Penny wise, pound foolish

A short trip to Vancouver to meet up with Luna, who’s travelling around North America and has arrived in La La Land (the term coined in eastern Canada for Vancouver back in the sixties when it was the hippy heaven Canadian equivalent of San Francisco). Mike has warned that I should get a reservation on the ferry, but I’m convinced I can save $15 by just getting there early.

Arrive at the Nanaimo terminal an hour and a half before the 3:10 ferry. It’s full. I will, the attendant tells me, be lucky to get on the 5:20. Bollocks. I’m supposed to be meeting up with Catherine tonight to go out for dinner and explore the Heights (my new neighbourhood). No mobile phone, so I go off in search of a payphone. Ring her mobile, which goes to voicemail, leave message. Spend four hours at the ferry terminal, reading my book and wishing I hadn’t stripped my computer of all its games. The 5:20 arrives half an hour late. Mine is the third last car to get on it. Phew. Try to use the payphones on the ferry, but they won’t accept my credit card. Still don’t know if Catherine got my first message. If not, she’ll be arriving at my place at 6:30 and I won’t be there. Bugger. Go to the top deck for a smoke. Spot a hairy biker sending a text message on his mobile. Ask if he would possibly allow me to use it to make a call. Get hold of Catherine at home. Tell her I will ring as soon as I get to the flat in Burnaby. She laughs when I tell her how galling it is to admit Mike was right.

It’s 8:30 by the time Catherine gets to my place. She’s already eaten (don’t blame her). We go for a wander. Yes, I’m pleased to see, the Heights area does have quite a lot on offer, including a couple of really good restaurants (the best one of which is, unfortunately, closed for its summer holiday). Good butchers, good fishmonger, interesting shops. Yes, this will be a good neighbourhood.

Get up the next morning and plug in some of the spare lamps I’ve brought over from Gabriola, old ones of mine which make the place look a bit more interesting. I’ve brought various bits of fabric with me which might make good tablecloths for the table rescued from the recycling on last trip. The beautiful fabric I bought in a market in Provence some years ago, really doesn’t look right, which is a shame. Then I realise I still have the card table Catherine and Bob had donated to tide us over until we got a table. Get it out of the storage room, open it up on the balcony. The Provencal fabric looks perfect. Now all I need are some chairs for it (not to mention needing some chairs for the rescued diningroom table).

Set off to meet Luna at Continental, a coffee shop on the Drive, which used to be a big hangout for the Greenpeace staff. Am greeted effusively when I arrive by Anita, the now 72-year-old owner who is seldom in the shop these days. Have a chat with her and buy a pound of espresso before Luna arrives. She is loving Vancouver and plans to come back here to settle for several months in September. This is a bonus as so many of my other Vancouver friends are now living elsewhere.

Luna has graciously agreed to make part of our day together a trip to Ikea, where I absolutely have to go to buy some bookshelves in anticipation of all the boxes of my books (and other things) due to arrive early next month. Before dragging her out there, I take her for a tour of places I lived in the Drive, starting with the house on Cotton.

It has had quite the Painted Lady makeover since my day, but still holds fond memories of all those wonderful women’s dinners.


I also show her the house where Rowan and I first lived in the Drive, before I met Mike. And, yes, it is pretty fucking amazing. It is also for sale at the moment for $1.5 million. (When I clocked this on a previous trip I immediately went out and bought a lottery ticket, which, predictably, failed to make me the new owner.)

We make a stop at the Peg, an antiques/second hand shop which I am reasonably certain will provide me with some reasonably priced diningroom chairs.

As so often in the past, The Peg does not disappoint and we leave Commercial Drive with two rather nice chairs which go very well with the tablecloth. Result.

In honour of our Swedish friend Jenny, we have a Swedish meatball lunch at Ikea, before loading four bookcases and two folding chairs into the car and heading back to the flat.

When Luna suggests we might want to look at the instructions, I tell her instructions are for wooses. I’ve put so many of these Billy bookcases together I could practically do it in my sleep. We quickly have the two tall ones assembled and in place. At this point I realise I’ve forgotten something about my attempt to order bookcases on line for delivery (for which the Swedish bastards were going to charge $125). What I need is two tall and one medium full width bookcases and one medium narrow bookcase. What I’ve got is two full width medium bookcases and that’s not going to fit. Bugger. We assemble the full width medium case which is destined for the kitchen, leave the other one in the package for return and exchange (oh, joy) another day.

Still, the dining area has been completely transformed. it has (as you can see) been a good day’s work.

Time to uncork the wine, unfold the chairs and start relaxing on the equally transformed balcony.


The plan is to spend the next morning doing some more work on the flat. (Like getting the second coat of paint on the kitchen walls.) But Mike has me worried – as does my own BC Ferries experience of the previous day. It’s the Thursday of a long weekend and I really don’t want to have a five ferry wait at Horseshoe Bay. (There are, of course, no reservations left for any sailing that day.) So, instead of painting the kitchen, I pack up and leave at 10am, figuring I probably won’t make the 12:50, but I might get on the extra sailing at 2:30 or, failing that, the 3:10. Get to Horseshoe Bay at 10:35 and am informed by the attendant that I will be on the late 10:40 sailing. (It seems there’d also been an extra sailing at 10:10.) Probably could have got the kitchen painted after all. Oh, well.

Back on Gabriola, the Blueberry Hill rose bush is in its second bloom (unlike the second rose bush, which has done nothing) and two tomatoes are almost ready to eat. Hurrah! Look at the vegetable patch and blink with surprise. Do my eyes deceive me or are the carrots and beets staging a comeback? Of course it could just be weeds, but they do look like carrot and beet leaves. Oh, my god.

Another comeback elsewhere (or, more likely a never went away). Downstairs, despite removing all signs of cat food, there are mouse droppings on the floor near the spot where the food bowl used to be. Later I see not one, but two mice. Grrrrr. Really must track down some humane mouse traps.

Home invasion

The garden has been invaded. Not by snakes or snails (or even puppy dog’s tails), but by Mike.



Of course I understand that now that the garden looks so nice and the bench so inviting, he wants to get into it. And I had always intended that he should get to enjoy it, too. That’s why I spent more than a day widening the path and trying to remove likely-to-trip-up rocks from it.

But it is a bit of a palaver. First I have to get Mike, with his walker (no way he’s going to make it down the path even after my work with his cane alone) up the back path to the car. Then I have to drive him (with the walker and his folding chair – in case the bench isn’t high enough for him) down to the front of the house and help guide him into the garden. Of course it turns out the beautiful bench is high enough, so I get stuck with the folding chair. After 15 minutes of sitting in this, reading my book, I feel as if I’m skipping school. So much to do. So I leave him to it for an hour, go back and reverse the process to return him to the house. And the next day he wants to do it again. Honestly, some people.

Meanwhile, the downstairs has also been invaded – not by Mike, but by a mouse. The disadvantage to having a blind cat is his oblivion to Mickey Mouse scurrying around.

I suspect Angie of sneaking in during the day to empty Tri’s bowl of food, then I realise that the area near his food bowl is littered with mouse droppings. Grr. Empty the food bowl, get the hoover out. A little while later I spot the mouse. He seems to be making a bolt for the door (good – I can shut it behind him and hopefully he’ll fuck off somewhere else). Instead he disappears through a previously unnoticed hole between the carpet and the drywall. Plug up the hole, reasonably certain he can get through the wall to the crawl space at the back of the house, though not really caring if he can’t. Job done.

Take Tri downstairs in the late evening. Put some food and water down for him. Read for a while. Turn off the light and stretch out in bed with Tri sprawled out beside me. Five minutes later from the area of the food bowl I hear crunch, crunch, crunch. Bollocks. Either Mickey Mouse found his way back in through some other hole or he’d taken up residence with a chum. Fuck.

In the morning I ask Mike if he thinks Arbutus might sell humane mouse traps. He smiles, says he is not only sure they do not, but that they would laugh at me if I asked. Suspect he’s right.

Off to Vancouver to meet up with travelling pal Luna (hurrah!) and do a bit more work on project number two: the transformation of the beige apartment.