Three blog posts in one

A winter’s day in Canada. But not so fast: there are no igloos here, no bludgeoned seals, no portly mustachioed mounties. We are in suave, temperate Vancouver, where a different iconography holds sway: a blend of quasi-sixties laissez-faire, thrusting Asian, and throwback, lumberjacking, hockey-loving Canuck. Well, I suppose if you’re lucky you might see the occasional fat hairy cop. On the downtown sidewalks the people skate past each other in a deft gavotte, eyes pointed resolutely at the street, distressed sneakers and shiny clickclacking heels. And when you ask them how they feel about the reigning conservative government, they evince an array of emotions: from anger, to querulousness, perplexity, apathy, and bliss.

On two or three days out of the five I have to feed myself downtown I go to a cheap pizza place on Pender. It’s $3.75 for two dripping, oleaginous, vaguely repugnant slices, and I get a free slice for every ten I buy. The radio plays pleasant Indian airs. The proprietors welcome me warmly and sometimes we exchange pleasantries. I enjoy this interaction, because it has encrusted itself onto my daily routine over a very long period. There is usually a beggar standing outside, a mundane-looking man with a short ginger beard and a submissive posture. I give him money roughly once a fortnight.

Ever since I began reading Victorian fiction, I’ve wondered why the characters, especially the women, are so prone to fainting. I can’t believe that all of the fainting is Victorian novelists exaggerating for effect: most were intelligent and would have expected their works to be subjected to this kind of posthumous scrutiny. No, I’m convinced that women back then really did have a chronic fainting problem. So why was this? Partly of course it was the various poisons in the air and water: lead, cholera, asbestos, the blue funk, etc. There was also the weight of expectation on the 19th century woman: play piano, bear children, play piano, more children, more piano, play bear, piano, children, etc. Their life was a never-ending vortex of offspring and Haydn minuets. And they were always subject to that bodily pinging sensation that nineteenth century physicians called nerves; and the best thing about Victorian novels is the way they mention disease – polite for mental, blunt for physical.

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