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In other, and-I-promise-briefer news, I’m sick.

I hate how I get a cold almost every time I fly. People are filthy, especially children-people. You’re trapped up there at 35,000 feet, and the airlines don’t change the air ’cause that suffocates you into being more docile or something, so within a few days of landing”¦ the sore throat, the sniffles, the cough.

I wish we in the West would adopt that habit of wearing masks when we’re sick; it’s so much more respectful to others.

I’m taking mittfuls of Vitamic C, ginseng, and echinacea, but it’s a bit late for that now. I forgot to take them before flying. Anyone out there have a better suggestion for avoiding this?

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Here’s another thing I’ve been thinking about: For years I’ve essentially been apologising for having been an actor. After going to my theatre department reunion, I’m moved to not do that anymore. It was a damned hard thing to study and to do for a living, and what I learned shaped the person I became, the way I see the world, the way I understand human beings, and the way I use language. It’s a noble profession; the people I know who are still doing it work hard, and I recognise that the writing work I do now — both commercial and creative — is all exactly the same thing.

I used to say “I’m a recovering actor” as a joke, like I was putting on a nametag and joining a meeting. Now I feel proud about having been one, and, if I can make a confession, while I was back in the Maritimes and going to a lot of different theatre shows, I found myself wishing I was doing a little gig for the summer. There’s nothing like a summer stock to give you the lark of a holiday and the camaraderie of an army troupe under fire all in one.

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I’m back, and I’ve had a nap, but it takes more than that to make up for being strapped to a chair all night and carried across several time zones.

I’ve come back feeling much-restored and with a head full of new ideas. I’m happy and excited, but for now… rest.

I’ve got a few pictures, not nearly enough, but I’ll post them soon.

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I’m sitting in the Charlottetown Mall. The food court here is huge, but abandoned, except for about a half-dozen of us who are in here on a summer’s afternoon. The mall is near my old high school; we’d walk over here when we were flush, which wasn’t often.
When I went to Charlottetown Rural, the school was a red brick box. Years ago they decided to spruce it up with a Cubist-Jetsons addition that’s supposed to represent the ocean or somesuch.
~
My travel to Canada went fairly smoothly. I’d forgotten to arrange vegetarian meals, but the stewardess on this Continental flight fell over herself to find me alternatives, bringing three salads and double the number of other items in the in-flight food playset, like buns and apple crumble. Then for the snack, she brought me another salad, more buns and crumble, and a plate full of fruit and so many wedges of cheese I felt I had Secretariat‘s heart beating in my chest. It was as if the woman was afraid of me being in any way unhappy. I can only imagine the Air Canada response to this situation: “Oh well, f*** you.”
I had to stop over in Newark, New Jersey — the first time I’d been on American soil since the whole paranoia state came into being. I wasn’t sure which passport to bring: if I had both on me, they might think I was pulling a Jason Bourne and send me off to some oubliette clink in Cuba. So I just brought my UK passport; my home address is in the UK, so I figured that was safest.
On the contrary: the Homeland Security official in the States said that as a Canadian I could travel hassle-free through the States (this is not what I’d heard nor experienced — I remember my bus stopping at a border station in the middle of pig farms on the border, where my buddy Cosgrove and I were turned back by a nasty guard who couldn’t imagine we might not want to stay in the US). Similarly, the Canadian immigration officer said that a Canadian passport would have meant he couldn’t prevent me from entering Canada. Sensible point.
My connecting flight arrived in Halifax at midnight, touching down in a fog like seafood chowder. I got a shuttle into town easily enough, and was soon travelling through streets I’d long since forgotten. I was dropped off at my hotel, got a key-card from the front desk, and went upstairs to my room, waking up my friend Kirsten. She’d Googled me a few years ago, and we’ve written back and forth just about every day since. Still, it’s always great to see each other in person, and we stayed up late chatting to each other from bed to bed in the hotel room, making each other laugh.
Kirsten was instrumental in getting together a twentieth anniversary reunion of her graduating year from Dalhousie University’s theatre department. Since the program was so small, the invitation was extended to anyone who’d been through the program around that time.
I travel back to the Maritimes each summer to see my folks, so I figured, yeah, what the hell, why not go? But to be honest, I really had nothing at stake in the event. Dalhousie was far in my past, and I didn’t really keep in touch with anyone, I’m not an actor, and I didn’t feel any particular need to revisit those events.
The next day, we met some of the others from Kis’s class for brunch at a little retro-family restaurant out near my grandparents’ old house. I was floored by how… normal her classmates were. Ann runs a series of jewellery stores, Aetna and Paul, brother and sister, run a theatre company, but were so down-to-earth — absolutely not “theatre people” in the least. Aetna’s husband John, who works on film sets, was there, and patiently put up with us reminiscing about how much the program taught us and shaped our subsequent lives.
Even more shocking was that my old schoolmates looked exactly the same.
After lunch, Kis and I wandered around town, picking up some things for the reunion potluck, then went back to our hotel room for a nap. The Halifax air was muggy (as they say in the Maritimes, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity”, and it was), so we set our thermostat to “Freezer Section” and had a rest. From our window, we could see the harbour, where ships with masts and taut white sails like laundry slid slowly along between the commercial freighters.
We got ourselves ready and headed in a cab over to the Dalhousie Arts Centre, an angular hunk of crumbling 1960s concrete design.
As we entered the building, I remembered days and days of hiding in its corners and staircases, trying to finish projects and memorise lines,and the unending weekends of long rehearsals.
We walked into the studio space where we had our classes, and I stepped back into a hundred lessons about probing into a playwright’s words, shaping my voice for speaking and singing, and owning my body as we learned ballet, jazz, and intricate stage blocking
Person after person arrived, and in that moment popped back into existence for me: I’d forgotten many of them. Any guilt about that quickly vanished in the light of getting to see them again and recapture what we’d shared. “Oh you! I liked you!”
And everyone looked great. Like, eerily the same. I’m accustomed to being told “You don’t look your age”, but none of us did, as if we were all part of an experiment, and something about it had kept us vital for all these years.
I was really happy to be there, and to reconnect with all the things I’d learned and experienced during those years. We read speeches some of our profs and classmates sent, and naturally made fun of our professors’ crazy, brutal, hammy, intense manner
isms and methods, but there was no rancour there: we were who we were because of them, and wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.
My class’s turnout was fairly pathetic, but that’s consistent with how we were back then: Kirsten’s class were naughty and fun-loving, organising things for themselves, whereas our group’s attitude was more “What do we have to do?” That’s just how it was, nothing there to fix or change, but it felt appropriate that the reunion was centred around that year, because they represented the peak of the department’s spirit while I was there, culminating in the giant production of Romeo & Juliet whose set contained more staircases than an Escher drawing. Three people broke legs, and we all sustained an amount of emotional abuse from the director. The costumes were elaborate fabric pastries that cinched our young bodies up with lattices of laces.
Videotape of our shows ran on a television in the background; from time to time we’d stop and comment. The funny thing about watching a recording of a performance is that you can remember exactly what was going through your head in that moment. I saw myself walk onstage in R&J, wearing the tight turquoise-and-brocade sausage-casing that had been designed for me, as ‘Paris’, with frilly collar, cuffs, and a bleached-blonde do worthy of Ziggy Stardust. I knew the second I saw it that I would have an actor’s nightmare that night about being back there, having to remember the lines, which my present-day brain couldn’t. (Sure enough, I did have that nightmare.)
My best friend from those days walked in and Kirsten pointed him out to me. To be honest, I was indifferent about that, too. I’d been really stuck on him back then; now I didn’t feel anything, and there was a certain freedom in that. He was excited to see me and made an effort to talk to me throughout the evening, which was nice. He suggested breakfast the next morning, and I didn’t have any other plans, so I agreed.
One by one the alumni left, most of them with spouses or children in tow. The event was heartwarming, not naughty or drunken at all, and the way it tied up was consistent with the groundedness of all the people I’d been reacquainted with. Everyone was just living their lives, some of us creating in theatre, some creating in other domains. There was absolutely no competition, no pressure to prove ourselves or justify what we’d accomplished.
Some of us continued on to a bar and stayed until closing, but I was untouched by the weak Canadian p*ss that passes for beer, and the hour seemed tamely early compared to the pub lock-ins I’d experienced of late in Edinburgh. What got me, though, was the jet-lag.
Getting up in the morning was no big deal. I walked across the city, long-forgotten areas illuminating and connecting again in my mind as I went, and I found the swanky new restaurant where my old friend asked me to meet him. His beautiful wife came in with him — she was meeting a friend here, too. I’d spoken to her the night before and got a very nice vibe; this was no trophy, but a lucid and capable person in her own right.
My buddy Beale and I sat down, ordered some coffee, and chatted politely. Then things switched gears as we started sharing our various theories about things. My universe stopped and split open: oh yeah, that’s why I liked this guy! We exchanged the themes we were working on right now — we’ve both always had some idea or another we were experimenting with — and spoke animatedly over pancakes and eggs about the essential nature of everything. Between the previous night’s reintroduction to the training I’d been through that shaped my adult self and a passionate conversation with this old friend who just got how I see the world, I felt like I’d come to Halifax for a reason. I left Edinburgh feeling stuck about some things, and now they seemed small and miles away in the rearview mirror. My pilot light was relit.
Afterward, as we walked across the Halifax Commons in the burning sun, we agreed that we wished we’d recorded the conversation, because it felt like a big one, an important one, and it would be hard to recreate. He’s my access back into it, though, and me his. It was important to go away and have a life without this person, but I really want to keep in touch with him now. I’ve got a number of “best friends”, even though that superlative would seem to exclude such a thing, but each of them brings something different to my life. I need that.

Beale and I went our different ways for a bit, then had lunch in town. He had an audition that afternoon — as did others from the program, whom we bumped into. I liked Beale’s approach to it all: his career belongs to him, not the people he’s auditioning for. I’m not sure what’s made the difference there; perhaps it’s the fact that he puts on his own production in the summer, The Peggy Show. It’s like me having my micropress: I’m going to see if I can get my latest novel published by someone with the means to do more with it than I can, but if no one wants to, fine, I’ll do it myself. Lord, I’m still auditioning! But the advantage in going at it this way is that you get to do your own work for your own reasons. It’s just a matter of finding people whose vision overlaps with yours. I’m reminded of something someone said to Paul (the one who has a theatre company with his sister, Aetna): “Did you start that because you couldn’t get work?” How can manifesting the whole creative endeavour from start to finish be a lesser activity than going out and landing a job?
Kis and I had dinner with some friends that evening, I met with Beale for a drink later, then I went back to the hotel, where Kis and I stayed up late, laughing, even though her flight the next morning was at an ungodly-early time. I felt guilty staying in bed when she left”¦ but not that guilty. I slept through until it was time to meet my parents, who’d driven over to the mainland to visit an old friend themselves before coming to get me. We had breakfast with Beale, over which we concocted a plan to go see his show when they brought me back over to catch my flight. Then we hit the road.
I love my folks, so it was a pleasure to spend the drive with them, catching up and chatting over the headrest at Mom. We stopped for a coffee at Tim Horton’s, so I had to try their famous coffee, since I’ve heard so much about it and have only recently started drinking the stuff myself. My impression: mocha ashtray.
We crossed through Nova Scotia until we reached the Confederation Bridge, which connects Prince Edward Island to the mainland. We drove onto it, and the height and length of the thing made it disappear off in the distance before us, like a bridge to some other world.
So here I am, on the Island. The summers here are a joy, just barely making up for the hell this place is in winter. Tonight we’re off to a lobster dinner in New Glasgow (not very vegetarian, I know; don’t tell the stewardess), and I’ve got a slate of other favourite Island activities I’m looking forward to. To my surprise, I find myself considering the idea of spending more time here.
OK, this is far too long, and if you got all the way down here, I’m amazed. Thank you. I just wanted to get this out of my head and into storage somewhere. And there’s still lots of holiday left.

The inside pages of my books are just Word documents. “But you used to do design,” I hear you scream (please stop screaming), “how can you do typography and page layout in a word-processing program! Heretic!”
Actually, Word does all the typography I need — styles, sections, page numbering. The one thing I could never get right, though, which always irked me, was justification.
The books I produce from my micropress all have “ragged-right” justification, with a straight left margin but lines that end wherever they happen to end on the right-hand side. Most novels have “full” justification, meaning that the text lines up straight against both margins, with the words balanced between them.
The problem I had with full justification in Word is that, not always, but every once in a while, I’d get a line that ended like this, which I considered unreadable and ugly:
Today I finally found out how to fix this: just hit ENTER after the line. Voila, fixed!
Turns out it was only happening at the end of a chapter because I didn’t put in the final carriage return; the next line was just a page break starting a new chapter, which messed up Word’s sense of how to deal with the line, since it never ended properly.
I’m printing out manuscripts of Finitude in book form, and am thrilled to be able to produce them using a much quicker process because the book is short, and now I can have properly justified paragraphs, too!
Isn’t that exciting? (Humour me here.)

The other night, I went to see Let’s Get Lost, a documentary about the life of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. The friend I went with fell asleep at one point, and I didn’t blame him, because it was a meandering, undirected collection of archive clips about Baker in his young and handsome days then later in his drug-addled ruin, pieces of music set to unrelated film stock, and interviews with musicians who admired him and the many women he”¦ well, basically f*ed over.
Now that my novel is finished, I’m finding it fun to have all my creative energy free to do anything I want, instead of needing it all directed at the book. One of the things I wanted to do was try to sketch Baker ’cause it’s been a long time since I tried sketching, and by the end he was a haggard mess, which should make for a good life study. (That’s another thing: drugs are boring. Amazingly, Baker stayed talented and capable till the end both as a singer and a trumpet player, but when he spoke”¦ my God, the slow, lingering drawl of his junkie voice sounded like it would never find a thought.)
Two things struck me on thinking back about the movie. First, Baker definitely did have something that made him more compelling than other musicians, and it wasn’t technical ability. One of his women, a hard-edged, junk-shaky lounge performer, sang a number and was fine. In terms of vocal ability, she was probably equal to him. But”¦ she was just singing. I wasn’t a fan of Baker’s before this film, but when he sings, it’s like the smoky thought-stuff of a great poem or a dream you get lost in that you keep remembering for half the day. What is that difference?
The other thing that struck me was the bickering between these women over this wreck of a man, who obviously had an ability to mesmerise people, either with his talent or an affected vulnerability. And make no mistake, he was awful to them all, each in a uniquely abusive way. “But,” I thought, “Chet Baker didn’t have a problem. These women had a problem with Chet Baker. But Chet Baker had no problem with Chet Baker.” There’s a lesson in this for me somewhere.
I’m going to the reunion of my university theatre school this week. Chet Baker aged 57 was a frightening sight, and I couldn’t help wondering how I’ve weathered over these last twenty years. I’ve pulled out some pictures from back then and”¦ I think I’m better off now. At least a lot of my pictures from the Eighties have me in costume, sparing posterity from visions of my bad dress sense (which is no better now).
I dunno; I think being an adult suits me better. Not being a junky helps, too.

Phew! I just finished my fourth novel, Finitude. It’s”¦ hmm, I need to work on my elevator pitch. Okay, how about this?
It’s a lighthearted climate change action story about an insurance salesman at the end of the world.
Normally I get all weepy when I finish a book, but with this one I have to say I’m relieved. It’s such a huge freakin’ topic — juggling all the different ideas I had in my head about it and wrangling them into a story was a lot of work!
I’m off to Canada next week for a reunion of the university theatre department I graduated from. It’s well-timed, getting to have a vacation after sorting out my work-work stuff and finishing this book. So I’m taking a wee break before tackling the next issue, which is the question of what to do with this book. Do I go through the whole manuscript submission meat-grinder process again, or do I jump straight into publishing it through my own micropress?
I’m open to suggestions. Informed ones, that is: Don’t say “Have you tried [X]?” if X is a publishing house — like Edinburgh’s Canongate — who don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts. Now, if you have a cousin who’s an agent or a pal who’s an editor, let me buy you a beer.

I strung up a line this morning and hung my washing out in my rose-scented garden. Lately I’ve been keeping my window open, loving the feel of the breeze coming through the chipped old white pane. Last night I even slept with it open, and the cool night air was delicious.
It’s time for me to make my life a bit more wholesome. (Mom, stop reading.) It’s been rather unwholesome of late, mostly in reaction to things going badly in my personal life. There’s a point, though, where too much of that living mucks with my brain chemistry and skews my priorities.
So I’ve deleted my dating site memberships, and figure I’m taking a month off from ‘gay’, with a possible extension to the whole summer. Maybe it’s silly and idealistic, but the current state of things certainly hasn’t been bringing me joy. (Okay, brief bouts of joy, but nothing lasting.) I’m tired of being kicked in the nuts by people I’ve let into my heart, right when I’m having fun and not expecting it. And there’s so much else I could be doing with the time I spend reacting to this stuff, like making art, not treating my friends as also-rans, or being out in the world instead of trying to score attention from virtual people.
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Meanwhile, I’m re-reading my novel Finitude and making small edits, because I only have one chapter left to write and want to make sure it’s in keeping with everything that’s gone before. It’s not for me to say, but, dammit, I like it. And every single day I see at least one thing mentioned in the news that I touch on in this story; it’s time for it to be out there.
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Freud was once asked the secret to a happy life, to which he replied “Love and work.” Those are the two things I generally try not to talk about on here, but since I’ve already talked about one, I might as well get the other off my chest.
One of the things I was being hush-hush about was a copywriting gig I took on the side. That was published this past week. The end result looks amazing, and the client was over the moon about my work, which was a much-needed boost — finding out that others out there could respond with the same kind of enthusiasm about what I love to do as my existing client has in the past — because there’s always that one stray thought that maybe you just managed to fool them, but couldn’t fool someone else. I haven’t been writing for the main client for several months (I’ve been working on another project), and that was getting under my skin.
So I had a conversation with my editor about where my work with them is headed, because at the core I’m a creative person, and I need my work to be creative. It’s a conversation several people advised me not to have, since it could jeopardise my main source of income, but I had to have it. I’m not someone who can fake it in my relationships to any degree. Plus, these are amazing people for whom I have endless respect — based now on ten years’ worth of proof — so it seemed to me I was underestimating them by not trusting them to ‘get’ it. But they did, and now instead of dealing with this schism in my head about work, there’s a new possibility for bigger things. Phew!

Poor wee gastropods keep slithering across the path leading to my house, and it’s nearly impossible to distinguish them from shrivelled leaves until I feel that sickening crunch underfoot. I look, and there’s yet another creature with its brittle shell shattered and driven into its slimy flesh. I’m sorry.
Last night I went out on a household emergency, buying loo-roll since we were nearly out. The corner store didn’t have our flavour of Andrex, so I bought the one they had that was the closest approximation. It has puppies on it, and features this as its Unique Selling Proposition. I don’t know what product development person managed to push this product through, but contrary to whatever market research they did, I really, really don’t want to wipe my @rse with a puppy! And look how they show it, holding out a paw like it’s offering itself up as a sacrifice. “I know I’m cute and adorable, but I also realise that you have needs, great human master.”
Sick.
Now if it were a kitten, sure.
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Most of my life right now is going on in my head (like Chapter 17 of Finitude, which is underway), so I haven’t anything to report.

Yeah, I know, it’s been forever.

Isn’t it funny how the stuff I shouldn’t write about here is exactly the kind of dirt that people want most? Still… no. There’s some of it I’d really like to crow about, but it would not be a good idea.

Meanwhile, I’m back into my novel and getting very close to finishing. I’ll be asking for input about that project soon.

And my brother has driven across Canada! So in lieu of actually presenting interesting content myself, I will direct those with reading needs over to his blog.

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This morning my brother and his family got in their new van and drove away from my parents’ place, off to the Yukon. Ian applied for — and got — a social work position up there, inspired after attending a conference in Whitehorse (also in the Yukon).
It’s a big adventure for them, one they could never pass up, and so many things lined up to help them on their way that none of us doubts this is the right thing for them to do. I’ve been there myself, hearing the call to move somewhere else (I arrived in the UK seven years ago this month), yet it’s funny knowing that my bro will be so far away.
It’s strange for my parents, too, who’ve been used to having Ian’s family around on weekends a lot of the time (there’s so much more going on in Charlottetown than out in the country where they lived). And my nephew has been staying with them for the past two years, working, then studying photography in town.
It’s a big change for Ellen’s family, too: her parents are now living in a home, which is no doubt better for them, but the time finally came to sell the family farm. It had been handed down for generations, and for Ellen it was always “home”. When Ian and she decided to build a house, they built on the land next door. Ellen’s brother will be staying in their house, but the farm had to go.
It’s a silly comparison, but I can’t help thinking of the bit in Anne of Green Gables when Anne and Marilla are faced with the prospect of having to sell the farm. “But you can’t sell Green Gables!” Anne protests. Apparently you can.
It’s not good to resist the call to adventure, though. Hero stories from around the world, throughout time, all agree on this. (And in my eyes, with the social work my brother has done, much of it on behalf of disadvantaged families, I think of him as a hero.) I can’t wait to see the pictures and read the tales of my brother and his family settling in and working in a remote part of the country that so few Canadians ever visit. Ian has experience working with the First Nations community, and this new post will involve a lot more of that work.
In the summer, apparently Dawson is a major tourist destination. If Prince Edward Island has its Green Gables and Edinburgh has its castle, Dawson City has memories of the gold rush to bank on. Ellen and Andrew’s work will probably be related to that.
I see my parents no less now than I did when I lived in Toronto — maybe even more often. But I guess I’d always selfishly counted on my brother and my sister to be there for them. So this is a change, and like any change it’s a bit scary. But the fears are all imagined and the good things about our family are real. If experience shows us anything, it’s that things just work out for us.
So, Godspeed, bro!