The Time Traveller's Diary

Thursday 6^th May, 2010 09:30 Entry No. 193,865

The wind still blows off the North Sea . The cold never really goes. It’s a funny bloody spring. I’m reading a novel at the moment, Wolf Hall, in which the cold Tudor spring described within must have felt like this. The weathermen say it has been a long cold winter and that spring is slow in coming. They aren’t wrong. No matter, we are off to Vancouver tomorrow morning – to spend almost three weeks on the other side of the world - a different continent, different coast, different ocean, different climate. But first, we have to vote!

Friday 7^th May 2010 11:30 Entry No. 193,866

In the unprecedented confusion of the British political climate, during a spring where the leaves still haven’t appeared on the trees, we cast our vote, then drove south to Gatwick where a bed & breakfast booking close to the airport awaited our arrival. Note: There is something very 1970s about Gatwick Airport, and the surrounding conurbation - the B&Bs, the concrete carparks, the dilapidated gangways and the undersized Departure Hall, tinged with sadness and Helvetica signage.

The election results are in but still no one knows who has actually won – not the candidates we voted for, that’s for sure, but then they never do!

Friday 7^th May 2010 20:00 Entry No. 193,867

Gained a day or lost a day? That is the question. Left Gatters (LGW) at 1300, arrived Vancouver (YVR) 1500 same day. WTF! Day gained, but also lost due to spending 10 hours of it in an aluminium tube defying time at 800kph and 35,000 feet.

Met by Mum and Dad at YVR – They’re Aussie-born Canucks. He’s 80+, she’s 75ish, but they both behave a bit like 25 years olds - talking all at once, driving devilishly through the Vancouver traffic, dressing in jeans. Good to see one’s parents after a year or so; it's nice to be with people who occasionally refer to one as “The Little Fella”, despite one being the eldest and well over 50 to boot!

Monday 10^th May 2010 22:30 Entry No. 193,872

All four of our feet ache, as we have just walked most of the way around the heart of the Olympic City of Vancouver, British Columbia. We strolled along the shoreline promenade that leads into the city centre from the West End. I discover that Vancouver has well and truly embraced the 21st century since I was last here (two weeks in 1998 – last century!) Green glassed towers, like a stand of Douglas Firs, march down to the waterfront, reflecting the forest-clad mountains of the North Shore on the other side of Burrard Inlet. All is new. The sun is shining; spring is upon Vancouver. But all the walking has made me tired. I am very sleepujhtttttttt

Tuesday 11^th May 2010 08:00 Entry No. 193,873

Sorry, I fell asleep writing this journal last night. Exhausted by walking. Where was I? Oh yes... I discovered that 21st century Vancouver ends exactly at the entrance to Gastown, the old part of downtown that was done up in the 70s when old parts of cities were being restored and made into tourist havens. Gastown is full of tourist tat – stuffed beavers, bears, mounties and Indianwear. Then, in the blocks beyond Gastown we walked into the Past – West Hastings St. - AKA Skid Row. The 'Rubbity-dubs', as my dear, politically incorrect and unintentionally redneck, folks call the down-and-outs, have been corralled into a ghetto of poverty, drugs, deprivation, violence and handouts, just a few blocks east of the sparkling hi-rise forest. The most common vehicle we saw as we walked brisquely to escape the ‘neighbourhood of nought,’ were shopping trolleys, some piled high with worldly possessions, others overflowing with bottles and cans bound for one of the huge cash-back recycling depots hidden down the darkly unfashionable alleys of the East End. Out of these movie-set back roads, dozens of shadowy figures - the down and outs (rubbity dubs), patrol aimlessly, a bit like the zombies of old I note, before zombies were given the 'run-fast, rage' treatment in 28 Days Later.

Through a pungent aroma of cannabis and vomit, we emerged safely into the vast clearing on the north side of False Creek that is soon to become another forest of glass and steel. A futuristic skytrain silently swooshed overhead. Vancouver is going green, has a transport infrastructure, and with a great recycling ethos, has found something for its poor to do in their spare time.

Friday 14th May 2010 17:45 Entry No. 193,885

Bus to the bottom of Seymour Street. Walk down the Gangway to the Seabus dock. Board the ferry. Cross the harbour to Lonsdale Quay. This is where I used to live during my time in Vancouver, back in the 1970s. I lived at various addresses in this suburban heartland at the foot of the Coastal range. Hollyburn, The Lions, Grouse and Mt Seymour – these were the mountains that formed the backdrop to my late teens and early twenties. Lower Lonsdale village was where I think I was happiest. It was where I was hippiest, that’s for certain. My girl and I lived in a couple of different apartments on the North Shore, but our last and finest abode was a shared house on East First Street. It was a big joint and we colonised it with us, her 10 year old son and her sister, my two younger brothers, one of my brothers’ girlfriends, and my best mate. Plus, at various times throughout the two years we lived there, we also housed a morbidly obese book collector; a pyramid-worshipping cabbie; a very straight fisheries officer and his wife; a Psycotic Persian refugee from the Ayatolla’s regime; a sexy, but suspicious, black glamour model, and, because my girlfriend was a First Nations person, an endless number of Indians from various reservations and communities around BC.

The neighbourhood has changed a bit since I lived there. More buildings and nice trees have grown, but it has less of a village atmosphere. Gone is the iconic Seven Seas floating restaurant, and the Alice and the Olympic – the two rough pubs – are both no more – sadly, the edge has dulled on Lower Lonsdale.

Tuesday 18th May 2010 07:00 Entry No. 193,922

Quick entry – we are driving north this morning – destination: a one-horse town in the interior of British Columbia; we are going to visit my old girlfriend’s family who I haven’t seen for over twenty five years. This is a journey tinged with nostalgia and sadness, as I only recently discovered that she passed away suddenly a few years ago. Her family have invited me to visit as a way of reconnection with the memory of their beloved sister, and so, accompanied by my current partner and my parents, we drive north, into my past. (As a footnote to this journey - I only became a Facebook friend with some of my Ex’s family a few months prior to this visit, after losing contact with them for nigh on 25 years. I am astonished by the way our modern technology has enabled me to link up with my past in such a tangible way. Now I really am feeling like a time traveller).

Thursday 20th May 2010 19:00 Entry No. 193,923

Now sitting in a luxurious hotel room at the foot of Whistler Mountain, where the Winter Olympics have recently been staged. Looking out the window I can see clouds of mist flit over the ski runs which are still snow-covered and open for business in late May. Privately, I can reflect on our brief but emotional visit with my Indian ex-in-laws on their remote family ranch, high in the eastern foothills of the rugged coastal range. Their land is a land of sage brush, ponderosa pines, wood rail fences, cattle, creeks, and marble canyons - cowboy country, where eagles soar and 'heesh'* dwell in the hollows and high country.

My Dad, once a keen skier, keeps reminding me how much Whistler has changed. Indeed it has - I barely recognise it as the rustic, hard to get too place, where we skied so enthusiastically in the early 70’s when our family were newly arrived in Canada. It was a time when double denim and cowboy hats were considered tres-cool ski attire. Now speaking of fashionable ski-wear - I noted today, a couple of snowboarder dudes slinking through the apré ski village toward the gondola. One of ‘dem’ is wearing the lowest ‘batties’ I ever seen (sic), the crotch hanging barely a foot from the ground with half his arse crack and all his underpants totally on view. If nothing else it will be cold when he wipes out. The young of today… huh?

Tuesday 25^th May 2010 09:30 Entry No. 194,001

We leave this afternoon. It has been a good trip, I think. I’ve sorted some important pieces of my personal jigsaw and spent a goodly amount of quality time with my parents, who show no sign of aging, what with their own PCs and their state-of-the-art home entertainment centre with HD telly and a subwoofer so big they daren’t use it in case they piss off the neighbours.

The calm waters of the Straits of Georgia (the expanse of salt water that lays between the mainland and Vancouver Island) sparkle in the late May sun. Dad tells me they are thinking of renaming the Straits  “The Salish Sea,” in honour of the First Nations race who are the original inhabitants of the region – it sounds like a good name to me, after all, WTF is Georgia?

Looking forward to getting back to the UK to see what has come of the elections and all that…

Thursday 27^th May 2010 23:30 Entry No. 194,002

Oh. My. God. Call me Rip Van Bloody Winkle if you like. I feel like I’ve been away for 20 years – Late spring sunshine and a warm spell have turned the bare English countryside into a leafy jungle. But the real shocker is the Government… it has coalesced into a bizarre blend of the left and right with a strange feeling of retro-doom in the air - it's the only way I can describe the queasy fear of neo-Thatcherism that seems to lurk in the back of many minds. Is the UK to be plunged into a 1980s-style 'Anti-society' with every man for himself? A free-enterprise free for all? Is a consensual coalition really going to work? I have no idea. In one way I dearly hope it does work… but in another...Mmmm… I've seen Zombieland, for that is what we could end up with - rubbity dubs and all.

On my finger I now wear a magic silver ring, engraved with Native Indian designs. It was given to me at YVR, just before we went through security, by lady called Bonnie Eaglenest. She knew me when I was her late Aunt’s fella, way back in 1980, when she herself was only 10 years old. The 40 year old Bonnie had rushed to the airport to meet me at the last minute. She handed me the ring, hugged me, said it was great to see me again after all these years and that I was a crucial, missing piece in her own jigsaw. Then she went. With that, we said farewell to my parents, entered the time travellers’ queue, and were soon beyond the bounds of earth.

*Heesh – Secwepemc: Ghosts and spirits