We nearly emigrated last year. And the year before. And the year before that. ‘I’m getting fed up with nearly emigrating,’ I said. ‘Let’s do it.’
So this year we did and home is now Canada. And, just for the moment, home is also an apartment building literally in the process of being built around us. Another floor is completed and people move in above us. Fascinating people, it seems, who play strange games on their bare golden-oak floors at dead of night. ‘Per-plink’ we keep hearing and after some discussion at breakfast we decide it must be tiddlywinks.
Tentatively we try pancakes with maple syrup, a popular breakfast with Canadians. ‘It’s not Pancake Day in England y’know,’ says Dan, puzzled.
Then it’s off to work in the shiny new apple green car for David and off to school in the faded new denim jeans for Daniel. No such thing as school uniform, we were told, but blue jeans are uniform here for at least half the population.
In great flurries of Italian, work parties crowd in upon me with paintpots and screwdrivers and proceed to do last-minute things to our walls and wiring. It is all quite jolly in spite of the fact that our only means of actual communication are nods, smiles and little bursts of opera. The foreman, who does seem to include the occasional Canadian phrase in amongst all the rich ‘bellas’ and ‘issimos’, eyes my rump rather thoroughly and manages to convey that he comes from Venice. When I tell him that I once spent ten days in Lido Di Jesolo he becomes so excitable I have to go out for a walk.
I wonder what he thought I said? I must just get used to the fact that Canada is a mixture of races and even among English-speaking Canadians my Londony accent isn’t always readily understood.
Loaded with great plastic cushions of milk, sweet bread-and-butter pickles (yummy) and cartons of delicious cheap fruit, I return home and approach our new gleaming white wall-telephone with some trepidation because I can be pretty sure that Long Distance will call me Sir and connect me to Oshawa when I’ve asked for Ottawa. They always do.
’Gee Beddy, ya hafta say Oddawa,’ says a neat little old lady from England who seems to have found her own individual, if rather catarrhal way to break the language barrier.
Life at the moment seems to be full of well-groomed little old ladies, all with upswept specs and blue-grey waves. And all claiming me as their own special buddy. Phrases like ‘at our age’ and ‘those younger ones’ keep cropping up. Eagerly they whip out photos of ‘our gang in Miami last winter’. Close inspection reveals the entire gang to be smiling and tanned and sinewed and silvery-haired. ‘Hey – you’d have a ball with us,’ they add.
Obviously, wearing my hair this new pewter colour is a mistake. I quite like little old ladies. I’m just not ready yet to join their ranks. Looks as if I shall have to join the other lot – the younger, untidier half in the blue jeans.
Clearing my throat carefully I try out ‘Oddawa’ on the operator and get put through right away. Then, shouldering my way through our swinging, ranch-style kitchen doors and longing to drawl at the smiling workmen: ‘Okay fellas, the Milky Bars are on me’ (but prudently deciding against it), I go in search of the ‘Sears’ catalogue and the necessary blue jeans.
As a reasonable compromise, for evening wear, I run myself up a couple of long denim skirts which are cool and useful and seem suitable for most occasions. I wear one to ‘the smartest place in town’ – all Tiffany lamps and really very pleasant indeed once you get over the initial shock of hearing the waiter ask: ‘Anything to drink with your meal, sir and madam?’ and hearing sir settle for a rum-and-coke while madam says: ‘Make mine a cup of tea.’
‘And why not?’ I tell myself firmly, as I watch Café Royale being prepared quite magnificently at another table. With great sweeping arm motions, the waiter pours flaming brandy from one huge, warmed balloon glass to another to be doused, with a deft flick of the wrist, by gleaming waterfalls of rich black coffee. His performance has the attention of the entire establishment and, entranced, I await the piéce de résistance – the bit where he slowly, lovingly, pours the cream over the back of the silver spoon. And here it comes … with a graceful pirouette he reaches under his black tails, produces an aerosol can and – plurp, plurp – a dollop of white foam lands in each glass.
Ah well, good old Canadian know-how does also include a lot of plus factors. Splendid central heating and air conditioning and here in Peterborough, Ontario, a lovely bus service in which not only are the buses on time but the drivers wave and wait for you and set you down at your very own street corner if they possibly can. At the post office too, they are smiling and jolly, asking me how I like Canada. ‘Everyone here is so helpful and friendly,’ I tell them.
‘But aren’t folk helpful and friendly everywhere?’ they ask, genuinely bewildered. Oh yes, I’m sure I’m going to like it here. If I can just carve a little niche for myself somewhere about midway between the tatty blue jeans and the neat blue rinses.