Want to see something really scary? My wife, who spends a lot of time watching horror films (for professional reasons as well as fun), was amazed at how well suspense was established and maintained throughout this little delight.
My wife also grumbled about not having access to a space like this for her projects.
†I worked a couple of days at the end of last year that NO ONE ELSE did, so the start of this week redressed that balance. I am now a strong advocate for a 20 hour work week.
No film last week, no update yesterday– you might think something terrible had happened to me. Happily, it’s just a quantity of unpleasant distractions demanding that I use my time otherwise.
I won’t try to penetrate the veil of traumatic amnesia which obscures the New Year’s Eve duties that ate my lunch hour, but the thing that kept me from yesterday’s (lack-of-)progress report has some grim amusement in it which I’m willing to share.
My intent was to add some air to a tire that wasn’t holding air particularly well. This is a tire that has been giving me trouble for a long time, and that should have been a hint– the problem extended through switches between summer and winter tires.
[An aside– I may have said this previously, but if you live above 45ºN in the Americas, get winter tires if at all possible. I had taken all-season tires at their word for years, but having tried winter-specific tires, there’s such a difference in traction that I have to urge them]
I will at this point mention that the weather here has been… I don’t think “abominable” is too strong. Most of the last fortnight has had lows under -30C, and most of this week the highs have been below -30C. A tire looking a little squishy is to be expected, but this one was VERY squishy. Using the front end of the lunch period to run to the gas station for some air was sensible, and even more so when I applied my tire gauge to it– a mere 15PSI, less than half what it should be.
[Second aside; yes, I use Centigrade for outdoor temperature and PSI for tire pressure. I’m a GenX Canadian, and a lot of us are wired that way thanks to the fifteen year conversion of Canada to Metric with which we shared our school years]
I applied the air hose to the valve, the sound of inflation followed, and when the tire looked more itself, I removed the hose to check the pressure. The sound of rapid deflation followed.
That ain’t right.
Let me show you my tire valve.
More than usually portable…
The cold weather was probably the last straw for this little fitting, but as this is the second time I’ve had this happen. The previous event was explained to me as an exercise in cost-cutting by vehicle manufacturers. In earlier ages, the main element of the valve stem was made of brass. Now, with this vital part being an exterior manifestation of the pressure monitor system, brass is considered too expensive for OEM parts. What we have now is “pot metal”, which is the foundry version of “100% unknown fibres”. It is given to failure.
I’ll leave this to you to decide if this is a manifestation of the wickedness of capitalism.
Yesterday was thus devoted to swapping flat for spare at -31C while apologizing to the dozens of other people wanting to desquishify their own tires whose efforts I was obstructing.
So, with that as a foundation, let’s have a progress-free report for the week.
Now, as a final disappointment, I’ve run out of time for this session to select a film. Hopefully next week will see a restoration of normalcy. I’m also DESPERATELY hoping that this week is not a setting of tone for the year, because that would be pretty hard to take.
A title with a double meaning. Over on my other front, I’m sharing “Wilden Klausen” which is about seasonal traditions and their underpinnings.
Here, I’m sharing what is a bit of a trans-Canadian tradition. One of the few things that is shared by all parts of Canada is CBC Radio service. Not everyone listens to it, but it’s there. Those of us who do listen to it have a yuletide tradition– listening to the sonorous Alan Maitland reading Frederick Forsyth’s attempt at the traditional English seasonal ghost story.
I’m taking next week off, so I may not look in here on Christmas Eve. In anticipation of that, I’ll wish you one and all a comfortable Christmas, Xmas, Yuletide &ct. (but not Festivus– take your pole elsewhere!) with people that bring you joy and without people that bring you COVID.
If anyone out there is shouting “What the hell are you thinking?!” they may rest assured that I can’t hear them over the screeching of my own internal critics. Updates as they develop… which given the careful approach to this unknown country I’m adopting, will probably not begin until Mid-January.
† It’s my birthday and I’ll use the same pen as the previous day if I want to. ‡ I have never taken my birthday off prior to this year. I recommend it, to be honest, if it doesn’t make life too miserable for co-workers. There is, however, still a price to be paid… ³ Never be The Indispensable Man. I’m not, really, anymore but I’m still not easily replaced despite writing and polishing instruction manuals for the past couple of years. ¤ The Skrip is NOS, just opened on the day of pen-filling, but isn’t quite contemporary to the pen; it’s got the red label from the last days of the dip-well bottles. The Quink, on the other hand, is possibly slightly older than the pen but definitely from the same rough era of manufacturing and also unopened until I got my mitts on it. I don’t know how this happens.
*Mondays being what they are, I left the house without the day’s selected pen, so Designated Fiction Pen had to stand in. To balance out, I managed to leave my wallet at The Regular Job at day’s end. I don’t usually Monday with that much force.
**More commentary on the forums has convinced me that Friday’s conundrum is mostly a Duofold with a replacement barrel stolen from a contemporary Mk. IV Victory; the barrels were the same size, and this explanation leaves the fewest gouges from Occam’s razor. No new page for the site, alas, but a new picture to apply to the Duofold page (the one without the imprint showing).
While I’m here, let me tell you all about something that I’m very pleased with.
Last weekend, while I was going through a drawer in an annex of my pen storage facility (which is to say, a bedside table), my son asked me how many pens I have. It has been quite some time since he took any interest in such things, and I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t have the answer readily to hand. If I were a petty fellow, I’d ask him to tell me the count of his wooden locomotives and when he came up blank I could have said, “There. See?”
Since I’m not petty (too often), I made up a number based on a quick mental visualisation of the primary storage facility (the basement office), and then to avoid follow-up questions, I produced from the very drawer I was investigating a pen in a box. A blue Pelikano Junior. I told son that this pen had been bought specifically for him.
A moment of silence. “Really?”
This was a true thing. I did not remind him of the Griffix set, the pen of which he… neglected, we shall say, throughout 2013 and 2014. It would have injured the moment. I then asked if he wanted it brought out and inked. This was greeted with some enthusiasm, which continued when that suggestion was put into action:
I dare you to tell me he’s not delirious with glee in this picture.
After some initial doodling with the pen, during which he attended to instruction, the pen was carefully placed in a selected location in his room, where it will be safe but accessible. He hasn’t used it much since, and only for special purposes, but he looks in its direction frequently.
What I’m really proud of, because rendering my son gooney over a possession is a mixed triumph at best (I don’t practice Buddhism particularly well, but I do read it), is the way he holds the pen. He has not only reached the age of reason, he has reached the age of sufficient manual dexterity:
That, folks, is a nicely relaxed grip of the correct shape, even if the pen is slightly rotated. The buttons on my vest are under serious pressure.
Back when this province had a flourishing film industry, I occasionally found myself joining my wife as a background extra. This is not acting, as such, because one doesn’t need the layers of character and motivation nor the deep well of skill and well-honed craft which makes people like… well, pretty much everyone on Downton Abbey or Sherlock so fascinating to watch. It does, however, take a little attention to the notion of creating a fictional reality. For example, the scene is set in July, so you need to ignore the fact that it’s late April and bloody cold as you walk idly through an amusement park in a t-shirt and believe it’s a nice summer day, otherwise too many people who want to watch an actual actor do interesting things will be distracted by the cranky, slightly blue person rubbing his arms as he passes between Ferris wheel and merry-go-round, incongruously freezing to death in the middle of a heat-wave.
Also, as a background extra, even if you in fact walk in front of the big-name actors in the scene, do not look at the camera. It is a visual challenge to the viewer, and draws them away from the story they came to enjoy. Here, check this out:
See? You want to see what life in Paris a century ago was like, but you end up in a staring contest with someone’s ghost.
What's up at Ravens March. 
