There’s no place that’s home

Comments Off on There’s no place that’s home

It’s bloody cold here this morning. It’s probably not that cold, but sat around in my big teeshirt and socks I’m fracking freezing. The wet hair probably doesn’t help

If you’re wondering about the whole ‘fracking’ thing, it’s a BSGism and it’s because I’ve noticed that Europeans, or more specifically the British and the Irish swear a hell of a lot more than Candians and Americans. For example. Had I written that sentance the way I first thought of it it’d’ve been: “swear a fuck load more than…”

When I visited Ireland all those happy years ago (3…) I thought “bloody hell” – and my ‘Irish’ accent is largely based around me dropping in about 60% more instances of the word “fuck”. Apparently it sounds like TV-Northern Irish. Anyway, I guess that’s how I must sound to Canadians…
Anyway, so, in an effort to make myself more polite I’m trying to drop the swearing. Thing is, I don’t swear at work, I’m really shocked when nurses swear – there’s this really nice Spanish nurse at work who learned English in the North of England, and her choice of words is rather more colourful than you’d maybe expect… Which is quite entertaining.

Yeah. So. It’s funny, I’ve felt this before and it’s usually a transient thing, but I’m kind of feeling it again; the whole not feeling at home anywhere. I mean, it’s my home, this is my house, some of my friends are here in Bristol. But I kind of mentally disconnected myself from the place when I decided I wanted to move to Canada. It’s bizzare. Bristol’s now just the place I live. Like my mum’s house, it’s a place I stay. Which has the unfortunate side effect of no-where feeling like home. I’ve ensnared myself in my own mental trap.

Not so clever after all :-p

Anyhow, that’s been bugging me, I’m treading water waiting for the time when I don’t have to wait for the time. Which is made more frustrating by discovering that the recruitment agents and the hospitals in Canada want 2 years post-qualifying experience in your chosen field before considering you for work. This is agonisingly painful. I now feel like I’ve hit the pause button on my life and can’t press play. The idea of staying here for 2 years after qualifying instead of 1.5 from now, well, it’s kind of depressing really. On the other hand it’s probably a more ‘reasonable’ timescale for me to raise the money and so on – so the sensible part of me is going “well, I guess it isn’t so bad. It’s only 6 months”; and the impatient impulsive bit of me is being driven nuts by it.

I’m still stuck listening to Desi on the Streets of Calcutta, incidentally.

Anyway, other stuff, namely Northern Exposure. I’ve finished season one of Northern Exposure off; the disks managing to last a week of viewing only with emmense effort on my part. I’d never seen Season one before, it’s (obviously) no where as developed as the later series, the characters seem rather two dimensional – and lack depth… Sometimes it feels like not only do you not know their backstory but that they don’t really have one. On the other hand, there are sparks of what the series was to become – and there’s some really good episodes hidden in this first series.

That – and the first episode when Joel is sent to Cicely is just hilarious. It’s the final epsiode of the series which really grabbed me though; the characters have started to get that rich depth that was so much a hallmark of the series and that episode – it grabbed me and sucked me in completely. I could watch it again right now. Highs and lows, humour and pain; all the things I loved about Northern Exposure.

One thing though; the DVDs are absolute shit. Complete and total pathetic crap. For the first time in my life I’ve submitted an Amazon review because it’s beyond poor. The quality of the video is fine, that I don’t really have any complaints about; in fact, I thought that the quality was suprisingly good. No. It’s the fact they’ve not even bothered to put chapter markers in it. No chapter markers at all. So you can’t stop an episode and come back to it without having to fast-forward through it video style. In fact, it’s worse than video because video you could stop and come back to, but not the Northern Exposure disks.

I don’t mind not having extras. I don’t actually care about that, they’re nice but I didn’t really expect much from a series shot in 1990, even not having scene selection – I don’t care. But no chapters at all? What kind of crap is that? They want 26 quid for the third DVD in the set, and it better bloody have chapter markers.

And in other news I’ve caught up on The L Word (spoilers (short)). Season 3 is turning out to be truly incredible. I mean, I knew when Dana was diagnosed with a ‘lump’ early on, I thought (obviously) ‘oh fuck’; and I expected the operation not to go well; but it still was one of those heart stopping moments; the seriousness of Dana’s cancer. And the kick in the teeth to Lara from the doctor? I wasn’t expecting that. Once someone’s said “This is my partner”, my first call is to say ‘are you happy to share information about your care with them’ – before anything else happens, so god, I just wanted to beat that doctor – and Dana’s family. Fuck! A partner is your choice; your family may not like that choice, but they should damn well respect it. Gaaah.
I guess like NE, it’s got these incredible highs of laughter in the episodes which pull you up only to hit you with something incredibly painful. And the worst of it there’s no one here for me to talk to about it. In fact, I don’t think I actually know anyone who’s seen Season 3 at all. Gaaah.
The whole series though is just incredible. I tend to get bored of series; I have a short TV attention span; something’s got to be damn good to keep me coming back and watching. But they’ve managed to keep the quality up really well on this one.

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.