It’s a small world – talking to BBC Wiltshire Sound

General,

I’ve done a number of interviews for BBC Wiltshire Sound over the years on behalf of organisations I’ve been working with. And it also happens that an old friend of mine is now producing the morning show.

Which is how it came about that shortly after 8am on Monday morning I recorded an interview for them about the choice to emigrate and Christmas in Toronto.

The hardest thing was that there is so much that I could have talked about – I hope I managed to say something interesting and get across some of the delight of creating a new life. It was a useful reminder, amidst the flurry of filling, sanding, painting and cleaning, of what an amazing experience this is and how much we have seen and done, even if we’ve had a lot of practical things to get through and have hardly started really to get to know our city.

The interview will be broadcast tomorrow morning in two parts (subject to last minute scheduling changes) and I’m told it will be available on the BBC i-player at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/wiltshire/hi/

Update: You can reach the broadcast at:
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p005j8ch/Mark_ODonnell_17_12_2009/.
This is the whole program, but if you use the slider at the bottom of the  player (the little grey mark on the pink line), you can find the relevant sections at the following time points: 1:45:05, 2:28:50 and 2:41:45. The program is only available online till Thursday 24 December.

Loving Toronto

Toronto

I just came on a list of 175 Reasons to Love Toronto – we haven’t yet begun to do more than skim the surface of this wonderfully diverse, vibrant, human city, so only a few resonate right now. But I’m looking forward to referring back to the list to inspire our exploration . . .

Mess and milestones

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Those two words seem to sum up the last 10 days pretty well!

As soon as we had tidied up after moving in, we managed to get the electricians in to sort out the badly placed switches and sockets, add some pot lights, wire us for sound etc. So my beautiful, clean, tidy new home is now full of holes! As with most North American houses, the structure is wood frame and drywall (plasterboard), so changing things involves cutting pieces out of the walls and fishing for wires, with the occasional need to pass through a beam. And, of course, every surface is now covered with a fine layer of dust, which will only get worse as we fill and sand . . .

New pan rack with lights!

Mess Mess Mess

But it will be worth it, especially the freshly painted family/media room ready to embrace my piano when it finishes its journey with an ascent to the first floor! And our new central vacuum cleaner, which Paul fitted apparently effortlessly last weekend, vanquishes the dust with ease.

In the meantime, the milestones.

The first snowfall came wet and howling overnight  on Tuesday. On Wednesday morning Paul set out for Tyco at Markham, where a Christmas pot-luck lunch was scheduled, through a thick layer of sludgy snow. A neighbour kindly cleared the sidewalk (pavement) in front of our house but, later, I christened our snow shovel and attacked the side (one downside of a corner property!).  This is definitely worth doing whilst the snow is fresh. We have only had flurries since Wednesday, but Toronto remains dusted with icing sugar in temperatures between around –5 and –8, with hard candy crusts where snow has gathered. Wednesday was gray, gloomy and damp, but the last couple of days have been mostly sunny and invigorating. Yes, it is cold, especially when the wind catches you, but as long as you have appropriate layers, hat and gloves, everything feels so clear and bright.

Yesterday we received notification that our container was arriving in Montreal, followed today by a copy of the manifest. We then had to take this, together with our shipping list, passports, Permanent Residency cards and declaration to the imposing official building at 1 Front Street to gain customs clearance. This was achieved so swiftly that it was almost a (welcome) anticlimax. The container should by now have been released for loading onto a train to Toronto and, hopefully sometime next week, there will be another round of chaos as the 169 boxes containing our worldly goods are delivered to our home.

The move

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The move went very smoothly – we got the keys at lunchtime on  Monday and moved most of our stuff (including a bed frame, which traveled on the roof of our car) on Monday afternoon and evening.

We were in the house by 8am yesterday ready for Rogers to come to connect the Internet and phone and for our bed and a lazy-boy type sofa (for our media/family room) to be delivered. The piles of packaging grew and grew . . .

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Then it was off to the Mall, spending courageously as my mother used to put it!

Paul had an event to go to in the evening, so I was forced into driving as he picked up the subway on the way home – it wasn’t far and I felt about ready to start getting over my nervousness at adjusting to controls on the opposite side and city driving all at the same time!  This also meant I could go off to the supermarket to frighten myself at the cost of stocking up with all the essential staples, toiletries etc. –  it”s easy to forget the initial outlay of starting from scratch with food, cleaning materials etc!

After two long and busy days, I really feel for Paul trying to find the energy and concentration to get back to his Tyco work. There are still a thousand and one small things to do, which he has to let go in working hours, as well as some re-design of badly sited switches and lighting (we have an electrician working on a quote) to be sorted before our furniture arrives from the UK around 15 December (it’s due to reach port in Montreal on 11th). We also discovered that the house has been plumbed for a central vacuum cleaner and anticipate getting this fitted as soon as possible.