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Last night I went with the gang to a club night here in Edinburgh called “Vegas”. It’s a self-consciously retro night with showgirls, Rat Pack music — the whole megillah. I’m not a clubby person by nature, but it was a great night out.

The venue is bizarre — sulphurous-smelling brick vaults beneath the Old Town. I love those old spaces, but the flashy nightclub clashed with the dark underworld feel of the place. Somehow, though, it worked. The atmosphere was really friendly, too; I think that’s because nearly everyone there made an effort, they didn’t just roll in off the street. The girls were dressed to the nines in shimmery dresses with moulting boas, and the men were at their gangsterish, swingery best.

It occurred to me yesterday as I was out and about preparing for this that how I experience the day is really given by the story I’m telling myself about it. I know this is called “narrative psychology” and is nothing new, but in that moment I really got it. I told myself that I was having a Big Day, celebrating my life in progress, which is a pretty good one, and the rest of the day really did go like that.

I managed to take some pictures.

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Puny humans! I scoff at your portions!

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p>No, you’re not going to find me written up on The Smoking Gun. I just had this scary serial killer snapshot taken in a little photo booth today, then mailed off my passport application. It’s totally non-news, but I want to keep the blog from going into hibernation.

It’s chilly in Edinburgh. Usually the rain here just blows around and suggests precipitation, but lately when it’s rained the rain is wet. Yesterday it even snowed, and the flakes were huge and hit my face like big, wet mittens.

Lately I’m eating like Brundlefly — all kinds of sugary junk. And last night after leading the second session of my writing workshop (gosh, I like the people in it), we went out for pints and all I ate was crisps and peanuts. Come to think of it, I’m drinking an awful lot, too. Having pints in a pub is the default post-event activity, and when I’m hanging out with people I like — which I’ve been doing a lot lately — I just want to stay and keep going. It’s fun but it’s a bad habit on a schoolnight! I can’t help it, though, ’cause my social life is quite healthy just now, and there are all kinds of people in my life I have friend-crushes on. They’re just cool.

That’s all. Nothing else to say at the moment.

When people say “Smile! Smile!” and take a long time pressing the button on the camera, my face goes into weird contortions. But there we have it: it’s official! If you ignore my stupid head, you can kinda see that they gave us really nice heather and tartan boutonnieres, as well as our certificates.

I was grateful for having Philip and Patrick there with me. They were my first two mates when I came to the country, and I’m happy that we’re still good friends.

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Last night I went to The Golden Hour, a performance night at The Forest Cafe. I had to squeeze into a chair in a corner, and my “Crowds annoy me!” thing started to kick in, but I stuck around ’cause my new friend Sandra Alland was performing in the second act.

Sandra’s a poet (as well as another ex-pat Canadian), but last night she was trying something a little different, combining her poetry with music provided by her friend Y Josephine. Together they called themselves “The Zorras”, and the end result was something I can only compare to the work of Laurie Anderson — beats and music and thoughts and emotions, raw but breaking easily and often through to humour, tickling and hooking my ear with sound patterns and original thoughts. The set was a polished and high-energy treat, and the room broke into cheers and whistles and applause when they finished.

I know it’s cheating, but God it’s easy to love my friends when they demonstrate how talented they are at something they care about.

The Zorras were followed by a large, stringy-haired guy in thick glasses who called himself “Pockets” and came up onstage with a ukulele held together with shipping tape with red words on it — not “Fragile”, but something like that. My initial response was “Ohhhh-kay,” but then he started to play that thing like it was a proper guitar, and he rocked the house.

Actually, he started his set by saying, “After I play this first number, you’re going to want to go out and buy a ukulele tomorrow.” And he was right.

But I’ve got other stuff to do. Ooh, like get ready for my citizenship ceremony.

Tomorrow is my UK citizenship ceremony!

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After sitting doing nothing in Halifax for five hours, I’m now faced with the prospect of having to run across the airport in Montreal to catch my flight to London. There’s an infant in the row behind me on this airplane and it likes to howl — exactly the sort of soul-slicing sound that would get me arrested for air rage.

But I’m sitting in Executive Class, being given all the nibblies and beer I want. Normally I wouldn’t be fussed about Heineken, but right now it’s doing a lot to alleviate my anxiety about getting to Montreal in time for my next flight. And you know what? If I don’t it’s Air Canada’s problem, because they’re labouring under the impression that I’m an executive, and will make arrangements for me. I see why people pay for this.

I’m also watching a program about some British guy who’s had himself dropped into the Everglades to demonstrate survival techniques. Instead of admiring him, I can’t help thinking, “Asshat!”

We’re descending now. Let’s see how this goes.

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Yes! I’m walking from one flight right onto another.

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Aww, darn. No cryo-pod, just a great big seat. still, it’s better than a kick in the head.

I had a nice conversation with a big, burly, yet shy gentleman who sat next to me on the last flight and was making the connection with me to this one. He’s lived all around the world, and now lives in Saudi Arabia. Given that he also once lived in Aberdeen, I’m thinking “oil”. People’s stories are interesting. And this whole listening business feels like a good habit.

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Machines don’t work well in the cold. We’re still on the tarmac in Montreal, suffering from some sort of electrical issue, after waiting 15 minutes for a plane that was blocking our route to the de-icing station.

Waiting is boring and a waste of time, but I don’t mind this so much because this is where I’m supposed to be; there’s nothing this is making me late for — especially since I have a five-hour wait to go from London to Edinburgh.

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I’m reading Whitman while eating strawberries, bread, and cheese, suspended impossibly, impossibly high in the air.

Here’s a passage: “Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travellers, Canada, the snows”. Canada, the snows. There’s much more to it than that; even I feel compelled to assert this, despite my gladness at having just escaped the snows.

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The moon sits in an azure sky with her distant cousin Venus just above a quilt of clouds stretched over the curve of the earth. The horizon is yellow into fiery orange-red.

The stewardesses are collecting the breakfast trays. I didn’t eat because my guts hurt. Every time I get on one of these high-altitude flights I feel myself inflate like some kind of antique pressure-measuring device made of pig bladder covered with badly-sealed balloon mouths.

I did sleep in my big reclining chair. And I was served on dishes, not in little puzzle-boxes. Everything in Executive class is a little better, and none of the improvements goes without being pointed out, which takes the gift out of it. And it’s only a bit better: yes, there’s a free wash-kit, but the toothbrush handle is like a plastic tongue-depressor, and feels like it might snap. When the head stewardess introduces herself at the beginning of the flight and offers her services, it’s from a list and she’s making the rounds. The checkbox duty of it kills any goodwill.

So this was a nice change, but not thousands and thousands of dollars nice. It’s too hot in here (as most Canadian buildings were for me).

I want to not be travelling. A few hours, a few hours.

Meanwhile, let’s enjoy the beautiful view up here of insubstantial, empty cloud continents between this airplane and the earth — endless unpopulated dunes of white sugar.

I can’t imagine anymore how anyone lives in a place where the weather has so much power over your life! Prince Edward Island was completely snowed in today, so though I was supposed to fly out, the day became instead a game of booked and rebooked flights, until this evening when I was waiting for a flight to Halifax in a dark but not-too-snowdrifty evening, and my flight was cancelled. Oh, it wasn’t because of the weather; they’d sent a crew person over who was now fatigued, and could not be asked to work another flight — even though the journey to Halifax lasts twenty minutes, which isn’t enough time for the trolley-dolleys to actually do anything.

But nevermind. I’d been cranky and temper-tantrumy today — in that way we can only be towards our parents, even though they’re the last people to deserve it. You see, it was my parents’ fault for choosing to live on this God-forsaken little Arctic outpost of an Island.

Having said goodbye to them this evening, thinking I wouldn’t see them until at least next summer, I thought, “The measure of a man is how he behaves under stress.” I wasn’t happy with my behaviour today. When my flight was cancelled, I found I couldn’t muster any indignation or upset. Sure, Air Canada totally screwed up on what was already a stressful day, but instead I got another chance to hang out with my parents and my nephew, whom I love (my brother and sister-in-law have already gone back “Up West”).

The hardest part of missing my connections is that I’d been upgraded to Executive Class from Halifax to Heathrow. Instead of trying to sleep sitting upright in a chair like a plank of wood, I was going to finally experience one of the fancy cryo-pods I’ve been walking past on my way back to the Steerage compartment.

But wait! When I called the hotline number to rebook my flight, it turned out that by upgrading me to an Executive ticket, Wendy here at the Charlottetown Airport twice-blessed me, because that meant I got to skip the queue (which, I heard on leaving the airport, could be from three to ten days’ wait for another flight) and get booked out tomorrow. And… I’m in Executive Class on the overseas leg of my journey. Wahey!

So it’s time to have a late dinner and a big ol’ drink with my beloved folks. This long day is done.