Blog Entry: 3 an Englishman in Canada
‘Fucksake’ while sitting in my overpriced cell at the Hilton Toronto, yet again my MacBook Pro restarts itself! This has become a common occurrence, but it would be most inconsiderate if the fucker dies right now! I have a 2012 MacBook Pro non-retina in silver, I spec’d with the highest CPU, RAM and original with a 500gb SSD! Now this once monster of a Mac has lasted me 9 years!! But I still wasn’t financially ready to commit to a new one. Not to mention mine was the last model that you could upgrade some parts and I was waiting for the M1 chip to come out. Unfortunately, I had upgraded all the plug in parts I could. The issue at hand is the power controller was giving up! But not to worry it only happened when I was doing major things like rendering videos or editing multiple photos……. “FUCK!” I say in a raised very aggravated voice as it failed to complete at 97%, I had been waiting 2 hours for this to complete and now I’d have to start again. To make it worse, this particular video render that it had fucked up wasn’t a clients work or a money maker, this film was far more important. It was my last skate project, one of a few little vids I had decided to do as a way of getting used to my Weebill S Gimble and yes you heard me right ‘skate video’. So, over the period of flu when there was nothing to do and nowhere was open, me and Jess had been out taking photos, trying to find new niches to explore and skating became one! This led to me meeting some of the best people ever had the pleasure of knowing (see the photo below) and finally successfully dropping into a ramp on skates. But this will have no relevance without some context.
It’s around September 1998. Great Dunmow recently got a skate park, see original half pipe pic below. (Possibly a reason to make Dunmow great!) and it was my 11th birthday. I had just got a brand-new pair of Roces Khuti roller skates from a shop in Chelmsford, the name escapes my memory, but it was the same place you could get Viper yoyo’s back in the day- hit me a message if you know the place I’m talking about? This was a fucking exciting day as I had recently decided I was going to be the next Tony Hawk, but on skates. There was absolutely no logic as to why I would be a massive success in the in-line aggressive skate world. Going by my previous skill level on my shitty low end skates from Sports Direct, oh and my swollen right testicle that had recently broken my fall (when I tried grinding on a decline floor mounted pole and as I fell I straddled it) ……. so going on this, the ‘Tony Hawk of the skate world’ looked even less likely. Also, to add to the mix the person who spent the most time at the skate part and was conveniently there every time I went down, was a guy call Greg. This particular person was a few years older and had recently told me he was going to kill me and not to come down to the park again……..This was a continuation of our loving relationship that had started when I was 7 or 8 and had decided to become the English ‘Jacky Chan’ and learn Karate …..this ended when Greg (a brown belt) heal kicked me (a red belt novice) in the head and took me out of what was meant to be a light sparing match, needless to say he wasn’t my biggest fan. I, however, not to be deterred easily had persevered and after about one year on and off, nearly cracking my head open and multiple injury’s, with encouragement in the form of threats and bullying from Greg I had decided to put skating on the side line and conceded that maybe the skate world wasn’t ready for me yet.
So fast forward to the summer of 2020 and after walking passed the skate park and seeing some guys on skates (!!) something I thought had died off years ago, I was straight over there, much to Jess’s comments “that’s not fucking weird, walking over to total strangers and asking to photograph them” well I didn’t give two flying fucks and as it happens it was good that I didn’t. One of the guys in question was Bradley, nicknamed African (a fitting nick name as he is South African) and he was up for some photos so win win. I mentioned I used to skate he said I should come down and start again…... now if you remember the previous paragraph this hadn’t gone to plan before, but now I was 33, older, with less balance and a higher centre of gravity it seemed like the logical time! So, I went home that evening a dug out the very same skates I had used when I was 11 and the next week was down there with a load of others that were trying to bring the aggressive skating scene back and I hadn’t missed a beat! I was just as shit as when I was younger! Well, except I could skate quite well now, thanks to a few years of street hockey, another random hobby bought on by a love of The Mighty Ducks movies. But tricks ramps and jumps, I was like Bambi on ice after 10 beers and a tab of acid, although that combination might have helped my confidence! But where an 11-year-old me had failed, instead I improved and persevered, by the end of an awesome 9 months, I had achieved more than I, or my very sceptical wife had thought possible. I could achieve limited rail tricks, I could kind of ride a half pipe and most importantly had finally dropping in for the first time! Only to get too cocky and fall trying an 8ft ramp as my second drop in, landing on my chest and letting out a noise that the devil would make if you kicked him in the cock!
I think I always had the ability but had never realised how supportive being part of the skate community was, no joke without flu I probably would have never gone back and tried again or got to meet the awesome group of people I did. So, while flu had put people back in their goal’s, I had succeeded where an 11 year old me left off. And also now I think about it, twenty three years on coupled with the piss taking wanker and lover of hard banter I have become, it makes me think. Maybe what I saw as bullying on Greg’s part, may have just started as banter and maybe I had taken it the wrong way and it snowballed from there? Sad if that was the case…….
Then like a loud fart in a silent room, a knock at the door broke my anger filled tunnel vision, it was our first meal since landing. Now when we were told food would be delivered to the room, I was expecting gourmet fucking room service. As I was learning, the ever-evolving arse fuckery that was flu, coming in to reduce the enjoyment factor, just like a shitty Vauxhall Corsa, at a high-end car meet. So instead of room service meals, we got pre-packaged plastic wrapped crap that was worse than cheap plane food, not to mention dangerously cool in temperature. It was at this point my wife who was getting annoyed asked “could I not do anything else?” and just relax this evening, she couldn’t deal with me getting more angry if something I want to do breaks or doesn’t work again….. in all fairness I had yelled at the computer, bitched about the food, oh and spent at least 2 hour earlier, ripping EE a new arse hole (EE is mobile phone company in the UK). Fuck it. She may have a point; it’s just I have another two days of confinement in Toronto and I’m desperate to stay productive. The days passed I finally finished my video and it was the 17th, so off to Calgary, more specifically Calgary’s version of Guantanamo Bay, what they call ‘SAIT Student Accommodation’. It wasn’t too long and we were in the air and I was confused, So, we have…..
Isolated before leaving England
Tested before leaving England
Flew on a reduced capacity flight
Tested when arrived
Quarantined for 3 days
Spaced 2m away in the departure lounge, queues, etc
Only to be packed to absolute capacity in a 737 from Toronto to Calgary……. honestly, no words…….
But we finally got to Calgary, well kind of. We still had a 3 hour wait for customs, but by mid-afternoon we had been let into the country and were in a taxi on our way to the ‘SAIT penitentiary’. We had been to Calgary before, but its different when you know this is now going to be your closest city for the foreseeable future! To make it worse our taxi driver, who had limited at best English skills, seemed to be constantly getting lost and now had taken the back street detour and was showing us the areas that would benefit you if, all your dates start with a credit card transaction, or you have an unhealthy drug dependency. Thanks to the delay in customs, we arrived later in the afternoon, but it was dry and mild perfect weather for moving 4 x your body weight in luggage. I should have seen the signs from the off, the deeply unenthusiastic African girl at the front desk of the ‘SAIT penitentiary’ who didn’t acknowledge our exitance till the second time of saying “Hi” very loudly, she spoke volumes of what to expect of SAIT.
After our existence was finally acknowledged by the winner of SAIT’s employee of the century award, we got our key and rules ………. we found out we were 22 floors up and got my first telling off as I nearly used the departing elevator instead of the arriving one. The building was industrial concrete and stainless steel, I have seen many North American campus dorms in films and TV series, this was nothing like them! We (mostly me) got our stuff out of the elevator, we could see our door and made are way over. “What the fuck?!” as both me and Jess opened the door. The room looked like it was still yet to be furnished. The floors were bare concrete, half the room was padlocked off and it has a terrible odour to it and after taking a look around we found we had some furnishings, most of which was bolted to the fucking wall like a jail cell, and all painted in 50 shades of prison green. At least we had one outside window, I walked over hoping for mountain views but alas we were 180 degrees off, so all we could see was city and flat desert beyond. Ok, not perfect but time for a cup of tea, but to match the dated furnishing the kettle was not electric and we need to heat the hob first, I went to fill the kettle and realised it was half full of scale….. luckily, we had asked for the tea and coffee pack so a we re-purposed the coffee percolator as a tea pot, putting the bags in the part usually reserved for coffee. Next on the agenda customer service hadn’t mentioned evening meal? By now I was expecting porridge in a stainless tray that get pushed through a flap in the door followed by a deep prison warden voice yelling “food”, this meant time to ring the front desk and probably get ignored. At least we were now on the right continent and in the right province and slowly getting closer, just another 2 weeks and we would be free.
