Reaching New Lows

It has been a long time between posts. For those of you for whom new entries on this blog represent highlights in your otherwise dull work days, or in any way contribute to your general happiness, I am sorry. And not just for the gap in posts - this blog actually making your day is a bit sad. There are two reasons for not updating sooner. First of all, I don't have very much internet access, which makes spontaneous "impulse updates" impossible. But many of the entries on this blog are not acts of impulse, but rather deeply thought and considered entries that I have intellectually sweated over for days. And I haven't written any of those entries because I've been really busy.

"Busy?" you ask, "How can someone who contributes as little to the world as John be busy?"

In all honesty, I am asking myself the same question. Obviously, I spend a lot of time skiing, even more time sleeping, and a quite unnerving amount of time eating. Aside from that there's baking (which is a diabolical way of eating bread without having to pay for it) and repairing my skis (which is required on an all-too-frequent basis). There are also lots of people staying in White Star Chalet at the moment, and they keep going to be early, which means I don't get as much time to sit around and agonise over this blog as I did in the past. In any case, I have recently reached an intersection of busyness and slovenliness where I need to write "Take a shower" on my lists of things to do.

This baffling condition of being busy combined with the fatigue of continued skiing and the peculiar mix of isolation and crowdedness that comes from living in White Star Chalet has produced a kind of alienation from regular society and its norms. I have become obsessed with wiping down the benches in the hut's kitchen, but am perfectly happy to wear the same ski socks for a week. I am personally offended when people wear their shoes inside, but I don't mind eating bacon that has pretty clearly gone off. I regularly check the shower to see if it needs cleaning, but I don't actually use it. The other day I spent almost two hours wandering around the hut in various states of sartorial disarray muttering and hooting to myself like a crazy hobo before I realised there was a another person lying in bed about two metres away THE WHOLE TIME. The only consolation I can give myself is that I still had the decency to be embarrassed.


Like most descents into madness this has been a gradual process where the subtle daily changes go unnoticed. Just like the steady creep of gambling addiction, in which an addict may only realise there is a problem when they have gambled away their entire pension cheque, it can take a moment of revelation and horror to realise just how low you have sunk. For me, that moment came last Saturday, when I allowed a six year old to take credit for one of my farts.

Obviously, this blog is much too high-brow to indulge in fart humour, but for the sake of historical accuracy and personal integrity, I shall recount the story. White Star combines its living, sleeping and cooking areas into a single room, and while standing roughly in the centre of this room I - in a moment of inattention - let out an especially vile and malodorous silent fart. But in the short interval between the emission of the fart and its detection by my companions, a six year old gleefully cheered "I just farted". This at first brought great mirth to all in the room, but as the true scope of the problem was revealed, and the residents of the hut increasingly found themselves pressed outwards by the stench, people began to marvel that such powerful flatulence could be produced by a child so small. Meanwhile I, flooded with both relief and shame, said nothing.

So this is my public apology to Winnie, who probably did fart, but was not responsible for the true horror experienced in that room last Saturday evening. Winnie, I am sorry. However, my promise to keep your teddy bear if it ever falls onto my bunk again still stands.

Things I have not done recently

OK, so it’s been a long time since my last post. In my defence, it has been snowing. In my life as it currently operates, there is a very strong correlation between snowfall and the number of important things I don’t get done. If you were to write out a list of the usual functions that are required to sustain me in my current lifestyle, starting with the least important and working your way down to absolute life essentials, it would look something like this:

• Checking for mail at the post office
• Washing (clothes)
• Socialising with people who aren’t my housemates
• Writing blog entries
• Ski boot maintenance
• Cleaning the house
• Emailing people
• Ski maintenance
• Important administrative stuff (booking or changing flights, getting a British Columbia driver’s license)
• Washing (myself)
• Food shopping
• Going to work
• Skiing
• Sleeping
• Eating

As more snow falls, I ignore more and more of the items on this list, starting at the top and moving down. It is thus theoretically possible that if enough snow fell I would stop skiing completely and simply stay at home eating and sleeping. That would have to be a complete boatload of snow. It’s not so much about total quantity of snowfall either – it’s more related to how regularly snow falls in quantities of roughly 10cm or more.

And on that front the last two weeks have excelled themselves. We had two days without snow, and the rest were all between 5 and 15cm. It’s not much per day, but it all adds up. And it has resulted in new lows on the list of things I’ve been ignoring. Let’s just say that I’ve still been buying food, but that’s about as good as it gets.

However, today is Friday, and I’m at work for the next three days. There’s also no snow in the forecast, so this is chance to get my life in order before I head to Silverstar (a ski field near Kelowna – a few hours from here) next week to visit Giuliana from Broken River. Believe it or not, I actually have several clean pairs of socks and even a clean pair of undies for the weekend. Given that I don’t know when I last did laundry, this is something of an achievement. It is, however, an achievement that demonstrates just how little effort I have put into finding clean socks and undies – these have been hanging on a rack somewhere for a week or two and I didn’t even notice.