argue against it but what does it prove? Does it really show who should be a new citizen and who shouldn’t? In the case of Canada if I repeatedly flunk the test I’ll still get to stay here as a permanent resident and pay my taxes along with everyone else. The big difference will be that I won’t get to vote and thus influence how the tax that I pay is spent.