Saturday 27 July 2006

Halifax Airport, Nova Scotia
Waiting here for my 75-minute delayed but mercifully direct flight back to Glasgow. It took me 11 and a half hours to fly here via London and St Johns; it will take me 5 hours to go to back.

My experience of Canadian airport security staff as being thorough but entertaining continues. After finding every piece of metal about my person, they offered me a share of their watermelon and a napkin. That's a new one. 

Today started with another spectacular breakfast from Patty: blueberry pancakes (wild blueberries from a few miles down the road) with orange butter, raspberries melon and orange, thick plain yogurt and maple syrup. Olympic standard I think. By the next time I visit they'll have moved house, so it was a sad farewell to them and to my four bed ward and its history of sick sailors.

The Wills family gave me a lift to Halifax, which was a chance to share our knowledge of British comedy, Radio 4 podcasts, Ivor Cutler and Daniel Johnston, and to play the word game which my daughter Susie and I have developed over the last few months. In its simplest form, it just involves two people improvising a sentence by saying alternate words, but it has now developed a series of arcane rules about how often you can incorporate key words such as 'explode' or 'doom' (following 'of'). As today progressed, the game became more and more baroque, drawing in most of the Greenberg family in their sunny back garden, and it also acquired rules about when you could say the word 'arse', and when you could get thrown out of the hammock for violations of game etiquette. Hours of hysterical laughter followed by an afternoon nap seemed like a good way to recover from last night's gig and a very late night.

Once my teaching was finally completed yesterday, and I'd succeeded in buying presents to take home, I went along to rehearse a couple of tunes with Chris and the guys (DG, Andy and Nick in this case). I was pretty done in, but it was very nice indeed to be in their musical company. Nick beat me to the Casavant organ for once, so he provided celestes and bourdons and I played the United church's new Yamaha upright piano. We had the last spot in the gig after Rod Garnett, Paddy Keenan and Kevin Crawford, and Jean Michel Veillon. I've never been introduced to an audience as 'one of the UK's best ... legs' before. I was wearing my kilt and just wandered onto the stage in time to distract Chris. He continued with 'one of the UK's best ... arses' before I stopped him in his tracks. In the unholy jam session that ended the show, DG's contribution was for the two of us to break into his ragtime tune 'Dad's Day 87' which in the middle of an Irish Jig was pretty funny. And despite coming in on a set of jigs for the first time ever, Marten's face only radiated total comfort and relaxation. Similarly when on the melodica I made a point of smiling across at other members of the ensemble whenever I found myself in the wrong key or otherwise lost. A bit like Lisa Milne's strategy, which I hope she won't mind me repeating here, of 'When you forget the words, smile and point at someone in the audience'.

It was back to the Lunenburg Fire Hall for the last time after the gig for a couple of beers, lots of conversation, and about an hour of saying goodbyes to people - I walked back through the town in the fog and made it to bed before 3.

Well, here I am at the airport after a week of very hard pretty much non-stop work, rewarded by some perfect hospitality and a pretty constant stream of nice people telling me how great I am: one conversation last night actually included 'But David, you are a god', which isn't an possibility I'd ever considered before, or ever will again. I blame the beer. When I get off the plane in the morning, I'll be back to being a normal run-of-the-mill pleb with responsibilities and a complicated life. But I get to see my family again! Woo hoo!