DIARY
DOM JOLY 1 'm in Canada, three hours north of Toronto, up in the great wilderness. Well, wilderness with lattes if I'm being totally honest. I'm on Lake Joe, one of the three Muskoka lakes that are a little bit to Toronto as are the Hamptons to Manhattan. I'm 'cottaging', which always sounds a tad George Michael until you hastily explain that everything on a lake in Ontario is termed a 'cottage', from humble log cabins to huge Kennedy-like complexes. It's worse in Quebec where they call them 'chateaux' whatever the size — very nouveau, very French. For my sins I'm married to a Canadian so, every year, I come over here for a month and behave like the Great Gatsby, lavishly hosting my legions of in-laws. This year I might be here a bit longer as, when I managed to locate a rare internet connection, I got an email informing me that our home in the Cotswolds was under three feet of flood sewage. We had a family meeting and decided to bury our respective heads in the sand, enjoy our holiday, and deal with things when we get back — very impractical, very British.
Watching the news and seeing breathless Canadian anchors reporting 'live from Tewksbury where looting has broken out' seems totally surreal as I sit on my deck in 32°C watching my kids hurl themselves off huge slabs of granite into the magical lake below me. Mind you, a lot of Brits find it mildly surreal that I take my summer holidays in Canada. 'Isn't it bloody freezing?' they all ask. I have to point out that Toronto is on the same latitude as Cannes and that it gets seriously hot up here. I actually try my best to keep very quiet about the place as one of the real joys of being here is the almost complete absence of Brits. I know that it's a bit unpatriotic but I just think that most Brits don't really `do' holidays that well and tend to ruin a place with excess drinking and tattoo coverage. Canada is a quiet, orderly place. At times it's a little like being stuck in a Christian camp as everyone is so 'nice' and friendly. It's been described as the Ned Flanders to the US's Homer Simpson and that's not far off. The headline in our local newspaper yesterday concerned a bus driver who had kicked a young woman off his bus as she was wearing a low-cut top that he found 'distracting'. You couldn't make it up.
El or the first week or so out here I remain defiantly British and refuse to say 'hello' back to complete strangers, nor do I talk to people in shops. Then I slowly succumb and start to actually quite enjoy smiling at passersby, waving to other boat users and mowing old people's lawns. I come to realise that we in the UK are a surly, unfriendly bunch and I determine to change my ways and lead a quiet revolution when I get back home. Sadly, five minutes after I've arrived back at the insufferable Terminal 3 and faced the idiocy of jumped-up traffic wardens masquerading as 'airline security' armed with the powers of the Gestapo, normal service is resumed. Canadian airport security is no less efficient than ours but they somehow manage to do their jobs without making you feel like a worthless travel worm. The passport official at Toronto's Pearson airport even stamped the homemade passport that my wife had made for my daughter's beloved panda. When we'd handed it to the surly official at Heathrow on the way out I thought for one terrible moment that Pandy might be headed straight to Guantanamo as he muttered something about 'forgeries . . . very serious affair . . . must see my supervisor'. God, I hate England at moments like that.
The Canadians are slightly chippy about their status in the world. It has something to do with having such a powerful neighbour — New Zealanders suffers from a very similar syndrome and travellers from both countries tend to compensate for this by placing their national flags prominently on their items of baggage. They also worry about terrorism but in a slightly different way to us. Several Canadians have sympathised with me about our recent spate of home-grown suicide bombers but they do not want to be outdone. 'Of course we have had a lot of near-misses ourselves — the CN Tower is a very high-risk target.' Sadly, the reality is that nobody ever attacks Canada — it's just not sexy enough.
T ' m off to the 'Empty Quarter' on the borders of Oman and the Yemen when I get back. It should be fabulous — my wife gets to dry out our house and I get to play at being Wilfred Thesiger. Sadly it's not going to impress anyone at the US embassy next time I need a visa. Not only was I born in Beirut but I already have potentially offensive (to the US) stamps in my passport from Syria, Iran, Libya, Morocco, China, Egypt, Russia, Vietnam and India among many others. Last time I had an interview, the woman looked at my (thick) file and saw that I spoke French and Arabic. She actually asked me the question, 'Why do you speak these languages?' It was so much like a scene that Bill Hicks, the much missed US comedian, described in a waffle house somewhere in the southern United States. He's sitting in there reading a book and the waitress approaches him in some confusion. He looks up and she asks him — 'What you readin' for?' He muses that he's often been asked what is he reading, but never what for. His answer is perfect and to the point — 'Well, I guess it's so I don't ever become a waffle house waitress.' I've never dared try a similar approach with the US authorities. I don't fancy joining Pandy in Guantanamo any time soon — besides, a Cuban stamp could just tip the balance.
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