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I have been in a state of low-grade stress for the past couple of months, and I think I'm doing a pretty good job at holding things together, but I feel sometimes that the pyramid could collapse at any moment. These past few months have pretty much sucked (pardon my French). Even though G's been diagnosed with diabetes and lost his job, all this has affected me pretty much as much as it's affected him. I've tried to stay strong and chipper for the both of us because simply falling apart isn't a productive option but I admit that I do worry a lot. I've always worried, even when I was a kid and supposedly didn't have anything to worry about--well, I've always had the knack of finding SOMETHING to worry about. I mean, I remember in Grade 6 we had to do this get-to-know-you exercise at the beginning of the year where our teacher asked us a bunch of questions about ourselves and we had to write our responses so she could get to know us. One of the questions was 'what I'm most afraid of'...everyone else seemed to put 'spiders' or 'the dark' or something like that. What did I write for my answer? Nuclear bombs. So I guess I've always been an intense kind of person.

I've always been sensitive to stress as well. Especially in the last ten years or so, because of having to struggle with clinical depression (which I've had since I was a (supposedly carefree) kid, I just didn't realize it). After having to drop out of university because I couldn't keep it together because I tried so hard I burnt out, I've been really aware of my limits and how much stress I can handle. It's a difficult place to crawl back from and I don't ever want to go to that place again. So I try to put things in perspective, and get enough sleep, and eat reasonably well and all that stuff. But it just seems that lately, it's kind of hard to stay chipper some days. But I do. Like I said, just falling apart isn't the most productive option.

People at work notice that I get stressed out easily and I let things bother me. I want to tell them 'hey, cut me some slack, considering the Knipe Universe has kind of crumbled during the past 6 months, I think I'm doing a pretty good job here' but I don't; I'm afraid they won't understand so I laugh it off and don't really tell them how I'm *really* feeling. I don't want them to pity me, I just want a bit of empathy. But I just don't think they'd truly understand how vulnerable I'm feeling right now.

Plus, I realized with some degree of panic, that I have to renew my passport through the Canadian High Commision pretty darn soonish, and I should've done it six months ago (according to the website) but completely forgot, and plus there's the matter of getting my visa restamped through the British Immigration and Nationality Directorate (talk about a high-falutin' name!) into my new passport and I could theoretically apply for my British Nationalization but do we have the money to do that considering our financial situation and....you get the idea. Any ex-pat can nod their head in agreement with me that it's incredibly easy to feel stress at the fact that your life is placed entirely into the hands of some big, bureaucratic behemoth in a building someplace (how's that for alliteration, eh!), which is enough to strike fear into the heart of anyone. I mean, these people *say* that the forms are easy and straightforward to fill in but one false move means that your entire claim could be totally rejected...and I for one feel distinctly uneasy with the requirement that only original documents can be submitted. So if the mail service makes those documents go 'poof' then anyone's stress levels are guaranteed to go off the Richter Scale.

I guess this all makes for some good blogging fodder, anyway. See, I'm thinking positive! I'd love to spend my days sitting in a bubble bath, or reading a good book with some Cammomile and Honey tea, but unfortunately that's not an option. I'll be OK. I always am. I just don't like feeling stressed out.

I need a hug.

Well, we had a great visit with my cousin, even though it was literally a flying visit. But we packed in as much British culture into 2 days as we possibly could...we took him out for a curry and a pub meal, we went to York and saw lots of old buildings, including 'some old church' (AKA York Minster) (heh heh), he wandered around a grocery store (let's face it, to really get to know a culture, you've got to see what kind of food people buy) and in return he came bearing gifts of a couple of Canadian newspapers and magazines and Miss Vickie's chips--little things which meant a lot to me, because it was a little bit of 'home'. Plus he told lots of facinating stories of what life is like 'North of 60'. We told him he should start a blog, because he shattered my impressions of what the Arctic is really like, and I'm sure his blog would make interesting reading! But I know he's so busy, so finding time may be difficult for him. But still, when the weather is so bloody cold during the winter, you've gotta find *something* to occupy your time!

But my friend Bonn, (Japhthor's other half), after much gentle prodding/encouragement/peer pressure, has entered the blogging world. Bonn runs a household, homeschools 3 kids, and even finds time to do a bit of musical theatre on the side. I don't know how she does it, but maybe she'll let us in on a few of her secrets in Women's Reality.

So, in the words of Garrison Keillor...that's all the news from Lake Wobegon--where the women are strong, the men are good-looking and all the children are above average.

We had a surprise phone call last night, G answered it. We were about to get ready to go to Manchester to see Dave Gorman, a British comedian that G (oh, OK, me as well) wanted to see; we have been getting way to serious lately so this was therepeutic.But anyway, My cousin phoned from Winnipeg airport to say that he was about to catch a flight to Toronto and then was flying into Heathrow for a quick trip to London and could he come up and stay with us for a couple of days as well. Of course we said yes! Canadian company! Wowsers! I haven't seen him for 10 years; he works for Canadian North, the Canadian Arctic airline (yes, we're talking Arctic Circle North!) so even going to someplace like the UK is a 'southern holiday' for him. He doesn't get much time off so the holidays he gets tend to be spur of the moment but isn't it great to have a job that you can just jump on a plane like that! I don't know if I could get any time off work though, I'll have to ask my manager REALLY nicely; he's spending a couple of days in London then coming up to Manchester by train. I hope we'll be able to take him on a bit of a tour, maybe to the Lake District or York one day. But of course the irony is that we got rid of our two single beds in our spare room, thinking they wouldn't be needed because we RARELY get any visitors and then of course we get some! I guess there's always the couch. I couldn't get much sleep last night, cuz our house needs a serious clean! ARRRGH!

Anyone else who wants to come and visit us--please do. I'll put the coffee on.

A new Tesco opened in Warrington last week, striking fear and trepidation into the hearts of the other supermarkets in town. Why? Well, Asda (now owned by WalMart and whom I work for) has 3 stores in Warrington, then there's a Sainsbury's (which was the UK's first grocery chain plus a branch of the Northern chain Morrison's. (Thus the people of Warrinton will never go hungry!) But the reason why people in Warrington are so scared of Tesco is that it's the Big Boy where UK supermarkets are concerned. It has something like 40% of the UK grocery market plus stores in other European countries, and it does grocery retailing well. It's really interesting how the other retailers have reacted to Tesco opening. Asda, despite being owned by WalMart, is officially the No.2 player in the market, having just recently pushing Sainsbury's out of the spot. It's FAR behind Tesco, though. But to be honest, even though I work at Asda, I don't feel any sense of loyalty to them where shopping is concerned--we shop at Tesco sometimes because we like to get new and different products which Asda doesn't carry--and most of my colleagues would admit to doing the same thing. We *used* to shop at Sainsbury's until they started getting mega-expensive; Sainsbury's seems to be catering for the 'yuppie market', kind of the same group who frequents Marks and Spencer's food hall on a regular basis ("Excuse me, can you tell me where the quail eggs are located").

I have worked at Asda for 5 years now. I can't believe where the time has gone! I've wrote about more of my experiences in a ancient blog entries, which you can read hereand here if you want more background. I *still* have a love-hate relationship with my employer, because I am frustrated about the low wages that come with these sorts of jobs. I like my job as an optical assistant, the job is close to home so I don't have to commute across town, and I'm glad to be working (and sometimes I think I am not qualified to do anything else so that's why I'm staying, to be honest) but I'm frustrated with the false economy which retailing seems to generate. The wages make for a supplementary income (if you must know, most retail jobs pay around £5/hour, not much more than mininum wage) but it's darn near impossible to comfortably raise a family solely on those sorts of wages. It was reported in the local paper that the new Tesco has generaged over 400 jobs in Warrington, but I know from my experience that a high percentage of these jobs will be part time.

If you want to read a good-yet-depressing book about about this sense of false-economy in the UK (and I suspect this sort of thing happens in other nations as well) go and seek out a copy of Hard Work by Polly Toynbee. I don't know if Chapters in Canada could order it in for you, or of course there's Amazon.co.uk , from which the synopsis is taken:

"Could you live on the minimum wage? Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee took up the challenge, living in one of the worst council estates in Britain and taking whatever was on offer at the job centre. What she discovered shocked even her. In telesales and cake factories, as a hospital porter or a dinner-lady, she worked at breakneck pace for cut-rate wages, alongside working mothers and struggling retirees. The service sector is now administered by seedy agencies offering no prospects, no screening and no commitment. Most damning of all, Toynbee found that despite the optimism of Tony Blair's New Deal, the poorly paid effectively earn less than they did thirty years ago. Britain has the lowest social spending and the highest poverty in Europe. As the income gap between top and bottom has widened, so social mobility has shuddered to a halt. The low-paid are caught in an economic double bind that victimises them and shames the rest of us."

She takes a hoity-toity tone at times, but like Naomi Klein, she makes you think--which is the sort of book I like. The only problem is, I recognized myself and my job in it, and consider myself darn lucky in some respects, but some days when I'm feeling down I still feel kind of caught in a low-wage trap (but this is only when I'm feeling super-depressed). I don't just want to point fingers at 'the system' but it seems that politicians in all shapes and sizes are willing to turn a blind eye to this all too often. But last night we watched a programme on TV which tried to build a bridge of understanding. When Michael Became a Single Mum showed Tory politician Michael Portillo trading in his bachelor lifestyle in posh London for a week on a Merseyside housing estate taking care of a single Mum's family of four children on a budget of £80/week (after the bills and rent had been deducted) and even working at the Mum's two low-paid jobs. It didn't necessarily change Portillo's life but put a face to political policies which I guess was a positive result.

I know this is kind of a whingey blog post but I feel passionate about this sort of subject. I don't like seeing inequality and injustice and yes, I'm kind of idealistic where this stuff is concerned. But HOW to change it is an entirely different matter.

I wanted to blog about this earlier but never got a chance, so I guess it's better late than never!

This past Thursday in Britain it was officially (but not a day off from work or anything, darnit!) National Poetry Day. What's cool about this is that it doesn't just celebrate the UK's great traditional poetry but also the modern poetry that speaks about everyday life (kind of what Canadian Literature aims to do in Canada). I like that idea; yes, even though I'm an artsie chick, I think poetry has got a bad rap in society, that people think it's some stuffy, dead art form and I think poetry deserves better than that. The BBC also has a poetry page (lots of goodies on here) including a microsite from its Radio 4 programme Essential Poems (which I keep meaning to listen to, but never manage it).

Also, while the England football team has been acting like a bunch of whingey, overpaid prima-donnas this week (for background on the story, click here) the Rugby World Cup is currently underway Down Under and the England squad is just getting on with the job despite the lack of press coverage. I like rugby, even more than football. Warrington is a rugby town but I've never been to a Warrington Wolves match just because I've heard stories of fans being beaten up by the opposing team's fans and don't really fancy that. But maybe I'll pluck up the courage to go sometime, who knows. But anyway...Canada is in there as well, believe it or not. (Hands up all those who didn't know that we even *had* a national rugby team?!) I watched their first match against Wales this morning on TV and um, they kind of got creamed, 41-10 but I will say this, they're a plucky lot, them Canucks. (And at least it wasn't as depressing as the result from the England v. Georgia match...84-6. Ouch). Canada plays its next game this coming Friday, by the way. Which would be good, except it's against the New Zealand All Blacks which is very, very bad. Why? Cuz the All Blacks are only considered to be one of the best (or THE best, depending on who you talk to) rugby teams on the face of the planet! And any team that begins its matches with an ancient war chant (called the Haka) has got to be rather intimidating! I will cheer Canada on, definitely, (and hopefully that now you guys know about the Rugby World Cup, you will too just because it's Canada not because you know about rugby even though it's a cool sport) but it's gonna get ugly out there, that's for sure.

...how Google page ranking works. I don't know why I think about these things, but I do. I am wondering about this because I see that both me and G's pages (bad grammar, so shoot me) have increased slightly in the page ranking scheme of things and I'm just wondering what we did to deserve it. We're just getting on with the 'business of blogging' really. But having said that, it's nice to be noticed (in my mind, anyway) and I look at G's guest counter and notice that he's got way more visitors than me--basically double the amount. Compare the two yourselves. I know it's not a competition, but we rib each other about it. (And we keep suggesting topics to each other, but we don't necessarily take those topics on board.) I want to be popular, dangit! I know it's not high school anymore, but, old habits die hard.

I did a teeny bit of research on Page Ranking, which you can read up on here. From what I gather, the more links you have to other websites, the more the Googlians (for lack of a better descriptive term for people who work at Google) deem your page 'worthy' and more relevant when people are searching for it. So it's kind of arbitrary, really. It's not that the quality of writing is better, or your page is prettier--and one cannot bribe Google and buy a higher page rank (I'm sure there are those out there who have tried it). But does anyone get a '10 out of 10' page rank? Does that mean that there is an 'Ultimate Webpage' out there someplace, lurking? Should we be striving for Web Site Shangri-la?

I know, I know. I shouldn't worry about things like this. But my mind works in funny ways. Just ask my hubby. And I swear that somehow, some way, I will catch up to him on the amount of visitors he has to his site. As Baldrick from Blackadder might say...I have a cunning plan, m'lord.

While illusionist David Blaine is currently in the middle of a 44 day stint of hanging over the Thames in a perspex box with no food and no one to talk to (yes I'm being serious), Derren Brown , a self-described psychological illusionist, was playing a real game of Russian Roulette involving a real gun on live TV last night. (And now that I have your attention....) As this interview with Britain's Channel 4 (the station which carried this bit of ultimate reality TV) says, it could've obviously gone horribly wrong. But let me tell you, it made for some facinating yet terrifying (and disturbing) viewing. Don't try this at home, kids.

For those of you who don't know what he's all about, here's an introduction. We've watched his programmes on TV in the past and really enjoyed them (his other shows are much tamer than this!) because they make you see the world in a completely different way. They aren't 'typical magic' because they involve card tricks, but not in the way you might imagine. This guy is spooky. He uses real psychological prinicples combined with uncanny intuition and an innate ability to 'read' people's minds and their personalities to shake people up in a way that sends shivers up the spine. It sounds hokey until you actually see him in action. It's difficult to describe it. If you want to learn more, go to the Mind Control website. Let's just say I'd be totally freaked if he were to do a profile on me--who knows what might get revealed! If only every Psychology 101 class in university was this interesting.

Anyway, how this Russian Roulette thing worked. A member of the public, selected by Derren from a nationwide search, loaded a real handgun with a live bullet, placing the bullet in a specific, numbered chamber, and then handed it to him without Derren seeing which chamber it was. Derren then used his famous ability to read people to determine which chamber contains the bullet, by putting the gun to his head and pulling the trigger until he comes to the live chamber. Like I said, this is not to be tried at home. So where on earth did that idea come from?

"Oh, you know, you go out, you have a few drinks, the next thing you know you've agreed to shoot your head off," he says cheerfully in an interview for Channel 4. "I don't know, it just seemed a great idea for a show."

"A while back we ran some trails on Channel 4. We had about 12,000 people go to the website, fill out a form and apply. I went through those application forms and picked out of those about 2,000 - it's a whittling down process basically - so we got in touch with them and got them to send in videotapes of themselves, and they had to talk about why they wanted to do it, show me their living space, and bits and pieces like that."

Out of those tapes, he picked 100 people to come to London for a day of filming, and during that day whittled that group down to five through a series of psychological games and tests. After that, the five people came with him to the secret location where it was filmed - it wasn't in the UK, for legal reasons. There weren't people around, and was filmed by remote camera. Just before he decided do it the actual stunt, Brown decided which one of the five he would use.

What really shocked everyone was that there was always a chance Derren would get it wrong--with obviously horrific consequences. He said in the Channel 4 interview, "Most of the stuff I do I reckon has a 90 per cent success rate - it depends on the person I pick. So doing a one-off, I'm happy with that. Obviously it could all go wrong, but I think it's very, very unlikely. It's all about picking the right person - if I'm slightly out in my choice, suddenly it's about fifty-fifty. But I'm reasonably confident, provided I don't freak out about the fact that it's a gun."

So what happened? Well, it was really tense television, and I watched it with my hands over my eyes, peeking out between my fingers. Yes it was live, but with a 2 minute delay in case anything bad happened. But he lived to tell about it. The Press Complaints Commision only received 100 complaints (which was pretty amazing, considering the fear from various people and groups that it could lead to copycat stunts etc) and over 9 million people watched it. I don't think something like this would be shown in North America somehow. But it definitely pushed the boundaries of TV. Whether it was for the better or worse however remains to be seen.

What does Derren think of the David Blaine idea? "Well, I guess mine's over a lot quicker and doesn't involve as much weight gain beforehand."

You can do a great impression of Stewie from Family Guy, like my husband can do. He's multi-talented, that man. 'VICTORY IS MINE!' Sorry. I just couldn't resist. You'll get that if you've watched Family Guy.

Of course, slang terms sound so much better with an English accent. See the BritSpeak dictionary link to the left of this blog page if you'd like to add to your vocabulary. I learned a couple of new words to my personal list of British slang tems which may/may not come in useful. First of all, there's minger which means an 'ugly person' (this is not a very kind word to use so don't go round calling your sister this or the consequences could be very bad indeed). A related term is mingy (both pronounced with a hard 'g' sound) which means anything gross, filthy, yukky--you get the idea. There ya go. Just thought I'd share that with ya.

I feel cheated though, I haven't yet got an English accent even though I've been here for 6-odd years although my Canadian accent is a bit softer I think. I've had to adapt to the slang, though, or no one would understand me. There's a great article on Americans who adopt faux-English accents just to make themselves look cooler (think of that pretentious Madonna, for instance) on the Guardian's website, which you can read here . Although I would LOVE an English accent, I would never fake it! Honest! (cough cough)

"There is no word for end of summer sadness", wrote E.B. White, "but the human spirit picks up the first of its apprach". We see it in the slant of the sunlight, in the autumnal blue of the bay. We hear it in the cricket chorus from the salt medow: "Six weeks til frost, six weeks til frost". Suddenly each day becomes precious, something to be hoarded like candy in a child's pocket.--Arthur Vanderbilt, quoted in Reader's Digest (yes I *do* read Reader's Digest!)

This quote really sums up this time of year. I always lament the passing of summer. I can't believe we're already into October, it just seems like last week that summer was still here! The days are steadily drawing in; we've had to put the winter duvet on the bed and have had to put the heating on to take the chill out of the evenings. But here in England, Autumn doesn't quite have the sense of ritual that Fall does in North America. We don't get the spectacular Fall colours (unlike NEW England!) which is a pity (but then again, there's less leaves to rake). And of course we don't get the Canadian ritual that REALLY signals the approach of winter,--putting the snow-tires on the pick-up truck! Of course, in Canada, Thanksgiving is right around the corner and I admit that I miss celebrating it. Here we get Harvest Festival but it isn't a statutory holiday, and isn't done with as much fanfare as Turkey Day. Well, in November there *is* Bonfire Night (aka Guy Fawkes) on November 5th which is kinda cool but by that time the weather is pretty miserable and rainy, rather than crisp and (ahem) autumnal.

And my biggest beef about here? The Christmas stuff is already making headway into shops--there's just something fundamentally wrong about seeing Christmas wrapping, chocolates and puddings in September. And it's even sadder that people are actually BUYING their economy-sized tins of Quality Street! I asked one lady in Asda why she was buying Christmas goodies now, thinking that she's just being super-organized. Her reply? "My kids don't want to wait for Christmas so I'm buying Christmas cookies and chocolate for their lunches." OH MY WORD, was all I could think. (I posted on this very topic last year; if you want to read more about it, go here)

But anyway, I know it's kind of weird to wax nostalgic over this. But I'm a sucker for this sort of thing!