Despite everything, I think that I am supposed to be here

I’m staying in the Bed and Breakfast suite at Bonnies place and on the shelf I have found copies of ‘The Four Agreements’ and ‘Daughters of Copper Woman’ which are both books that I really want to read.

I think that arriving at any new farm or couch surfing host is always going to be awkward and I’ve got to do it at approximately another 24 times over the next 6 months.

When we visit people we know, we arrive to waves, hugs, kisses or at the very least a smile and a warm handshake. When we arrive at the homes of strangers it’s hard not to have the defences up. They tend to be welcoming but guarded. I tend to be polite but awkward. I guess it’s human nature, or maybe it’s just me, but whatever the case it’s something that I’m just going to have to accept for a little while. Yes, it is going to be uncomfortable, over and over and over again. But just because it’s temporarily uncomfortable it doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. If I’m going to meet new people and have new experiences it’s not going to feel like putting on an old pair of slippers. Sometimes the shoes are going to feel too big, sometimes too heavy, but I’m going to have to grow to fit them as they stretch and adapt to my own shape.

Even arriving here, in what must be the most laid back place in the northern hemisphere, it felt weird to begin with and I had my doubts about my choice. I started thinking that maybe I should move on somewhere else, that maybe this farm was a bit TOO laid back for me and I should go somewhere a bit more ‘serious’, whatever that means – wow, I‘m in a funny headspace still! But once we’d sat down to supper and I’d learned to hold down a conversation over the top of another very loud one going on next to me, drunk a glass of homebrew and we’d all shared our stories I was laughing my socks off and Bonnie, Wayne and Zena all seemed to be a fair bit more comfortable with me too.

So this is where I am now so I’m going to get on with ‘being here’ for the next 7 days.

First night on Lasqueti or Yes, they really are all bonkers.

Yes, they really are all bonkers, but I say that in the most respectful way possible. People here are the kind of bonkers that we should all aspire to. The kind of bonkers where people decorate their mail boxes not just with their names but with flowers, ornaments and doll parts. The kind of bonkers where the ‘Teapot House’ quite literally has a teapot for one chimney and a sugar bowl for the other; you are welcome if there is smoke coming out of the teapot but not if it is coming out of the sugar bowl.

The phone directory is sorted on a first name basis (who in real life goes by their surname these days?] and to mail a letter to Bonnie from anywhere in Canada all you really need to write is

Bonnie,
V0R2J0

However this bothers certain people, catalogue companies in particular and so the people here have great fun making up mailing addresses. Merrick lives near the Teapot House so his address is on Teapot Rd. Bonnie opted for 007, Main Street (it’s really unlikely hers is the 7th house along) and Wayne, who Bonnie very sweetly introduced as ‘my neighbour, my love’ chose

Wayne,
2nd dead dog on the right,
Lasqueti, BC, V0R2J0

However, this wasn’t good enough for one catalogue company who needed to know if it was ‘2nd dead dog on the right’ street, road, crescent or boulevard.
So now he lives at ‘2nd dead dog on the right boulevard’ which I’m sure makes all the difference.

Oh, and people change their names here if their old name doesn’t satisfy them any more. There are the more subtle changes from Diane to Daisy and then there is ‘ Wisteria Wildwood’, the former tugboat captain (I’m not sure if Wayne was pulling my leg at that point) whose previous name was probably Jane Smith. Wayne informed me that the process was simple. I could just start telling people that from now on I wanted to be called… ‘Elderflower MacTavish‘… and that would be that.

I’ve decided to stick with my name because I like it, but I do like the notion. Wouldn’t it be great if all adults had to decide whether to change their names when they got to a certain age. That way they could take out all their hippy or conservative tendencies on themselves and choose names for their kids that they might actually want to live with. Paula Yates could have called herself Peaches or Honeyblossom, got it out of he system and named her kids Katherine and Jennifer. Then they, if they so wished, could rename themselves when they were at a mature enough age to know what they wanted to be stuck with for the rest of their lives… and if they changed their minds, they could just change their names again.

I was about to say ‘if only all of life could be that simple’ but it is, and we can, we just forget.