The other evening when visiting friends on Saltspring we all, en masse, watched an instructional video on swimming. I was surprised at how captivating it was. The audience of all kinds of ages were impassioned with views on the content, on the science, on the fashion and more.  The night before we had watched a BBC Sherlock Holmes film (filmed I swiftly noted in Dublin) so perhaps were in the mind of investigating every detail.

The farm we stayed on had a long history. I was particularly captivated by an older out building which had at one time and for a long time housed the farm workers (Japanese workers and orphans from Victoria according to a history book chapter our hosts gave me). I clambered into its rickety and collapsing lookin structure to explore. There were two buildings in fact and both of them were curious. You could see the pantry arrangement and some remnants of the bunks. There was a big old geysir in the bathroom of one house and a lovely looking old Stanley style range. That house had been habitable up until 1986. It bought home to me how quickly dwellings dilapidate when there’s no one to live in them and upkeep them and give them a reason to stand up. Also the small spaces groups of workers inhabited and I wondered how at the end of a hot day of intense physical labour how they kept their heads about them in such close proximity to each other.