Tales from St Anthony Part XVIII – Martha Stewart saved my life and tips on driving in Newfoundland

I am prone to fits of internalized paranoia whereby the usual outwardly projected extreme and irrational distrust of others is turned inwards – in short I am paranoid of paranoia.

Just for the record I am also scared of people wearing sombreros (who needs a hat that big anyway), termites (anything so small that can devour a house deserves to be feared) and since moving to Newfoundland, I have begun to fear driving, more accurately my paranoia of computer-based written driving exams scares the bejesus out of me.

Oh and I am also scared of falling asleep and waking to find my limbs fused with useless kitchen utensils like a pastry brush, spork and a colander as a helmet, but none of the cool ones like rolling pins for arms a meat tenderizer for my right hand and a pizza cutter for my left and egg beaters for legs that I would spin so fast I would gravitate to become the ultimate crime fighting machine able to flambé the fricassee out of culinary crooks.

Anyway, today I should have been studying for my driver’s test because despite my 16 years of clean driving in Australia, I have to go through the whole process again. That's cool with me, I dig practical tests. I'm a practical kind of person. But it means I have to sit

that rotten written test again so instead of studying I cooked macaroni and cheese from scratch for the very first time.

The driving exam has me spooked so much I turned to a Martha Stewart recipe. It makes sense after all, who better to guide me through the heady and complicated world of Mac and Cheese than Martha, who I also discovered is a damn fine history teacher. Did you Thomas Jefferson invented Mac & Cheese?

Now let me make this clear, my fear of driving isn’t because of the conditions in these parts. I have driven horribly dangerous roads in the southern hemisphere and survived potholes the size of small mammals, small mammals the size of humans and humans with brains the size of small mammals.

Nope, but sit me down in front of a driving test on a computer screen and I go to water and it’s all because of the way they phrase the questions and rank the answers.

There is always one ridiculous answer, one slightly daft one and two that are almost identical and would both be correct however one is more right than the other.

For instance, according to the Newfoundland and Labrador Road Users Guide, the minimum safe following distance is at least one car length for every 15kph meaning if you are traveling at 90kph you should be six car lengths behind the one in front. To work that out you must wait for the car in front to pass a checkpoint and start counting. If it takes two or more seconds for your car to pass that same checkpoint, it is considered to be a reasonable following distance.

The literature goes on to point out that the two second rule will allow you to react to an obstacle but it won’t be enough time to stop your car.

Again, sound advice though I would tender the argument that novice drivers shouldn’t be burdened with mathematical duties as well as driving responsibilities.

Now if I were to then suggest that it was safer to up the ante, turn the two second rule into a three, four or five second rule, I would be correct and a great deal safer but I would also be wrong and fail the test.

Then there is the advice given in the user guide which at times is quite hilarious.

For instance under the heading To Avoid Hitting a Car in Front of You, it calmly starts with: “Don’t be impatient,” which I admit is very good advice before concluding, “never let personal problems or daydreams take your attention from the road.”

Again, sound.

One of my favorite quotes comes under the heading Sudden Stopping and Reaction Time that reads:

“Before you can realize that you must stop your vehicle to avoid an object ahead, you must see it.”

I am wondering if this is a philosophical debate or instructions to Jedi.

The most worrying aspect from a non-moose acquainted driver is that the writers of the manual appear more worried about headlights then they are about moose.

For instance the paragraph about headlight glare reads:

“Glare causes the pupil of the eye to contract ... it takes about seven seconds for the pupil to readjust, during this time you may be temporarily blinded. If you were traveling at 90kph for those seven seconds you would have gone 125 metres while you had no vision.”

Temporarily blinded for 125 metres traveling 90kph? The only way that could get any worst is if an eagle flew in through the open window and began clawing your face off.

The writers under the heading Vehicle Plunges into Water helpfully demonstarte how to successfully escape a submerged car, what to do if the hood flies up or your car catches on fire while driving 90kph down the highway. 

They also offer the indispensable tip on what to do if you are about to slam into another car under the heading Direct Collision Course that reads: “Brake hard!”

Martha might have just saved my life.

Under moose the best advice they can give is thus: “Always think moose – especially when you drive at night”.

'Think moose' is the best they can come up with?

I think Martha Stewart and I are going to become well acquainted up until I sit my test on July 22.

Tales from St Anthony Part XVII –George the Bard, Family Ties and $25 lobster dinners

Hello Mr Lobster, would you like a new home in my belly?

"Do you come from a big family George," I asked Cow Head’s friendliest local bard as I tried to prevent my rickety plastic lawn chair from toppling over.

George had rushed up the road to the Dr Henry N Payne Community Museum where he had been boiling lobsters at the Anglican Church all morning.

As strange as that sounds, it was all part of the 29th annual Cow Head Lobster Festival on the weekend and George was multitasking.

"Oh yes, a big family, seven brothers and a sister," he said as the summer sun slapped me upside the head while the ice box chilled wind kicked me in the shin.

"My daughter asked my father there once, she said, why do they have such big families around these parts and my father said, 'well you know, we’ve got to keep warm in the winter somehow'," George grinned and chuckled to himself.

For about an hour George did what he does best, he spun some yarns regaling us tales of his family and that of the region, stories that would have been told years ago around the camp oven, or in the kitchen to traveling strangers.

This time around it was just four of us huddled together on the lawn of the historical society.

He told us about his fishing days, local folk lore, maritime disasters and the death of modern society.

"When you buy a piece of lumber 2¼ inches and what you actually get is a piece 1¾ and you pay seven times its worth, well things aren’t looking good," he said, "we are in a bad way, a bad way," he concluded of modernity.

The talk of families was poignant as I had only that week bid farewell to my own who had journeyed from Australia to the northernmost point of Newfoundland.

I hadn’t seen them in about 18 months so there was plenty to talk about and for almost two weeks we showed them all that the Northern Peninsular had to offer and by the end, my father had developed a guttural Newfoundland laugh, my sister and mother had been made honorary Newfies after being ‘Screeched in’ and the entire lot had grown scales and gills because of all the cod and seafood they had digested.

A family portrait, not my family portrait but one nonetheless.

On the last night though, my parents in typical dramatic form, brought the whole trip crashing to a low.

At this point I must point out that my parents can be kind of dramatic. If mum has some bad news she usually starts the conversation with, “now don’t panic” or “before you get upset” my dad normally just comes out and speaks his mind.

“It’s been good to see you,” my mum said as she wiped at her face in a bid to make it look like she was scratching an itch that scuttled about her face like a snow crab. She was crying, but she didn’t want me to know. But I did and put an arm around her.

“Don’t make it sound like it’s the last time we’ll see each other,” I said.

“But it might be,” she said, “we might never see you again.”

“Sure you will it’s not as though we are that far away from you. We are only in Newfoundland.”

“You don’t know that,” she muttered, repeating it under her breath, “you don’t know that.”

Moments earlier over a tasty chunk of halibut my dad averted his eyes from my gaze when we had concluded the very same conversation.

“This might be it mate,” he said, “we might not ever see you kids again.”

“Don’t be silly,” I retorted.

“I’m not,” he grunted, jack blunt as always.

And therein lays the difference of generations. While we think it’s nothing to jump on a plane and fly around the globe as if we are packing the campervan and heading to the local beach for a holiday, for my parents it is a big deal, this trip to Newfoundland was a big trip, a once in a lifetime trip if I am to believe them.

I know the locals around St Anthony feel the same. With job opportunities limited, most of the extended family has been forced to move away to Alberta or further afield to make ends meet but each summer they try to make it home and celebrate as a family unit.

As each year rolls on and families expand and contract with numbers, a new baby here is offset by the loss of a grandparent there, many of us wonder if this will be the last time they will see a family member again.

My grief at not seeing my parents again for a while is tempered by the knowledge that I am lucky.

My family is still alive and currently driving around Ireland.

Sláinte.

Tales from St Anthony Part XVI -- Acceptance speech

The immigration officer's hand shot out at me, waist high, with a military snap.

I flinched but I needn't have.

 

"Sir, " he said, "welcome to Canada."

As I unwrapped my spindly fingers from around his meat claw it dawned on me that I was now a permanent resident of Canada.

My new home had officially accepted me, a faceless bureaucrat at the Canadian Consul found me to be truthful, honest and trustworthy and granted me permission to stay while a burly Newfoundland immigration officer at the aptly named southern port of Fortune confirmed it  with a stiff handshake and a heartfelt profession of pride.

I could tell Charlie, that's the immigration officer, was proud to be Canadian and he was darn happy to be the first person to welcome me into his country, his home.

With those thoughts ricocheting in my skull I turned to Em and started crying. She laughed. 

I tried to laugh but I was too busy crying so I kind of blubbered a bit, it's not every day you become part of a new country.

Tales from St Anthony Part XV -- Wrestling Bedouin and a parallel universe

"Me against my brother, my brothers and I against my cousin, then my cousins and I against strangers."

The modern Bedouin travels in a rental van and not on camel through a desert.

According to the World Wide InterGoogle machine the above is a “widely quoted Bedouin saying” and while I will suspend my belief until irrefutable proof is presented, more than Wikipedia at least, it is the perfect description of the nomadic band of journeymen I witnessed last night – professional wrestlers.

A traveling troupe crisscrossing their way about Canada – Mainstream Wrestling – arrived with little fanfare in St Anthony yesterday, setting up residence inside a corrugated iron shed that doubles as the town’s ice hockey rink in winter.

Perched on the peripheries of a ring erected inside the freezing stadium about 400 people, mostly kids, watched on as good guys and bad guys belted each other senseless for more than two hours.

A montage clearly showing Josef Von Schmidt, a wrestler supposedly from East Berlin and whose MySpace page attests a desire to "resurrect the Berlin Wall" and proof of a love tryst between Dolph Lundgren (circa Rocky IV) and StreetFighter's General M Bison and Sagat. 

Sometimes the hits hurt, other times they missed all together but still inflicted a certain amount of injury and pain; such is the wonder of wrestling.

When the show finished and the crowd, with lungs aching and cheeks hurting, filed into the car park, the showmen packed up their own merchandise tables and the troupe disappeared south down Route 430 through the fog, past the moose onto the next town, onto the next show.

When Em first told me about the wrestling, I remember laughing, snobbishly.

I can’t remember the exact details of that exchange but I imagine when Em broached the subject, I was inside my ivory tower at the time sitting on a thrown made of intertwined strands of hair from the fabled golden badger, stroking my pet thylacine, ordering my thralls to track down more wine.

I probably then threw my head back and chortled at the idea proclaiming with a booming voice that would put Brian Blessed to shame something like: “I have been to international sporting events the world over with crowds reaching up to 100,000, what folly is this?”

In instances like this I’m either in my ivory tower or on my high horse, named Garry. 

Either way, I admit I was a fool, treated the concept with contempt, and as such I would like to issue an apology.

Because I have no-one to apologise to but myself, I hereby accept my own apology, acknowledge I have a lot still to learn and promptly move on.

Now here’s a question, is it culturally insensitive to draw parallels between a formally nomadic Arab ethnic group, the Bedouin, and spandex-clad fringe wrestlers? Maybe it is better to compare them to Fred Brophy’s travelling boxing tent in Australia, however I fear the latter is far too bloody and a lot less theatrical.

I’d imagined this group as muscle bound circus carnies, charlatans, who left town in the middle of the night with all the towns peoples’ hard earned money, everything not bolted down, perhaps a cat or two and a couple of stowaways with dreams of the big lights of WWE.

But that wasn’t the case – not by a long shot.

"Me against my brother, my brothers and I against my cousin, then my cousins and I against strangers," is the perfect way to describe last night’s performers.

Each day they travel to a new town, set up their traveling show, fight each other then move on.

The Bedouin entertained through folk music, dance and poetry, these guys do the same although thrash metal has replaced the sullen tones of the al-rababa, their choreographed war dance (ardha) ends in moves subtly titled brainbusters and powerbombs and the poetry was more monologues about the wrestlers own greatness mixed with crowd tauntings of “no, you suck”, rather than the traditional ghinnawas, two line emotional poems similar to haikus.

Am I drawing a long bow? Maybe, but one certain thing is that last night was all about the kids.

I think it’s fair to say that entertainment options are limited up here on the Northern Peninsular.

The closest cinema is six hours away and while there are a couple of playgrounds, a lot of open land and several sporting groups, live show experiences like this don’t come around every day, in fact it was four years since the troupe last came to town.

Four years.

Let’s be honest, the show wasn’t professional wrestling on a scale of WWE but who cares?

Watching all those kids and their parents yelling, screaming, cheering, booing and watching the wrestlers exacting every ounce of effort and strength from tiring bodies courtesy of a strenuous tour, the show was nothing short of inspiring.

Last night, those kids might as well have been inside a stadium of 100,000 baying fans.

Hell, I even cheered and whooped it up.

I felt a surge of passion for the entertainment, not because of what it was but because of what it did.

Sometimes those hits really did hurt. Really, really.

It made people happy, it made people forget.

For a couple of hours kids got to be kids and parents could forget about a failing fishing industry, the imminent removal of their air ambulance, mortgages, shopping bills and simply sit back and watch their kids laugh, smile and holler.

Some of the parents’ smiles were as big as the kids’.

Since coming to St Anthony I have learnt that living in a place where even getting basic things can be tough, a night of entertainment provided by a modern band of Bedouin can do wonders for morale.

There are plenty of parallels between wrestling and the Bedouin, there are plenty of parallels between that show and the fighting spirit of Newfoundland but then again you can draw parallels between any objects with a bit of imagination.

Tales from St Anthony Part XI (ADDENDUM) - Badly stitched panoramas

It's been fantastic weather so I've strapped on the hiking boots and headed for high ground to snap a few more badly stitched panoramas. My apologies on the quality but they are quite rushed.

There is no path to get to this rocky outcrop, in fact it's a bloody hard slog however it offers unobstructed 360 degree view. Unfortuantely it's too big to be uploaded to Blogger.

This is from Fishing Point, after climbing 460-odd stairs.

This is looking back towards the lighthouse from Lamage Point

And the original panorama that stated this whole crazy idea. Again, there is no path to get to this viewpoint, just a whole lot of rock hopping, shrubs and moose poop.

Tales from St Anthony Part XIV -- Cultural sensitivities

To Newfie or not to Newfie, that is the question and one whose answer is far from being simple and straightforward.

Australians suffer a rare genetic disposition that propels them to shrink everything to its lowest common diction denominator ; the term reductio ad absurdum was originally penciled onto Australia’s coat of arms but it was shortened to just Australia – true story.

Incidentally does anyone else find it strange the phrase on the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom is in French? I would have surely just gone with God and my right, rather than the French translation, Dieu et mon droit.

Their sensitivity to pre-Revolution aristocracy means the French haven’t bothered with a heraldic coat of arms, however if one existed I am almost certain it wouldn’t be in English, unless it was a jibe directed squarely at the English, something simple like “nick off” or “your rugby team is rubbish”.

Back on point, the Newfie argument is one that hasn’t been resolved since our re-settlement from Vancouver to St Anthony.

Before we left the message was clear – calling a Newfoundlander a Newfie is the greatest disrespect imaginable

Since our arrival the overwhelming message has been that Newfoundlanders don’t find Newfie derogatory unless the recipient is from St John’s in which case they will berate you endlessly.

I am always very concerned when it comes to nicknames for a country’s inhabitants.

As an Australian, I am comfortable with the term Aussie a simple contraction of our country. In fact I don’t know of anyone who finds Aussie offensive, I don’t mind it when I’m called a convict in reference to our prison colony past. Sticks and stones and all that I guess but Newfie, now that is an interesting one.

According to The Dictionary of Newfoundland English, the term was first used by the province natives well before transiting US soldiers started using it as a pejorative and disrespectful term in 1945.

It could be argued that Australian soldiers solved a similar issue in 1942 when they rumbled with US soldiers who they deemed to be disrespectful of Australian culture and in the words of one author, "the Yanks were overpaid, oversexed and over here."

The term Newfie was abolished in Alberta of all places in the 1970s; the government of the day deemed the term a racial slur and banned its use on number plates until 2006 when, according to CBC, the government changed their mind and described the word “as a term of endearment”.

I don’t know if that makes it any better, “a term of endearment” makes it sound patronizing, in itself could be considered far worse in some circles.

I guess the thing is any term used to describe a group of people can be used with negative undertones and let’s be honest, some names are better used by their owners.

Looks like I may to have to suppress the innate compulsion to shorten the tongue-twisting term Newfoundlander until I can fully justify its legitimacy. The last thing I want to do is pick the scab off a freshly healed sore or come across as someone culturally insensitive.

Having lived in London, I know what it’s like to be thought of as a cultural barbarian.

Whenever I overheard the word “Australian” it was generally prefaced by the term ‘bloody’ and not by someone exclaiming, “oh those bloody Australians are such a lovely jovial lot who can handle their alcohol and are delightfully quiet and pleasant on the Tube”.

No, it was more, “when we shipped those bloody Australians down there the first time, did someone leave a map because how the hell else did they all find their way back up here to take all our jobs?”

Tales from St Anthony Part XIII -- Agnostic God? I'll believe in that

My alter-ego, Dirk Daring from Dragon's Lair

I’m an apathetic agnostic so when talk turns to religion, I tune out and let my mind jump behind the wheel of a 1971 Austrian-built Steyr Pinzgauer and head on a Hunter S. Thompson inspired road from Spain to the Romanian capital of Bucharest via Croatia.

In this phantasmal scenario, my brain takes the physical form of Dirk Daring (from the computer game Dragon’s Lair) and along with David Bowie’s Goblin King from The Labyrinth; Neil deGrasse Tyson, American astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan; and Terry Gilliam (circa 1975 Monty Python and the Holy Grail) we carve a path of self illumination and hilarity across mainland Europe. 

For the love of god, put it away Bowie.

(NOTE: David Bowie is wearing fishing waders to cover up his tackle box shame that the producers of The Labyrinth failed to notice in the movie or conversely wanted to highlight so as to scare little children even more.)

The Steyr Pinzgauer makes road trips rad.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is the other day I had one the shortest yet funniest conversation about religion that went something like this:

“What religion are you?”

“Well I’m not, I’m an atheist.”

“Aren’t you in for a surprise then?”

At that point the conversation about religion gently rolled to a stop, the hand brake was applied and all participants got out safely. No proselytizing, no conversion attempts, just a few hardy laughs and a few beers.

But that question lingered in my mind.

Now look, you are going to need some pretty impressive empirical evidence and hard scientific fact to even begin to convince me that a God or gods exist but the rub is that even if you did prove it, you would have to also prove that God or gods cared about the fate of us earthbound hominids.

Now don’t get all up tight and don’t take it to heart; it’s not your fault. I was once blackmailed into going to church or face losing my job so as you can see I have very little trust in religion but please, you can be as religious as you like, in fact I applaud you for having the Faith and the dedication.

The reason I bring this up is that when a recent discussion with some friends turned to religion I had to laugh.

For most of my life no-one has ever asked my religion but in the space of two short years, I have been asked many times whether I wanted to go to church, implored that I should go to church, asked repeatedly what religion I followed, as if it was kind of a football team, and more importantly what my beliefs are.

It seems the older I get the more people want to know my religion. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come? As we get older and closer to death do people start packing their parachute just in case?

When I arrived in St Anthony, one of the first questions I was asked was, “are you Jewish? You look Jewish.”

My reply: “Nope, not Jewish. But they do have awesome food, except that whole bacon thing.”

I’ve since come to realise that the communities up in these parts are fairly religious, the Church of England was the first recognized church in Newfoundland (source: DW Prowse, QC) and in St Anthony alone; there’s the Bethel Pentecostal, Salvation Army and Anglican churches and even a Jehovah’s Witness hall on the way into town.

I think it’s a good thing, I truly do and reading all the different histories of the region, I can see why religion has played such a huge role in people’s lives up this way.

When you live at the mercy of the sea as the Atlantic fishermen did battling squalls and icebergs, I too would probably hold onto my Faith in a higher being rather than my hope that your faithful boat builder didn’t skimp on timber or had too many afternoon sherbets at the shed.

Same goes for all the winter souls who felt their appendix rumbling or the women in childbirth who were forced to rely on the Godspeed of dedicated nurses and doctors and their flying machines or dog sleds.

But there is just one thing that I can’t fathom and it’s why there are different cemeteries for the different churches – I mean, aren’t you all going to the same God?

“Religion and politics,” my dad once told me, “are two things you never speak about on a Friday afternoon in the pub.”

I tend to agree.