Leaving Toronto from Billy Bishop Airport

Dear Readers, you might remember that one of the reasons for our visit to Canada was to see John’s aunt, who is 95 and lives in Montreal. She has been gradually accumulating health problems – last year she fell and broke both ankles, she’s had pneumonia three times this year, and she’s been in and out of hospital on numerous occasions. So I suppose it shouldn’t have been a shock to hear that she was in hospital following a massive heart attack, and that she wasn’t expected to live. There was a flurry of rearrangements, and this morning we flew out of Toronto’s Island Airport at 7.25 in the morning to get to the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, and to say our goodbyes.

It was only right and fitting that Aunt G’s last days should be spent in the Jewish Hospital – she was a nurse here and, after studying at McGill, she returned as a nurse trainer/lecturer. She was a woman who would allow no dubious statement to go unchallenged, and yet she was the first person to welcome me to my new family when I met my husband, and could be kind and generous and funny too.

We got to the hospital to find her pretty much out for the count. All of her energies are spent getting oxygen into her frail little body. To be honest, when we walked into the room we didn’t recognise her at first. There’s something about impending death that sharpens the angles of the face, and gives the features a waxy patina. But her nurse was attentive and sensitive to her changing needs, and sitting next to the bed was a strangely serene experience.

I’ve said before that there is labour in producing a new life, and hard work also in the leaving of it. Dying feels like an uphill path, across stony and unpredictable ground. Although it is the most universal of experiences, it still feels unique to each person, a path that they need to tread alone. And yet, I can’t help but believe that, even though we are helpless in the face of death, there is value in being a witness, in paying attention to the subtle changes in breath that mark the signposts in the journey. We can watch, and talk to the loved one, and tell them what they meant to us. We can hold their hand, or smooth their hair, and encourage them to let go. We can tell them that we’ll be alright. They say that hearing is the last thing to go, but even if we aren’t heard, I believe that the love that surrounds the dying person can only, surely, be a blessing, to them and to us.

When we left, Aunt G was still breathing, still alive, but I have little doubt in my own mind that she’s past through a door that has shut behind her. She will walk on down the corridor alone, but please may there be light at the end of it, whatever it represents. She had a good life, well-lived, and maybe that’s the most that any of us can hope for.

Update: Aunt G passed away peacefully at 19.30 p.m. this evening, 

Dear Readers, by the time you read this, the fate of Canada for the next four years should be becoming clear. Mark Carney, known to us Brits as the ex Governor of the Bank of England, is going head-to-head with Pierre Poilievre. In what seemed like a sure fire win for Poilievre’s Progressive Conservatives only a few months ago, Carney’s Liberals are now expected to win. What happened? Donald Trump happened, with his referring to Canada as America’s ’51st State’ and his general disrespect for the country. Then there’s the little matter of the tariffs. Trump has boasted that he can bring Canada to the negotiating table through reducing the country to economic ruin, though he hasn’t completely ruled out using military force if necessary.

Much of this is most likely bluster, but Trump has succeeded in doing what Justin Trudeau, and the leaders before him, couldn’t. Even in Quebec, with its long history of separatism, the number of people who feel ‘proud to be Canadian’ rose from 45 per cent to 58 percent following Trump’s intervention. You can feel the difference as you walk around in Toronto – shops display signs indicating which of their products are ‘Canadian made’, Indigo bookshop has beefed up its section on Canadian authors, and there are maple-leaf flags everywhere.

What will this mean for the election? The Conservatives have been wrong-footed by Carney’s arrival. They were hoping to go into battle against the deeply-unpopular Justin Trudeau, but instead they’ve got a money man, who many people feel would be the best placed to face off against Trump over the economy. Poilievre himself is something of a conundrum – a supporter of abortion rights and public healthcare, but looking to reduce immigration and make it harder for people to claim asylum in Canada. Commentators seem to see him as someone who is not nimble politically – one journalist observed that, following the terrible events in Vancouver a few days ago, when someone drove their car into people celebrating a Filipino festival, killing 11 people, Poilievre’s speech in Vancouver didn’t mention the event at all.

Whatever the outcome, there is no doubt that there are a lot of internal problems in Canada that need addressing: housing, homelessness, mental health, healthcare, to name but a few. But it seems as if Canada’s big, brash, increasingly ugly adversary across the border will suck up all the political air in. the medium term. We continue, unfortunately, to live in interesting times.

The Dog Fountain at Berczy Park

Dear Readers, well, here we are, back in Toronto. My husband’s Mum’s 97th birthday is happening next weekend, another Auntie is in hospital in Montreal, and all in all it felt like time for a visit. So, to fend off the jet lag we went for a walk around Toronto on the most beautiful spring day.

First up was the Dog Fountain in Berczy Park. I’ve written about it before, but I still love it, especially as everyone brings their real-life dogs here for a walk, and it’s fun to watch the real and pretend dogs interacting. I’ve never seen the fountain in action, and some of the dogs are looking a bit careworn, but it’s still a delight. All the dogs are ‘worshipping’ a golden bone at the top of the fountain.

Regular readers might remember that the fountain features one cat, who has a beady eye on two birds perched on a nearby lamppost.

So then we headed down in the direction of the St Lawrence Food Market – more cheese and peameal bacon than you can shake a stick at here, but en route you can really admire the Vertical City that Toronto has become.

Crossing past St James Anglican Cathedral, I was intrigued to see these…

There are two of these Tiny Tiny Homes parked in the church grounds – on my walk I must have passed half a dozen people sleeping on the pavement, or on the ducts from the underground system that provides a little bit of warmth. The shelter system in Toronto is completely overwhelmed, and I’ve seen a big increase in homeless people and in people with obvious mental health problems in the past few years. As in the UK, all these people were homed during Covid, only to be thrown out onto the streets again when the pandemic eased. These tiny homes provide at least some shelter and dignity for the homeless. You can see tented ‘cities’ all over Toronto too. As in London, it’s an indication of the ever-increasing gap between those with everything, and those with nothing.

St James’s Cathedral

We were hoping to see inside the new St Lawrence Market, which was just a hole in the ground when we were last around here, but it doesn’t seem to be open yet. It has a distinctly playful, post-modern look, and I’m itching to see what it’s like inside. Apparently the Saturday Farmer’s Market is in the new building, so I shall have to go and check it out.

And then back to the Cambridge Suites Hotel, where we’re in the same room that we’ve been every visit for the past five years (home from home!) to share all this with you before heading out for brunch. Tomorrow we’ll be off to visit John’s Mum to see how she’s settled into her new nursing home, and then on Wednesday we’re off to Montreal to see the Auntie. But for now, I’m just enjoying the vistas that pop up down the most unexpected alleyways. Even if they are a bit lopsided.

Image from https://www.completepaincare.com/patient-education/conditions-treated/peripheral-neuropathy/

Well, Readers, as you might remember I had a nerve conduction study to try to identify why my feet were so numb a while back, but it was a very simple test that didn’t give me any detailed information. Hah! Scientist that I am, I wanted to know what was going on, and so I was able to get a more detailed test last week.

For those of you who’ve never had one, a nerve conduction test involves sending an electrical current along the nerves, to see how far it will travel. In a normal person, you would expect a reading of about 10. Mine was 2. Furthermore, the consultant (who I think gauged that any news didn’t need to be sugar coated) suggested that if I came back in two years, he would expect to find it difficult to pick up any current at all.

As you can imagine, this is not good news, though I am a firm believer that diagnosis isn’t destiny. And also, I’m not really sure what it means, in terms of mobility or the future. At the moment my hands are fine (they can also be affected by this particular kind of neuropathy). What is clear is that my feet are very numb and cold, with sometimes some tingling or burning thrown in for good measure, though fortunately they are not (yet) painful.

The consultant advised me to keep using my stick, which was a relief as part of me thought that I should be able to do without it. Enough of the ‘shoulds’ already! I actually rather love my fancy walking stick. Plus, it gives me just that little bit of extra confidence when I’m out and about. I am going to pilates regularly to work on balance/strength/all those good things. I have lost the weight that I put on when I was pretty much immobile with my broken leg and living on cake. I have some overseas adventures planned which I intend to soldier on with, including a return trip (hopefully not literally) to Austria, which will be a real test of how much I can do.

So I am, as my lovely Canadian friends say, copacetic. I shall be listening to my instincts about what to do and what not to do, and I shall be living every day to the fullest. I am heartened that my Mum, who also had neuropathy, was still wobbling about in her eighties. But I would love to hear your neuropathy experiences, good and bad, and if there’s anything you do that helps or hinders.

Jonathan Bailey

Dear Readers, last week I toddled along to the Bridge Theatre for a performance of Shakespeare’s Richard II. This is a very fine theatre, though for those of us who are still a little unsteady on our feet, getting into one of the high seats in the bar was a bit of a performance in itself. More low seats, please!

Richard II was one of my A Level plays, and personally I have never known works as well as the ones that I studied for this qualification. You needed to go deeply into the analysis of the text (it was taken as read that you knew the words) and so there would be a lot of time spent looking at themes, comparing different critics etc. So, I was well primed for taking a fairly nuanced view of this tricky play. I’d also previously seen David Tennant take the lead role when the Barbican were doing the ‘Cycle of Kings’ back in 2014, and I’d loved his performance.

The lead in this production was taken by Jonathan Bailey. He is a serious Shakespearian actor, but these days he is better known for his role in Bridgerton, where he is a serious hearthrob instead. Indeed, the audience contained a fairly high proportion of young women who were, I think, more interested in Bailey than in Shakespeare.

On taking my seat at the end of row B, a young woman a few seats into the row leaned forward.

“When I booked this seat, it was on the end of the row”, she said, pointedly.

“Ah, they sometimes change the seating once the final rehearsals are done”, I said. “But why did you want the end of the row?”

“Well, I thought that maybe Jonathan Bailey would move along the aisle to get to the stage”, she sighed.

“Ah!” I said. “Maybe a few skin cells would have wafted off and you could have cloned him for your own personal use! But don’t worry, we’re close enough here to be spat on”.

She gave me the look that I probably deserved, but all was not lost, because at the interval (Jonathan Bailey hadn’t wafted past, but John of Gaunt and several flunkies had).

“Do you know anything about Richard II?” she asked.

“A little bit”, I said modestly.

“Do you think he was bi-polar?” she asked.

And, uncertain where to even start, I was still explaining about how Richard II had come to the throne when he was only 9, the doctrine of the divine right of kings, how he was convinced of his own absolute power, and how relevant all this was to Certain Autocrats today when the lights went down and silence was blissfully restored.

But anyhow, the performance. The play is worth seeing for sure: all the individual actors are good, the staging is interesting, and Bailey is great at portraying the sheer capriciousness of the King. In other performances, the ‘favourites’, who are the coterie of yes-men and also the King’s bedfellows, are seen as being the reason for the king’s terrible kingship. There is even a speech where the queen speaks of the favourites usurping her marriage bed. None of that here! One of the favourites is a woman, and there is never a whisper of the King’s homosexuality. When Tennant played Richard II, he was able to make us sympathise with Richard, whereas Bailey didn’t. But honestly, I think the Tennant Richard II was probably one of those once in a lifetime performances (and I’m not the only one to think so).

So, this Richard II was entertaining. Who can resist two topless men wrestling in a pit, or an artillery gun on stage? The language is as beautiful as always, and it’s gotten people who might not otherwise come to see a Shakespeare history play into the theatre, and thinking about what it all means. But there is a depth and nuance to this play that this particular version didn’t do justice to, and that’s a shame.

If you want to go and see the play, you’ll need to get a move on – it finishes on 10th May.

Dear Readers, it’s been ages since I’ve done a garden post: we’ve been having our windows replaced and then painted, and in a moment of madness I also asked the painters if they’d paint our bedroom (so the screaming monk is now gone). It’s all lovely, but I’ve been mostly living in Caffe Nero on East Finchley High Road to try to get away from the racket, and the disruption, and the dust. Oh lordy, the dust. Anyhow, my thoughts have finally turned to the garden. The lilac is the best that it’s been in years, the scent in the garden is delicious. The plant must have known that I was giving it a sideways look, as I consider how hard to prune it. Maybe a little bit of a hair cut is called for, but nothing too drastic.

Now, I have plans for the pond. If you look at the first photo, you’ll see that the pond is surrounded by a ring of stones. This was all the rage a while back, but it’s actually not very good for wildlife – little critters can actually roast to death on the hot surface. So, my pal Matt at Green Ravens Horticulture is going to help me remove the stones (well, he and his new sidekick are going to do all the heavy lifting while I make tea) and replace them with wildflower turf – this will make a much softer, more friendly edge, and should provide a bit more cover for the little frogs when they enter/leave the pond. This is all going to happen in early June, once my exams are over for the year (4th June! Keep your fingers crossed for me!)

And the hawthorn and the whitebeam are finally starting to put out shoots and leaves, after an anxious few months when I was convinced that the very hard prune that happened last year had killed them. Fortunately not, but it will definitely take a couple of seasons before they’re back to their former glory. In the meantime, the woodpigeons and starlings are very happy, perching above it all like vultures in the Serengeti….

So, Readers, what’s happening in your garden? Do share¬

I like this, though I had to read it through a couple of times. You can listen to Carol Ann Duffy reading it aloud here, highly recommended. I love how words come to life when they’re spoken.

FOREST

In fact, the trees are murmuring under your feet,
a buried empathy; you tread it.
High over your head,
the canopy sieves light; a conversation
you lip-read. The forest
keeps different time;
slow hours as long as your life,
so you feel human.

So you feel more human; persuaded what you are
by wordless breath of wood, reason in resin.
You might name them-
oak, ash, holly, beech, elm-
but the giants are silence alive, superior,
and now you are all instinct;
swinging the small lamp of your heart
as you venture their world:

the green, shadowy, garlic air
your ancestors breathed.
Ah, you thought love human
till you lost yourself in the forest,
but it is more strange.
These grave and patient saints
who pray and pray
and suffer your little embrace.

Carol Ann Duffy

Butcher’s Broom (Ruscus aculeatus)

Dear Readers, it’s always a pleasure to come across a wild, native plant that I hadn’t noticed before, and during a damp walk in my friend L’s patch of woodland last week, I discovered Butcher’s Broom, an indicator of ancient woodland. This is a most unusual plant in some ways – it’s a member of the Asparagus family, and just like that toothsome vegetable, what appear to be its ‘leaves’ are in fact extensions of the stem, called cladodes. Each leaf has a sharp, spikey point on the end of each ‘leaf’, and there are rather attractive bright red fruits. The flowers are tiny and yellowish-green, and grow out of the middle of the true leaves.

Butcher’s Broom flowers (Photo by By Benjamin Zwittnig – http://www2.arnes.si/~bzwitt/flora/ruscus_aculeatus.html, CC BY 2.5 si, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40879806)

All in all, this plant looks much more exotic than something you’d usually find in a patch of hornbeam and beech forest, but it just goes to show that we have some very interesting plants right under our noses. We also have to be a little bit careful about the wild provenance of any plants that we find, as the cultivar of the plant is becoming increasingly popular in gardens: the RHS has given the variety ‘John Redmond’ an Order of Merit. Butcher’s Broom is dioecious, meaning that individual plants are either male or female, and can also reproduce via rhizomes.

Butcher’s Broom ‘John Redmond’ – Photo by By Dominicus Johannes Bergsma – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38358922

Why ‘Butcher’s Broom’ though? The stiff, wiry stems were used for cleaning butcher’s blocks, and interestingly the plant has been found to contain a number of antioxidants. In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey reports that butchers also used to build a kind of miniature hedge of Butcher’s Broom around meat in their shops to keep mice at bay. I’d have thought it would take more than a few twigs, but Butcher’s Broom also contains saponins, chemicals which have foam-forming qualities, and which are often used in soap, so perhaps that discourages the little rodents.

As it generally grows quite low, Butcher’s Broom also has the vernacular name ‘knee holly’. Mabey remarks on the plant’s habit of growing around the base of trees, as if to form a protective fence, and points out that sometimes the Butcher’s Broom is older than the tree itself.

Culpeper describes the plant thus in his Herbal:

‘a plant of Mars, being of a gallant cleansing and opening quality. The decoction of the root drank, and a poultice made of the berries and leaves applied, are effectual-in knitting and consolidating broken bones or parts out of joint. The common way of using it is to boil the root of it, and Parsley and Fennel and Smallage in white wine, and drink the decoction, adding the like quantity of Grassroot to them: The more of the root you boil the stronger will the decoction be; it works no ill effects, yet I hope you have wit enough to give the strongest decoction to the strongest bodies.’

Shame I didn’t have any handy when I broke my leg last year!

Butcher’s Broom (Photo by By Meneerke bloem – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=128179222)

Now, as you might expect from a plant with lots of saponins in it, Butcher’s Broom berries are poisonous. The shoots have been used as an asparagus alternative, and over on the EatWeeds website, Robin Harford has noted that in Tunisia the seeds are roasted and used as a coffee substitute. It seems like quite a lot of work to me!

On the Plant Lore website, it’s noted that street cleaners in the Azores still use brooms made from the plant. If only I’d known when I was there last year!

And here’s a poem. Nothing to do with the plant, but a little bit to do with a butcher, and his son. See what you think.

The Butcher’s Son

Mr Pierce the butcher
Got news his son was missing
About a month before
The closing of the war.
A bald man, tall and careful,
He stood in his shop and found
No bottom to his sadness,
Nowhere for it to stop.
When my aunt came through the door
Delivering the milk,
He spoke, with his quiet air
Of a considerate teacher,
But words weren’t up to it,
He turned back to the meat.
The message was in error.
Later that humid summer
At a local high school fete,
I saw, returned, the son
Still in his uniform.
Mr Pierce was not there
But was as if implied
In the son who looked like him
Except he had red hair.
For I recall him well
Encircled by his friends,
Beaming a life charged now
Doubly because restored,
And recall also how
Within his hearty smile
His lips contained his father’s
Like a light within the light
That he turned everywhere.

Thom Gunn

Dear Readers, there used to be lots of nesting sites for House Martins in our rural towns and villages, and even in our more urban areas. My Aunt Hilary used to have about a dozen nests under her eaves in her house in Broadway, Somerset, which she allowed to stay with relatively good grace, in spite of the ‘mess’. And this house, in Milborne St Andrew where Mum and Dad used to live, surely wins an award for the highest number of nests on one house ever…

But alas, the ‘little orcas’ that I love so much are, like the swift, suffering from a multitude of problems – not enough insects, not enough places to nest, degradation of the habitats both where they used to overwinter and where they stop off en route. The birds use mud for their nests, and one of the loveliest sights in Obergurgl in Austria, where I usually holiday every year, is the House Martins swooping down to collect mud from a puddle, then taking it ‘home’ to one of the chalets with their convenient over-hanging eaves to make some repairs.

Mother House Martin feeding her young (Photo by By Michael Palmer – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37001960)

One reason posited by the British Trust for Ornithology for the fall in House Martin numbers is the use of PVC in house building. Nests built on PVC facings are much more likely to fall off than those built on wood or brick. Overall, the BTO estimates that there has been a 44% decline in numbers between 1995 and 2022.

Photo by By Andreas Trepte – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40871453

House Martins appear to mate for life but as in so many cases, this is not as straightforward as it may appear. Up to 15% of nestlings who were genetically tested have a father that isn’t the ‘official’ mate. Apparently, the male guards the female very closely when she’s incubating the eggs and he only has her to feed, but as the chicks hatch and things get a bit more hectic, unpaired males will often sneak in for a quick liaison. It’s usually the youngest chick who has a different father, and this is probably why.

Photo by By Claus Ableiter – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2588978

Fortunately, House Martins are classified as ‘least concern’ from a conservation point of view across their very wide range. But it seems awful that, here in the UK, we’re losing our birds at such a rate, and it’s doubly terrible that it’s happened on our watch, if you’re in your sixties like me. We can all do our bit for sure, and I have no intention of despairing, though sometimes I feel like it. Let’s bin the pesticides, put up nest boxes, and do whatever we can to keep, and hopefully increase, what we have. Before it’s gone.

Image of a Colossal Squid ((Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) Image by By © Citron, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7757015

Dear Readers, if you were asked what the heaviest invertebrate in the world was, you would probably guess (as I did) that it might be some huge beetle, or a massive stick insect. But in fact we would all be out by a factor of about 1,000, because the heaviest invertebrate on earth is in fact the Colossal Squid, which is thought to weight in at about 1,500 lb (700 kilograms), to be between 33 and 46 feet (10 –  14 metres long), and to have the largest eyes of any creature yet discovered – one specimen had eyes that were 16 inches (40 cms) across.

Alas, this creature of the abyssal depths has only previously been seen by humans when dead or dying animals have been found, sometimes when the squid are taking fish from fishing lines and getting themselves entangled. The beaks of the squid were also often found in the stomachs of sperm whale  – they’re thought to make up a large part of the diet of these cetaceans, and the size of the squid was estimated from these indigestible parts. The depth at which the squid swim depends on their age and size, with the largest and oldest squid being found in the bathypelagic zone, 4,000 metres below the surface. No wonder the squid have such huge eyes – it’s dark down there, but it’s thought that the squid can detect such things as the disturbance in photoluminescent plankton caused by either prey fish or predators as they move through clouds of the tiny organisms.

Beak of a Colossal Squid (Photo by By GeSHaFish – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26210490)

So, you all know that I love cephalopods, and one reason for mentioning the Colossal Squid today is that a juvenile has actually been filmed in the wild for the first time. Not part of a squid. Not a pale and wasted adult at the point of depth. Not a disintegrating corpse. An actual live teenage squid, going about its business unmolested (well, apart from an automatic deep-sea camera of course). I love that we know even less about the depths of the ocean than we do about the surface of the moon.

You can see the Colossal Squid (only 30 cms long!) here. Maybe one day a submersible will see an adult Colossal Squid. Let’s hope it doesn’t end up like the scenes from Jules Verne’s  ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’. In fact, I suspect that the squid would disappear off into the darkness at speed. They are intelligent animals, after all.

Original illustrations from Jules Verne’s ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ by A. de Neuville and E. Riou [1870], from https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-original-monster-from-Twenty-thousand-leagues-under-the-sea-Despite-its-name_fig2_267732069