I am a nester not a traveller

Sunday we left Seattle for Vancouver Island.

There are many ways to get from Seattle over the border into Canada.  One is to fly.  We had had quite enough airborne activity for one month, so that was out. Then you can drive down the highway for about three hours and cross over into Canada that way, going via Vancouver. Then you hop on a boat and across to Vancouver Island, which is where we are staying.  We decided that we didn’t fancy motorway driving much, so we opted for the scenic route. 

This meant driving out of Seattle to a place called Edmunds.  Once there you sit in a queue of traffic to get on a tiny ferry for half an hour to a place called Kingston.  Not in Jamaica. No. It’s much wetter than that.  Apparently it rains for two thirds of the year in Washington State, which would explain a) why it is so green and b) why it reminds me so much of Wales, just on a grand scale.  From Kingston you drive for about an hour and a half through some frankly stunning scenery, with a gigantic national park on your left, and the coastline on your right, until you come to an unholy place called Port Angeles.  Port Angeles has two redeeming features: 1) it has an excellent bookshop which has a superb mix of new and second hand fiction and a cracking children’s section, and 2) it has a ferry port which allows you to leave the U.S.A. and more importantly Port Angeles.  Under no circumstances follow the ticket clerk’s advice when you buy your ferry ticket, and eat at the Country Diner. It’s inskusting, although nursing your indigestion will help pass the time on the hour and a half ferry crossing.  Although if you’re lucky, like us, you will sit next to three lovely ladies who had just been to a huge crafting and jewellry making convention and were keen to tell you all about it and laugh at all your jokes.

Getting into Canada was a breeze and a half.  We drove up to the window of the customs booth, showed our passports, said we were here on holiday, swore up and down that we had no firearms, bananas or pot plants, and that was that.  Hoorah! Colour me impressed.

We docked in Victoria and had a twenty minute drive to our house which is in an area called Saanich, just outside of a lovely town called Sidney by the Sea. 

The house is bonkers.  I will explain more on another day, and possibly with photos, should I find the right wire which will allow me to upload them from my camera.  Anyway, for now all you need to know is that it is huge and entirely impractical for children, stuffed as it is to the gills with antiques and slippery flooring.  In fact the dining room has caused me so many nightmares that we have simply blocked it off with chairs.  We would have shut the doors, except they haven’t built those yet!

We threw all our luggage in the house and then galloped off to Sidney to the local supermarket which is called Thrifty.  This name, by the way, is a big, fat lie.  There is nothing thrifty about it at all.  Food is exorbitantly expensive here. Much more expensive than at home. You cannot, for example, get a packet of biscuits for under a pound, and the price of coffee nearly made me weep.  We ended up spending $370 dollars in groceries, which is obscene.

By the time we got back, recovered from the shock and unpacked, it was about half past eight at night.  We had been on the go since six thirty in the morning.  It was quite a long day.  Nevertheless, by the time I fell into bed I was happy.  I have discovered that I do not like being a nomad.  I like having my house and my things around me, and that nothing gives me more pleasure than a well stocked book shelf and a well stocked fridge, both of which are now in my possession.  Just opening the fridge door and surveying the wonders within makes me go all relaxed inside.  I am a simple soul at heart.

Today has been spent watching the rain lash down and visiting with the children’s grandmother, who very kindly took us all out for lunch and bought Oscar his longed for bucket and spade. Not that he could use it today.  It is not beach weather. It is monsoon weather.  The rain has dripped off every roof and pooled round every gutter. As my granny would say: ‘It’s not stopping to rain’ it’s raining that much.  It’s a good job we didn’t visit for the weather.

We are surrounded here by lush gardens that back onto woodland.  Even when it is dry it is wet, if you get my drift. There are huge ponds in the wood beyond and there are two ponds in the garden.  The area is rife with frogs and they sing all night long.  I love the sound. Jason has taken to burying his head under the pillows.  He hates nature.  We have two families of deer apparently, who wander through the garden, although they have been too busy scuba diving to visit us in the last two days.  There is a Siamese cat across the way called Mocha, who has sat and called to us from her porch in a plaintive manner.  I am sure once it is dry enough for me not to worry about the children doing a Doctor Foster, they will be chasing her hither and yon and she will wish she had never bothered.  There is a suicidal Jay bird who has taken a fancy to one of the living room windows and has spent all day trying to break its neck by dive bombing it.  We have attempted to stop it, but it will not be denied.  I am hoping that if it kills itself, Mocha eats it before the children discover its lifeless corpse and I am forced to perform the funeral rites.  This is nature, red in tooth and claw.

Tomorrow I have my appointments at the optician’s. I am so excited.  Wearing my glasses for best part of a week has made me realise how out of date this prescription truly is and I am fed up of not being able to read road signs until I am sitting on them, and feeling vulnerable because I can only see what is a foot in front of me.  I am having new glasses and new contact lenses, and damn the expense.  It will be a day of celebration, even though I will still have to wait for the prescriptions to be made up, the end will be in sight, and I will be able to see it.  Yay!

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