Where is the summer going?

I've just returned from holidays in Quebec, a blissful interlude during which I swam, cycled, canoed (that spelling just looks weird), napped in a hammock, visited a Benedictine Abbey where they make great cheese, crossed the world's longest suspended walking bridge, read the last Harry Potter book, and ate my weight in maple sugar. Oh, and drank a lot of beer from Quebec microbreweries (which must be among the best on the planet). I am now struggling with the sad reality of being back at work. When you live for the weekend, life starts going by pretty fast. I mean, there are only, what, twelve weekends in the summer? Anyway, we're trying to plan some more trips to have something to look forwards to.

The floods in Oxford got some press in Canada. While I was at the cottage, unable to access TV or internet, I began to fear that the whole of southern England was under water. But when I came back from Heathrow by bus you'd never have known anything had happened (judging from what I saw between bouts of exhausted unconsciousness - those overnight flights kill me). Parts of the city along the Thames did flood, soaking homes that in some cases were still recovering from floods just over a year ago. A friend of mine spent a week on high alert, piling sandbags around her place (which ultimately escaped flooding), while a Scandinavian TV crew camped out across the road and annoying tourists walked around with cameras, presumably hoping to see exciting flood destruction. Many towns were worse-hit than Oxford though, all along the major rivers in this part of the country. But other than stories from a few people I work with who weren't lucky enough to be on high ground (and from many others who suddenly can't get home insurance), the only sign we've noticed is that grocery stores have been poorly stocked because the floods blocked roads and impeded agricultural production. Now, however, the news is all about the latest foot-and-mouth outbreak, which they are trying to contain.

Last night I saw the Canadian show The Newsroom on TV here. I am curious as to what British people would think of it. (They also broadcast Canada's Next Top Model, presumably filling the void between seasons of Britain's Next Top Model and America's Next Top Model.) I was also astonished when Jeff came home with little Fraggle dolls that Barclay's Bank is selling for charity. I always had the idea that Fraggle Rock was a Canadian show, but it turns out it was a collaboration between HBO, the CBC, a British TV company and Jim Henson's company. (Though it was filmed in Toronto and Canadian poets Dennis Lee and bpNichol apparently wrote for it. Now my next question is whether kids here ever read Dennis Lee poems.) Different countries filmed the human segments to be recognisable to kids from that country, so for example in the British version 'Fraggle Rock' is a 'rocky sea island with a lighthouse' based on Falmouth, Cornwall (I'm quoting Wikipedia). In France, the human segments take part in a bakery. And apparently there's a movie in the works, to be directed by Ahmet Zappa, which seems right in all kinds of ways. I think there is nothing I would rather be than someone working on a kids' TV show back in the day. I'll bet the people behind Fraggle Rock had a blast. I also watched a documentary on British children's television, and it was full of eccentric people building plasticine and felt models in backyard sheds for very odd shows like The Clangers. Hey, here's a fun trivia fact: the band The Soup Dragons was named after a character in The Clangers. It all comes together ...

Speaking of Canadian culture, I got a free CD with an NME magazine a couple of months ago that claims to be 'the sound of the new Canada scene'. Out of fifteen bands I'd only heard two (The Stills and Metric) and heard of two more (The Besnard Lakes and You Say Party! We Say Die!). This proves that either NME is out to lunch or, most likely, I am now truly, irredeemably out of touch.

Suspension bridge.

Misty evening on the lake.

Scary artwork in an antique shop in Quebec (below). I think this is one for the Museum of Bad Art, though at 90 dollars it's probably a bit beyond their budget. I don't know what it is that disturbs me ... perhaps that the cat's features are human when viewed up close - the eyes in particular. Yikes - imagine this on your wall.