August 2003 Archives

The bastards stole my bike. Around 4:30 in the early morning of Thursday, August 21, something woke me up. I couldn't go back to sleep so I went downstairs where I found the front door open and my bike gone. "My Goodness me!" I said. "What an unfortunate occurence!" Or words to that effect, anyway.

Please, if you read this, stop what you're doing and go out and look for my bike. Leave no stone unturned. It was taken from a house in the Dalston area of London (E8) and is a Marin San Rafael, silver in colour with fenders. The serial number is F643L50008. The cover of the light on the back fender is gone and it's got a nerdy "London Cycling Campaign" sticker on it. There is a mount for a handlebar bag on the front. It had an odomotor and a little black bell on the handlebars, and a blinking redlight under the seat. It has grip shifters and a shock-absorbed seat post. Both of the black plastic pedals are cracked and they have toe clips. It also has a pump strapped to the up-tube.

Please find it. I'm very sad without it. I loved that bike.

The above picture is a recent picture of me lovingly stroking the saddle and looking heroic. I felt as if I could take the whole world on when I had that bike. Now life is a hollow sham.

You may think it optimistic of me to think that I might get my bike back but there is a precedent.

A couple of years ago, my charming spouse had her bike stolen from outside the British Library. About two weeks later it showed up parked next to mine at the beeb. One of my co-workers had just bought it in Brick Lane. We managed to convince him that it was really my wife's stolen bike and we agreed to split his purchase price which (as you may imagine was quite low). Cool story, or what?

So, yes, there is hope. Hit the streets. Find that bike!

While you're at it, you could also look for the remote control for our cable box.

No one believes me about this but I swear it seems to be the only thing missing. It was definitely there on the coffee table when I went to bed that night. In the morning, it was gone. No amount of searching behind the cushions of the couch has turned it up. After three days, I am completely convinced the mysterious criminals took it as well. It's a green telewest remote.

In a way, I suppose it's a good thing they took the remote. Hopefully the exertion of having to get off the couch to change channels will make up for the lack of exercise in not cycling to work.

(more pics)
My charming spouse and I celebrated five fantastic years together last week by blowing the cost of a small yacht on dinner at the Connaught in London. We each had the prestige menu which consisted of:

* A selection of Italian breads and salamis
* Ham consomme with anolini
* Tomato mosaique wiht marinated goats' cheese
* Roasted fillets of John Drory with herb gnocchi, roasted artichokes, smoked red wine sauce
* Carmelissed Gressingham duck breast with baby leeks and Scottish girolles, port wine sauce
* Selection of seven sorbets and ice creams (we finished them all)
* Lemon pannacotta with blueberries and thyme
* Almonds powdered with chocolate and fresh cherries
* Accompanied by way too much booze of various sizes, colours and flavours.

Damn tasty, it was too. But we won't be doing that for five another years at least. Maybe ever.

Not that I think the marriage won't last another five years. I just mean we might be a little more circumspect (or broke) from this point on.

(more pics)
After surviving the trial by fire, we arrived in Edmonton, went for dinner at my Dad's, and then I stayed up 'til 5am writing a teleplay for a BBC contest called Undercover. My first attempt ever.

The house pictured above, however, is a picture of Vicki's folks' place.

And then we packed and went to Russ and Heidi's Wedding.

(more pics)
Vicki's parents came down to the coast for a brief holiday and drove us back to Edmonton. We planned to take the Northern Yellowhead highway but it was blocked by huge forest fires.

I was expecting the traffic to be horrific but it wasn't too bad, actually. All in all, a very pleasant trip. I even managed to survive two days in the back seat of a car driven by my mother-in-law ;-)

(more pics)

My Aunt's family has a bird named Dusty. Despite the overwhelming photographic evidence to the contrary, Dusty didn't particularly like me. I have no idea why the two of us were such a irresistable photographic subject, but obviously we were.

Dusty doesn't like it when you sneak up to her cage in the middle of the night, throw back the cover and yell "Boo!". She tends to fall off her perch and slam onto the bottom of the cage, flappying noisily and squawking.

I didn't do this, but one of my blood relations did. Proof that little girls are not composed exclusively of sugar and spice and all things nice.

(more pics)

Just posting the pictures from the Victoria bit of our recent trip to Canada. Gorgeous weather. I bought myself a racquet and played a lot of bad tennis, ate a lot of burgers at Barb's and lazed about. It amazed me how quiet it was there. My mother lives near Ogden Point and there seems to be no traffic along Dallas Road after 10pm. And I don't think I heard a single siren all week. It made me terribly worried that Victoria has no emergency services. Although, come to think of it, I did see a couple of paramedics on bicycles. That's it though. No police, no fire trucks, no ambulances, no SWAT team.

On the other hand, there was very little screaming and smashing of bottles outside my window at night. It was all very alien compared with Dalston.

Thank God, dinner at my aunt's was a typically noisy affair. It reassured me my ears were working.

I'm just about to hop onto a jet plane to fly back to London, but I thought I'd post these pics from Russel and Heidi's wedding. It was an extremely convivial affair at a Bible Camp alongside Sylvan Lake. I was the MC and was way too busy having fun to take many pictures.

We arrived on Friday night, chatted with friends, roasted some hot dogs around the fire and went to bed just as a fantastic huge thunderstorm hit. There were about 150 people at the wedding. We shared a cabin with two other couples that we knew from the old treeplanting days and three kids who belonged to one of the other couples.

The wedding was on Saturday morning in a gorgeous grassy field. The weather was perfect. Then there was lunch. Then canoeing on the lake, and volleyball, and badminton and bocce and croquet and many kids running around and cute teenage boy cousins flirting with cute teenage girl cousins and old farmer uncles laughing with old farmer aunts and just life at its most comfortable and vivid.

And then there was dinner and my debut as an MC which wasn't particularly auspicious but also not a complete catastrophe. And then I had too much to drink and danced like a loon and dropped not one, but two of the female guests on the ground. Whoops. Fortunately, neither of them seemed permanently damaged. And then there was bed and then the hangover and then the cleanup and then the farewells and the long drive back to Vicki's parents.

All weddings should be at least three days long, I've decided.

It's forest fire season here in Western Canada. There have been evacuations, homes burned down, and highways closed because of the fires. We could see the smoke when we were flying over the interior of B.C. Pretty nasty stuff.

One of these terrible fires couldn't help but bring a smile to my lips, though. Apparently, a fire near a trailer park in Metchosin was caused by a goose which flew into some power lines.

Yes, the reality of it is pretty unpleasant. Big fire. Thousands of dollars of damage, environmental catastrophe, very surprised goose dying a painful death -- all terrible things. But still, the cartoon image of a goose slamming into a high-tension wire, bursting into flame, and then plummeting into the forest to ignite a raging conflagration is somehow amusing.

"Honk... Honk... Honk... BAM! Sizzle! Whomp!"

"Look Ma! The lord done provided us with a bountiful feast!"

"Well, I wish he'd taken the time to pluck the damn thing before putting it in the oven."

"Oh Shit! The Woods are on fire! Get in the truck Fergal; we're getting the hell out of here. And, Fergal, take that goose with you. I'm starving!"

More pics...

We got into Victoria on the evening of July 30th, settled into my mother's place, then walked along the seawall towards Clover Point to watch this mini-airshow put on by the Snowbirds air acrobatics team.

I'd never actually seen a show like this and I was more impressed with it than I thought I would be. The setting probably helped. We watched from a cliff overlooking the Juan de Fuca Strait with the Olympic Mountains in the background. Unfortunately, I kept having all these news clips run through my head of tragedies at other airshows where two stunt planes collide and then pinwheel into the crowd killing dozens of blind arthritic nuns.

Fortunately, nothing like that happened. No planes crashed. No nuns were killed, and it was a gorgeous evening.