I just visited my first Vancouver High School in the role of selecting one. What a terrifying experience. It reminded me of documentaries I’ve seen on American prisons or those industrial photographs from Chinese factories or well, yes, the military.
It was massive! These endless lines of lockers, identical blue doors and it was empty, so I have to try and imagine what they are like full.
Perhaps this goes someway to explaining the large number of novels in this country that invoke or refer to High School, something that previously perplexed me, now understood.
We did locate the vending machine — certainly a priority! And I was impressed by a room that said knitting club on Mondays. I was completely unprepared for how big these places are. Clearly they need to make more films about Canadian high schools to educate people like me through popular culture, however then I’d have to also watch the films that were made. .. thus I propose one film about a knitting club in high school that shows how big these places are to those of us who haven’t attended them.
“These people are not crackpots or loons.”
The long-term risk of dying from donating a kidney is no greater than for anyone of a similar age who has not had a kidney removed.
Paul Gibbs, consultant transplant surgeon for Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth, has performed nearly 200 kidney transplants. Speaking about altruistic donors, he said: “These people are not crackpots or loons; they are very normal yet extraordinary individuals. They come from all walks of life: men, women, young and old.”
I am thrilled to see people arriving at my blog with “weather” related search terms and especially Vancouver weather related inquiries. Yes! I have landed as a weather forecaster (or rather past-caster). To this end I note today as a perfect Autumn (Fall) day. Fresh bit of wind, dry, snatches of sunshine to be got. Ruddy cheeked freshen up weather!
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The overnight lows are falling. We wait in anticipation of the promised La Nina freeze yer arse off winter. I must find some good online thermal links. Get out the knitting needles. I am convinced much malaise can be dissipated by the gentle act of knitting.
Parking
My favourite moment from our continuing 3D costume tradition was when he parked. Later he turned on the fog lights also.
What a rare old weather day … sun with bluster that became bluster with eye assault… which dipped to cold to colder and foggy cold was the final note. The most distinctive bout of fog so far this Autumn/winter season which my son insisted was not fog at all but gunpowder.
A very Sherlock Holmes finish to Halloween evening. I lacked my usual stamina for traipsing door to door and did a short bit with the family and left to knit with Lori, while the boyos and Grandma carried on.
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This afternoon at the prostate clinic I was reassured to see a couple of other young women, an old man with pigtails (not a Halloween costume) until finally a poor fella was rolled up on a bed with only a quarter of an oxygen tank remaining. I offered that he should go ahead of me and then worried the entire appointment about his oxygen tank expiring while the Dr. talked to me because somehow he didn’t jump the queue as I hoped he might. Due to this excessive worrying I now have a sheet of paper for some kind of test and have no idea what it’s for, so will take it to the lab for some translating.
Urologic Science reminds me so much of St Pancreas train station in London. I think you’d have to have been there to understand the connection. But the strident looking trains getting set to depart to the North remind me off the patients who exit from their appointments with good news, the handshake from the Dr and six-month-to one-yearly check up appointment. They skip out of there. Perhaps it was a good clinic today, since multiple skippers exited. But there’s the returns and the one-way tickets in there also. Co-incidentally I saw a man out on the street before I went in who had the look of Jack Layton about him and I had a bit of a Jack moment remenbering that it still seems astonishing that he’s dead and not say, leaning on a cane or climbing stairs in Ottawa.
I am lucky as they seem to have figured out my problem. The care is excellent in that clinic. (They also use Macs..) Canadian Health Care at its best. I won’t have a bad word said against our health care system.