Canada in instalments: 1 Port Edmonton

Canada is big. You will hear a lot of that in this travelogue. The country is big. The mountains and the lakes are big. Animals are bigger than our equivalents of them. People are big and they are also big-hearted. Following in this tradition, Port Edmonton is big too. You don’t know where it begins and where it ends. It just sits there in the windswept and open plains, which may be prairies, or may not be prairies at all, but they are vast, flat, blanketed with weather-beaten grasses and punctured with coniferous trees. So to me that equates prairies. Port Edmonton is sprawled in the middle of that vastness.

Whilst there, our wonderful hosts took us back in time to Port Edmonton of the yesteryear. You might think that there is no history to speak of in Canada and you might even be excused in thinking that any trip back in time will take you straight to the Stone Age. But you will be wrong. Take a look at this little gem of the Wild (Canadian) West:

 

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Bad hairday brushed off

Daughter and I were having a bad hairday. Something had to be done. I went to a hairdresser. Daughter went to a witch doctor. We are both happy.

Survival of the fittest

It is a constant battle between Dog and Husband. Husband wants to eat his dinner. Dog, too, wants to eat Husband’s dinner. Husband is not having the bitch have it her way (yes, the dog is actually a bitch, or to put it nicely, she is a girl-dog). So the battle of wills commences…

At first Dog approaches Husband in a casual manner.

Dog:’Daddy, why don’t we share your dinner?’

Husband: ‘I don’t think so.’

Then it becomes more forceful. Dog: ‘Come Dad, don’t be selfish! Look at me, you bugger!’

Slowly it transforms into blatant begging. ‘Daddy, daddy, spare me a chunk of beef! Pleeeeaaase… I’ll love you forever!’

Husband: ‘Go away, Dog! It’s MY dinner!’ As an only-child, Husband is unfamiliar with the idea of sharing his property.

Finally Dog adopts a new approach. She begins to look rather faint and dizzy.

Dog: ‘Daddy, I fear I may faint … I’m starving… If I don’t make it, Daddy, you can have my toy bone. If only I got a morsel off your plate, I could just make it…’

Husband won’t surrender his dinner. It’s a matter of life or death for him. For both of them. But that’s only until the last crumb is polished off the pate. Then they are friends all over again.

Introducing Mango, the dog

Mango has been rescued from a kill shelter in the depths of Romania by a bunch of enthusiasts from Trowbridge. She is now part of our family, or what she would say: a member of our wolf pack.

Chewing on everything and anything that moves (or stays still) she has grown over the two months of living with us and now takes up much more space than originally. Unfortunately, she has eaten her bed so her time is spent under Daughter’s piano stool:

I appear to be the pack leader (in Mango’s eyes); Husband and Daughter are just gang members, and they get trampled over, jumped upon and chewed at the ankles. All is good (until Husband decides to put his foot down).

Mango and I bonding before bed:

 

Oh, I do love to be beside the seaside!

Went to Burnham-on-sea to recharge the batteries because, let me tell you, I’m hardly a Duracell-man (or -woman, as the case may be). My batteries had been running low for a while, especially after a few near-lethal short circuits experienced this year.

So we went paddling by the boats –

Head-butting the goats –

Sitting on a fence –

Losing common sense –

Being swept away –

Calling it a day –

Metamorphosis

Yesterday, Daughter morphed into a Teenager. A day to remember! It was a very loud and rowdy affair, but then what would you expect from eight unruly teenage girls let loose on town? They trampolined in the close proximity of a bunch of pimply teenage boys, oozed hormones, flicked their long hair, posed and strutted, stuffed their faces with pepperoni pizzas and hallucinogenic sweets and finally collapsed in a heap in the early hours of the morning.

It wasn’t long ago when Daughter was just a small pink person with a milk bottle permanently attached to her lips, enthusing about a tiny snowman in a flowerpot.

Little Daughter

It wasn’t long ago when she stood pensive in her school uniform, holding a princess lunch-box, ready (or maybe not) for her first day at school.

Daughter goes to school

And now she is a teenager, full of attitude, and so very beautiful. And the story goes on…

Butterfly Daughter