The Biggest Swimming Pool in the World

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Superlatives are words used to qualify the absolute top or bottom in quality or quantity. How we enjoy talking about the wealthiest man in the world, the thinnest tablet or the most crooked political leader!

I guess these words were invented to make us forget how common our ordinary lives can be.

As I was discussing superlatives with colleagues, it made me think of something that happened while I was still married.

My wife was born to drive a car. She just loved to take to the road. She used any excuse to jump into the car and travel aimlessly looking for something new to see.

On a nice sunny Sunday afternoon my wife and I decided to take a ride in the countryside.

My wife was at the wheel. Fields, groves and cattle were going by the left and right of the car. I was daydreaming, thinking how great life was and how wonderful it was to be alive.

We came to a village famous for its cheese curds factory and decided to stop and sample the local delicacy.

Cheese curds were invented in Canada in the early 1960s by dairy farmers trying to bypass quota regulations. Easy to make, this fat, salty, slightly processed cheddar cheese quickly became popular and gave birth to the infamous “poutine,” a meal made of cheese and french fries topped with hot gravy.

We bought our cheese and as my wife was admiring the quaint shop, I read a story in the local newspaper about one of the area attractions, “the biggest natural swimming pool in the world.”

As soon as I mentioned it to my wife, she wanted to see it since it was only a few miles away.

We found the “swimming pool” at the end of an unnamed dirt road. The pool was made of three communicating stone basins at the foot of a large rock where a trickle of cold water was flowing from a spring. The bottom of each basin had been painted aquamarine to give the impression of an artificial swimming pool. All in all, the lagoon was much smaller in size than an olympic swimming pool.

It had been a hot summer with less than average rainfall. The stream was not a bubbly jet of water, just a slow dribble. The smallest basin was empty and the deepest contained nothing more than three feet of sticky water, green with algae proliferating under the warm sun.

This did not seem to bother the numerous children who were noisily splashing about in the water while their parents, slumped into lounging chairs around the pool, distractedly kept an eye on their progeny.

I told my wife this seemed to be the perfect place to catch a dermatosis that would make these poor kids’ skin tougher than the hide of Big Joe, the largest alligator of Florida that we had seen near Fort Myers.

With more than one million American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) in the world this species is far from being endangered as it haunts the southeastern United States. The word “alligator” is derived from el lagarto (the lizard), the name given to the reptile by the first Spanish explorers.

“You always see the bad side of things! Look at how much fun they’re having!” she said smiling and waving at the children.

At that moment, a man with a worn-out Elvis Presley T-shirt and sporting a dirty pair of khaki shorts with a dangerously open fly came to meet us.

— Welcome to our little paradise on Earth! Are you looking for a place to park your camping trailer?

— Erm... No, we just came to see the biggest swimming pool in the world, I said before being interrupted by my wife.

— Oh! There’s a campground? Can we see it?

— Yes, behind those trees, answered the man pointing towards a thinly-wooded area. I can give you a tour if you want.

— Oh! That would be delightful! Shall we go my darling? said my wife to me as she took the arm of our improvised guide.

Against my will I followed them through an underbrush planted with birch and aspen trees.

A lacing road was forming a loop of the campground. Trailers were parked along the road close to each other, most of them permanently. Some seemed to have been there for decades.

At the centre of the loop, a large porcelain urinal decorated with lights and plastic flowers was acting as a grotto for a statue of the Virgin Mary. The saint was standing in this makeshift shrine with her open arms, looking discouraged as if she declined any responsibility for the compound she found herself in.

Our guide was explaining the intricacies of camping to my wife as she obediently listened and asked questions from time to time. The man was so happy to have found an audience that he was rocking on his heels, a nervous tick that, to my dismay, was causing the broken fly of his shorts to open even more.

He then invited us for coffee in his trailer. My wife accepted although I was not keen on the invitation and we walked towards the fellow’s mobile home.

The trailer looked like our guide: common and unkempt. As the guy started to fight to open the jammed door, the broken fly zipper of his shorts gaped even more and, to my disgust, I saw “Elvis” leaving the building.

I had had enough. I took my wife by the arm, thanked our host and, pretending we had a long ride home we left this place where I had seen everything I wished I had never seen.

Swimming pools have been popular since antiquity, the oldest one was found in Sindh, Pakistan. In England, public swimming pools appeared in the mid-19th century. However, nobody has ever boasted of having the emptiest swimming pool in the world.

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Hospital Diaries VII: The Sweet-Smelling Ward

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This is part of a series. You can begin at Part I and follow the link at the end of each installment to read the next. 

Paralysis is a terrible impediment to autonomy. Not only are you not able to move but also you cannot get dressed, wash or go to the bathroom by yourself.

In the Gurney Hall I had to let go of my shirt and pants and I felt humiliated wearing nothing but briefs under the ridiculous patient smock with the wide opening in the back.

You see, clothes not only serve to keep you warm and decent, they also symbolize your social status. In a hospital this hierarchy is quite obvious: doctors wear white smocks and a tie, nurses and orderlies wear pastel-coloured scrubs, and patients lie half-naked at the bottom of the social ladder.

The social ladder is nowhere ever more present than in a fire brigade. Here a firefighter is climbing the social ladder in an attempt to become lead firefighter, a dangerous position with more responsibilities. Exactly why is a mystery to me.

I was sharing my embarrassment with my friend Lucide as she was pushing me in my wheelchair back to my room at the Emergency Overflow.

“You know, when you’re in a hospital, you have to give up your pride,” she said.

Unfortunately, my vanity prevented me from appreciating her wisdom.

The next day, I squirmed for an hour in my stretcher, finally managing to put on a pair of jeans. I could not button them because of my swollen and numb hands but I did zip them up.

As I was basking in this accomplishment, I looked up and saw a tall blonde woman who had been observing me for awhile, standing at the foot of my gurney.

Although she was smartly dressed and not wearing a white smock, I knew she was a doctor simply because she appeared out of nowhere like all the other doctors who came to see me in the hospital.

“Good morning sir. I am Doctor Sveta Tiplova,” she said with a strong Russian accent. “How are you feeling today?”

“Quite well thank you. Are you a neurologist?”

“No, I’m a physiatrist and I’m here to assess your condition.”

I thought I heard “psychiatrist” and for a moment I had a vision of the Soviet Gulag and the snowy Siberian steppes. I feared this new doctor was sent by the “Seagull,” the doctor who thought I was faking my illness, as a first step to having me committed.

Seeing my distress, Doctor Tiplova explained that she was a specialist of the musculoskeletal system. She then proceeded to thoroughly examine my hands, my arms, my shoulders, my neck and my knees.

Physiatry, a medical discipline that became popular during WWII, is about restoring the bones and muscles connexion after an injury otherwise than through a silly Bible camp song.

She seemed puzzled but I could see that she was carefully considering my ailment. She finally said:

“Listen, for what it’s worth I am going to submit your case to the Internal Medicine Department. They might be able to recommend some tests to establish a proper diagnosis.”

After she left I realized that medical science was as much in the dark about the nature of my illness as I was, although it did not have to cope with the pain and paralysis.

For the time being however, Doctor Tiplova’s visit had an instant benefit for me. For her examination, an orderly had moved me to my wheelchair and I was no longer lying down on my stretcher.

I had not been to the bathroom since I arrived at the hospital several days before. My friend Lucide had brought me prunes when she came to visit and I was beginning to feel their effect on my bowels.

Plums (prunus domestica) were introduced to the western world during the Crusades and offered as a perk to crusaders (whence the expression “plum reward”) who left their family and possessions behind to massacre Moors in the Holy Land. Once dried, they are called prunes and can be preserved for a long time. Their laxative properties are legend.

I rolled my wheelchair to the toilet, put the brakes on and painstakingly lifted myself up by leaning on the chair’s armrests. With great effort I advanced the three steps to the bowl and collapsed on its seat.

At once my intestines began to void. Oh! The joy I felt when I realized that at least this part of my body was fully functional! My hands, my arms, my legs and my neck may have given up on me but at this time I swear I was in Paradise!

However, after I was done and had wiped away the traces of my deed I was faced with another challenge. How was I to get up from the toilet? There were holding bars on the wall but my arms did not have the strength to lift me up.

I realized I would have to ask an orderly to help me get up from this awkward position.

There was a chain on the wall with a sign that said “EMERGENCY” in red letters. Humbly I pulled on it and after ten minutes an orderly showed up.

“Oh! Poor sir! You shouldn’t have tried to go to the bathroom by yourself! We could have brought you a commode chair!”

Commode chairs, such as this padded specimen, were popular in the 18 and 19 centuries before the advent of sewers. To each his own, using a commode chair is not a pleasant experience yet it is better than relieving yourself in a diaper.

He tried to pull me up but the bathroom was too narrow. He left to get another orderly and together they managed to make me stand up. The second orderly pulled up my trousers, buttoned them and zipped them up.

Nothing can wound your pride as much as having several people witnessing the embarrassing situation you are in.

As a consolation, I thought of Dante’s Divine Comedy where the author, while travelling through Hell, met an acquaintance who had been condemned to swim for eternity in a sea of excrements because of his pride.

Dante Alighieri is the Italian poet who established the Tuscan dialect as the standard Italian language. The Divine Comedy recalls his climbing the social ladder through the nine circles of Hell, the nine rings of Purgatory and the nine celestial bodies of Paradise. The journey is the reward indeed. Illustration by Gustave Doré, Public Domain

Once I was sitting in my wheelchair, I asked if I could go outside to have a smoke.

“That will not be possible sir,” said the orderly. “We have to put you back on your gurney. We found a permanent room for you in another ward and somebody will take you there shortly.”

As the gurney attendant was rolling my stretcher towards the elevator I was rejoicing because I believed that being transferred to a permanent room meant I was now a legitimate patient. Doctors would soon find the nature of my ailment, prescribe the appropriate treatment and I could go back home.

Alas! When the attendant pushed open the doors of the general medicine ward where I was to stay for the next several weeks a poignant stench of excrements assailed my nostrils.

I thought I was being taken to Dante’s first circle of Hell to be punished for my pride.

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To be continued in Hospital Diaries VIII: Lying in the bed I made

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Hospital Diaries VI: The Overflow

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This is part of a series. You can begin at Part I and follow the link at the end of each installment to read the next. 

I had been in the gurney hall for two days. Every move I made was painful and I still did not know what I was suffering from. It had all started with a gout attack but then I was told I had twisted my knee and had torn some ligaments. After being admitted to the hospital, doctors talked about arthrosis, spinal stenosis and a neurologist I nicknamed “the Seagull” insisted I needed back surgery.

Lying on my gurney I was pondering about how difficult it is to establish an accurate diagnosis. In all fairness I could not blame doctors for failing so far to identify the cause of my handicap. In a way, I felt it was like an evil genius, some kind of Keyzer Söze from the movie The Usual Suspects, was living inside my body, wreaking havoc at the expense of doctors/detectives who were completely baffled.

Only in literature and movies the issue is finding the “true” culprits. In real life, detectives and doctors are content to find a convenient suspect – all the best if it’s the real guilty party – to lay charges on, close the case and move on.

Those were my thoughts as I watched the hospital chaplain offer his sympathies to the family of a dying patient to whom he had just administered the last rites in one of the private rooms of the gurney hall.

At that moment an attendant showed up and began to place my personal belongings under my gurney. I was terrified she was going to take me against my will to the operating room for spinal surgery. I nervously asked her where we were going.

“I am taking you to your room sir.”

I could not believe my ears! Finally I was leaving the noisy gurney hall with its blaring bells and alarms! As I was profusely babbling my thanks to the attendant, she curtly said:

“I’m just doing my job sir.”

After I was wheeled into my new room, an orderly slid my body to a wider gurney with a thicker mattress. From the conversation the orderly and the gurney attendant were having, I understood that I was now in a place called the Emergency Overflow, a somewhat “underground” department set up for patients who had been residing in the emergency ward for at least 48 hours. This was the way the hospital had found to avoid the heavy fines that were imposed if the ministry of health’s performance goals were not met.

Mankind is obsessed with order, yet lusts for chaos. Maybe that’s why bureaucracy was invented. Bureaucracy is a form of labour organization purposedly designed to effectively achieve a cost-efficient use of resources in a rational way. However tremendous effort and considerable ingenuity are needed to get around bureaucracy’s cumbersome rules.

I owed my escape from the gurney hall to this paradox.

I was now in a no man’s land of a sort, some temporary quarters run by a minimal staff. From time to time a nurse would come by to take my vital signs and ask me to rate my pain on a scale from zero to ten and an orderly brought me my meals.

In Canada, hospital menus are designed by dieticians. Low-salt, low-fat and low-sugar meals usually taste like cardboard. If the food is not particularly tasty, it is however very healthy.

Everyday I had a visit from “the seagull,” the neurologist who was convinced I was faking my illness since I would not agree to have back surgery.

“Come on! Show me what you can do! Get up on your feet and walk!” the seagull would mock me.

I was nearing rock bottom. Having been confined to a stretcher for almost a week, I still did not know what I was sick from, my doctor was treating me as if I was imagining my ailment and I was taking painkillers that had no effect on my pain.

When my friend Lucide came to see me, she brought a bottle of Ibuprofen. I quickly took two tablets and hid the bottle in my bedside table hoping no overly conscious nurse would steal it away from me again.

While I was waiting for the medication to take effect, I told Lucide about my frustration and despair.

“Hmm… I saw three empty wheelchairs in the hall as I was coming to your room” said Lucide. “Maybe if we could borrow one and go to the cafeteria it would lift your spirits a bit.”

US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life after being struck with paralysis during a vacation at Campobello Island in New Brunswick. Still today doctors disagree about whether FDR suffered from poliomyelitis or Guillain–Barré syndrome.

My friend is a genius. I rang the nurse right away. After about 15 minutes of waiting, an orderly arrived and I asked her if I could have a wheelchair to go for a stroll with my friend.

“I’ll ask your nurse,” she replied.

Lucide and I continued our conversation for about 20 minutes and having no news from my nurse, I rang again. When the orderly returned, I asked her if the wheelchair I requested was coming.

“I’m sorry sir, your nurse is taking a break and I haven’t been authorized to give you a wheelchair yet.”

That was too much. The frustration that had been building up in me for the last week overflowed.

“Listen miss: are you telling me there is only one person in this ward who can allow me to go down to the cafeteria in a wheelchair to have coffee with my friend? This is a simple request! I’m not asking for a liver transplant! All I want is a wheelchair! This is not the third world, is it?”

My outburst took the orderly by surprise. She began to cry. Her sobs alerted her supervisor who rushed into my room.

“What have you done to my employee?” he enquired uneasily.

Ashamed, I told him what happened while a nurse was taking the orderly to the hallway to comfort her. Five minutes later, the supervisor came back with a wheelchair in which he helped me sit. Lucide wheeled me to the elevator to go to the cafeteria.

Still astounded by the drama that just happened I was nevertheless ecstatic to be sitting, moving away from the confines of my room.

Lucide and I got some coffee and I asked her to take me outside to smoke. It was a cold January night and at minus 20 degrees I was shivering. It was the first cigarette I had had in six days. It felt like I finally had found relief for my pain.

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To be continued in Hospital Diaries VII: The Sweet-Smelling Ward

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Hospital Diaries III: Incubation

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This is part of a series. You can begin at Part I and follow the link at the end of each installment to read the next.

Parked in a wheelchair at the hospital’s emergency ward, I soon understood why sick people are called “patients.” Patience is the ability to wait in silence while surrendering to calamity.

Unfortunately, the young lady sitting in front of me did not grasp that concept. With her cell phone glued to her ear, she was ranting over the senselessness of the health care system.

“I’ve been waiting for five hours! I’ve had a splitting headache ever since I got vaccinated last week and I’m leaving for Thailand in two days! Why is nobody taking care of me? Don’t they realize this is an emergency?”

Many people think that all emergencies require immediate action. This is not so. There are different levels. Some emergencies need to be addressed without delay, others can wait a little while. Few are a priority.

While driving me to the hospital, my friend Lucide tried to reassure me about my stay at the hospital by telling me the difference between private and public healthcare systems.

“A private healthcare system sees patients as a source of revenues whereas a public system – such as the one we have in Canada – views them as expenditures. A public system aims at getting you well enough to send you home as quickly as possible in order to minimize costs. You’ll see: in a snap you‘ll be back in your apartment, happily cleaning it up.”

I was not as optimistic as my friend. I believed that the waiting time at the emergency ward could be long. That’s why I asked Lucide to prepare some supplies for me before leaving my place.

In a shoulder bag I had a sandwich, some apples, an orange, a few biscuits, a water bottle, two packs of cigarettes and a small jar of Ibuprofen, the muscle relaxant I was using as a pain reliever.

Ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory drug used to alleviate fever, pain and swelling. One can say it is basically a “super Aspirin.” Ibuprofen is included in the core model list of essential medicines published by the World Health Organization and should be part of everyone’s medicine cabinet.

The enraged Thailand traveller was furiously pacing when I was called on the intercom.

Clumsily I wheeled my chair to an office where a nurse was waiting for me to check my “vital signs.” It took me a minute to understand she wanted to take my blood pressure and my temperature.

The nurse tightened an armband on my upper arm and stuck a thermometer in my mouth under my tongue.

Fever is measured by inserting a thermometer into the mouth, the rectum, the ear or under the armpit of a patient. It was only in the 19th century that doctors realized that fever was a symptom, not an ailment. Besides their taste, there is no difference between an oral and rectal thermometer.

While she was writing down the results I asked the nurse if she knew how soon I would see a doctor.

“Not right away. We’re very busy now. We will call you to let you know which cube you should go to.”

“A cube? What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.

“That’s what we call our consultation rooms. Now if you could please return to the waiting room, I have other patients to see.”

I was not thrilled by the idea of being “incubated” at the hospital. I was also less than elated to wait for ten long hours until I was called to Cube 67. During this waiting time, several patients – including the traveller to Thailand – grew tired of waiting and left the ward without seeing a doctor.

I had been looking at the walls of Cube 67 for twenty minutes or so when a young doctor showed up. I told her why I had come to the hospital. I explained my gout attack, the torn ligaments in my twisted knee, the weeks spent in bed at home and my paralysis.

She wanted to examine me. To do so she had to call two orderlies to lift me up from the wheelchair and sit me down on a bed. I painfully took off my jacket and my shirt and put on an open-back smock that one of the orderlies tied at my neck with a lace.

After the doctor checked my knees, my hands, my wrists and my arms, she left the cube without a word.

I could hear her talking with a man on the other side of the door:

— “He’s well over 50, he can’t walk and he has trouble moving. I wonder if...” she said.

— “He’s got all the symptoms, said the man, it could very well be spinal stenosis.”

— “That’s exactly what I thought,” she concluded.

Those were the last word I heard from her and I was never to see her again.

After 30 minutes, a nurse came into the cube carrying a plastic basket filled with small glass bottles and stickers.

“I need to take some blood samples, she said. Please roll up your sleeve, sir.”

I obliged half-heartedly. The nurse filled 31 vials with my blood then left.

There I was, alone in my cube, sitting on a slippery leatherette and foam mattress. I was cold. My arms, my shoulders and my legs were sore. What would become of me? I did not know what “spinal stenosis” meant and I was afraid.

One of the most widespread myths of modern times is that medical officers specializing in nerves and the spinal cord are called “spin doctors.” Because of that belief, people think that spinal stenosis means these doctors write down their observations using shorthand. However, spinal stenosis is really about an abnormal narrowing of the spinal canal running through the backbone.

Shivering, I managed to stretch and pick up my jacket that the orderly had left on the wheelchair. Despite the pain, I put my coat on, lay down on the bed and dozed off.

When I woke up, a man dressed in tan scrubs was putting my clothes, my shoulder bag and my shoes under a gurney. He then proceeded to skillfully slide my body over to the stretcher.

The attendant opened the cube’s door and wheeled me out to the corridor. I asked him where he was taking me and he replied:

“Where am I taking you? Why, to the gurney hall, of course!”

A gurney is a wheeled stretcher used to take patients on a journey. It is often equipped with a hydraulic system for raising and lowering patients so the attendant does not injure his or her back and develop spinal stenosis.

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To be continued in Hospital Diaries IV: The Gurney Hall

Hospital Diaries I : A Gout-Ridden Wretch

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Ouch! I was awoken by a shooting pain in the middle of the night.

For the fourth time in 30 years I was having a gout attack. By now I knew the story: the sharp pain in the joint at the base of my big toe would fade away after I applied ice packs and took muscle relaxants. This meant I would be lounging in bed for a few days while rereading the works of Guy de Maupassant.

After three days, the swelling had subsided but the pain in my foot remained and I was unable to walk without limping. It was not unbearable so I went back to work where a lengthy report on crystallizing the Canadian public health system through the infusion of additional government funds was waiting to be edited.

“Gout? What’s this? You think you’re Charles Dickens?” joked my friend Aaron when he saw me at the office.

I tried to explain that gout was not some outdated distemper and that its occurrence was on the rise in North America but my colleague was no longer listening: instead he was focusing on the coffee machine sputtering a reluctant espresso into his cup.

The espresso machine is believed to have been invented in 1884 by Angelo Moriondo, in Torino, Italy. The drink gained in popularity worldwide in the 1980’s so much that automatic dispensing machines such as this one are now common in North American public institutions.

Weeks went by, I was still hobbling and to make matters worse, one of my knees failed. I now had an even clumsier gait. I went to a doctor who told me upon quickly examining my swollen knee that it was sprained. He recommended two weeks of rest and to avoid putting weight on my leg.

So I took the last two weeks of annual leave I had left and went back to read Guy de Maupassant’s tales.

As this forced vacation was coming to an end and the time to return to work was approaching, my knee was still hurting. With the help of a walking cane, I went back to the clinic where the doctor summarily felt my puffy knee to immediately declare:

“This is a splendid case of a sprained knee with torn ligaments! You must get to bed my friend! Didn’t I tell you before to get some rest?”

“But I’ve been at home for the last two weeks!”

“In bed? No, no, my friend, stay in bed with your leg raised and apply ice packs four times a day. I am prescribing you some muscle relaxants to ease the pain.”

With the prescription in my hand, I called a cab to take me to the drugstore while realizing to my displeasure that, having used up all my annual vacations, I had to take unpaid leave to attend to my health.

The cab driver was talkative and seeing my cane asked me what happened to me.

“Oh, it’s nothing, I just twisted my knee” I said.

“You should stop smoking!” he replied.

Not impressed by the man’s popular wisdom I was stunned by the effectiveness of the advertising campaign put together by the Government, the health system and the pharmaceutical industry to blame all worldly problems on smoking.

So I went back to bed, determined to heal my costly lame knee. I would get up once a day to use the bathroom and prepare some food. My meals were simple: sandwiches, fresh fruits and vegetables, cereal, cheese, social tea biscuits and water.­­­ I ate lying down. With a razor blade, I cut up a two-litre soda bottle to use as a bedpan to avoid standing up.

The polyethylene terephthalate bottle was invented in 1973 by Nathaniel Wyeth, an American engineer, for pressurized liquids such as soda pop. Carbonation is weak in human urine. However it is surprising how many people use such bottles to relieve themselves when nature calls.

After a week this idleness was taking its toll. My back was aching so much that it was becoming a challenge to sit up in bed or to get up.

I could pull myself out of bed with a strap I tied to my bedroom door while I pushed myself up with my elbow resting on a stool. Every day walking from my bedroom to the bathroom and the kitchen became more difficult.

One morning I woke up laying on my back with my arms extended, completely paralysed.

I was sure this was the first time in the history of modern medical science that a gout attack turned into a sprained knee spreading to the upper body and limbs of an individual.

This is when I realized I needed some serious help.

To be continued in Hospital Diaries II : The Firefly.

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Mexican Rabbits

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My wife and I had been separated for about two months and I was living in an unremarkable and noisy bachelor apartment in a depressing neighbourhood.

There were about 40 apartments in the building where I was. My neighbours directly above me – a young Mexican couple, the Conejos – were polite and spoke in a nasal Spanish gibberish which I could not understand at all.

One night around 11:00, I was sleeping on the couch when their relentless lovemaking woke me up.

“Ain’t love great when it’s well made,” I thought, annoyed by their indecent sighs.

I tried in vain to get back to sleep. After awhile I decided to go out to read in a café until my neighbours’ Mexican hormones calmed down.

There was a coffee shop a short 20 minutes walk away. It was one of those franchised chains lit by crude fluorescent lights where young people in ill-fitting uniforms served the dark beverage in paper cups. It was open all night and smokers were relegated to a packed glass-enclosed room while the rest of the restaurant was empty.

One would think that following the smoking ban in public places coffee shops would have lost all their clientele as coffee without cigarettes is just not the same thing. I guess people are quick to give up life’s simple pleasures. Many thanks to Zebra Jay for the photo.

I entered the cramped smoking room with a coffee and a copy of Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf, hoping that the Swiss-German author’s eastern wisdom would help me forget the emptiness I felt.

Sitting at a table for four, two girls were talking.

— A funny thing happened to me at work, one of the girls said. After my shift, while I was changing in the backroom, Jason snuck in and took me from behind!

— Ah! Ah! That’s typical! scoffed the other one, Jason always does that!

I could not believe my ears. Here I was in a crowded public place and people were actually having this kind of conversation oblivious to their surroundings! I tried to focus on my book, lit another cigarette and took a sip of coffee. I was there to clear my mind after all.

I managed to follow Harry, Steppenwolf’s main character, as he was caught in his personal ontological maze. I had almost forgotten the girls’ obscene conversation when two guys joined them. I did not pay much attention until the girl who was groped by Jason got up to use the ladies’ room.

The two young men and the other girl looked lustily at her leaving.

When she came back, she said:

— So, what were you talking about?

— We were saying your ass looks great in those jeans, said one of the guys.

She immediately responded:

— You know why? It’s because I’m not wearing panties!

Flustered, I went back to my book, lit another cigarette, gulped some lukewarm coffee and really tried hard to think about anything else. Oddly, Tales of Ordinary Madness, Charles Bukowski’s famous short stories collection, came to my mind.

Maybe I needed to meet my Hermine, the Steppenwolf character who helped Harry to come to grip with his situation and learn to enjoy life again.

My predicament was not the same however. I was not depressed nor suicidal, I was only bitterly disappointed that my marriage had failed. And now, because of the Mexican rabbits who lived upstairs and those kids sitting at the coffee shop, I was entertaining lewd thoughts that were rubbing raw my feelings of loneliness.

Rabbits (conejo in Spanish) are not rodents. Rodents have incisors that are continually growing and needing to be ceaselessly worn down. Rabbits have two sets of incisors one behind the other. The female rabbit ovulates by reflex and can give birth to up to 12 kits three times a year.

I did not feel like myself anymore.

Finally the youths got up and left. Relieved, I tried to focus on my book again.

That’s when four ladies in their fifties coming back from bingo sat next to me and passionately discussed the most efficient manner to pleasure themselves with a hand-held shower head.

That was it, I had had enough. I closed my book, put out my cigarette, finished drinking my coffee and left, glad I had not brought a Henry Miller novel instead of Steppenwolf.

:Henry Valentine Miller (1891-1980) was a prolific American author whose books were banned in the United States on the grounds of obscenity until 1961. A couple of years later, western high courts rendered that kind of obscenity obsolete. The times, as the song says, they were a-changing.

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The Pressure Cooker

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When I was four years old, my father brought home a pressure cooker. It was one of those “modern” devices aimed at taking some pressure off domestic life (excuse the pun or don’t) by cooking food faster.

This pressure cooker was made from cast aluminum by National Presto Industries, a company that also manufactures adult incontinence products. Notice the steam regulator cap sitting on top of the vent pipe at the centre of the lid. I cooked delicious Boston baked beans in this vessel in 45 minutes.

Cooking with pressure cookers is different from cooking with regular saucepans. A small amount of liquid – water or broth for example – must be heated to a boil in a sealed container. As the pressure builds up inside the vessel, the heat is turned down to let the food simmer while maintaining enough steam.

When the food is nearly cooked, the heat is turned off and cooking continues as pressure gradually abates. The pressure regulator capping the steam vent should not be removed while the pot is under pressure.

Also, if the cooker is overfilled, the steam vent over which sits the pressure regulator might become obstructed, causing the pressure to build up inside the cooker and force out the content through the pressure valve.

That’s what my father learned to his dismay when he first cooked a three-pound ham using too much beer as a cooking liquid. The whole ham escaped through the tiny pressure valve and splattered on the kitchen ceiling, making my mother very angry at the mess he created and fearful of using the apparatus.

Even though pressure cooking seemed modern in the early 60’s, it certainly was not a recent invention. Denis Papin (1647-1712), a French Huguenot, discovered it.

Tired of being picked on for his religious beliefs by the powers that be in France, he moved to England in 1675. In London, he met Robert Boyle (1627-1691), an Irish-English chemist who was experimenting with air pressure.

At the time, England was undergoing a tremendous scientific revolution. Francis Bacon’s scientific method was the rage amongst “natural philosophers” who were experimenting with practically anything. This led to a radical new way of looking at the causes and effects in the natural world which, people were discovering, was not what they thought it was.

We are not exactly sure how Denis Papin came to experiment with steam. However, I can certainly imagine him sitting in a pub, drinking cheap Spanish wine and listening to Robert Boyle pompously lecturing about air pressure. While Boyle was going on and on about his views on pneumatics, Papin was probably thinking that it was a bunch of hot air.

After all, air is immaterial, it cannot be seen or touched. Of course one can feel it as the wind blows but Papin perhaps thought scientists should focus on something more concrete.

At that moment, the innkeeper might have been preparing tea on the stove, a new beverage that was becoming popular in England. Taking a sip of his wine, looking at the saucepan of water on the stove, Denis Papin maybe thought ahead of Benjamin Franklin that “a watched pot never boils.” Boil.

Boyle was explaining that the volume of a gas is inversely proportional to its pressure. Crazy Boyle. Boyle. Boil. Wait a minute! When water boils it turns to steam. Steam is a gas and unlike air, it can be seen!

This may not be what really happened but I do know that inspiration sometimes comes in strange ways.

Tea (Camellia sinensis) was a luxury item in the 18th century. It was heavily taxed by the British government which led to the famous Boston Tea Party where the gentle people of this New England town unloaded into the harbour three shiploads of this merchandise as a protest.

Anyway, in 1679, Denis Papin addressed the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge on the subject of a new invention he was creating: the “steam digester” which was the ancestor of the modern pressure cooker. Two years later, according to the legend, when Papin cooked a delicious stew to demonstrate the prototype he was presenting, the Royal Society was so impressed that it invited him to become a member.

In the 17th century the line between gastronomy and science was very thin.

After a few years, Papin moved to Germany and invented the piston steam engine. He returned to England many years later and unsuccessfully asked the Royal Society to reinstate him.

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was the head of the Royal Society of London when Denis Papin tried to be reinstated. Newton probably refused deciding that fine cooking was an art rather than a science.

Denis Papin died destitute and relatively unknown, presumably in 1712, and was buried most likely in an unmarked pauper’s grave in London.

Given that so many inventors suffer the same ungrateful fate, it is surprising that anybody attempts to discover new things.

My father was not discouraged by his first experiment with a pressure cooker. Actually he cooked with it all his life, as I have. Used properly, a pressure cooker will produce tasty meals quickly, giving you more time to focus on other endeavours, like blogging.

The Deer Hunter

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For Yves. Many thanks to Lucy.

Version française

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One summer evening as I was on my way to my haunted house in the country. I was negotiating a long curve on the highway around a steep hill in my 1983 Renault Alliance. To my left, the sun was setting. As I was pulling down the sun visor I saw a shadow in the corner of my right eye.

BANG! I hit the jumping deer at 60 miles per hour. The windshield exploded and instantly the inside of the car was filled with flying hair and the musky smell of the wild animal. I slowed down to a stop on the shoulder of the highway.

I got out of the car as other motorists whizzed by and the unfortunate doe was quivering on the median strip of the highway, gasping out her last breath. Massaging the back of my neck, I slowly walked around to see the damage.

The windshield had completely shattered and tufts of hair were caught in the cracks of the glass. The right fender was torn and one of the headlights was dangling. There were deep dents in the hood and on the top of the car as well as nasty scratches on the trunk hatch.

“This is what happens when Mother Nature takes on Motor Trends’ Car of the Year,” I thought.

The Renault Alliance was actually a Renault 9 re-packaged for North American markets following a partnership agreement between Renault and American Motors. Sold from 1983-1987, the hastily-designated "Car of the year" proved to be a nightmare for many owners because of chronic head gasket, clutch, transmission, suspension and exhaust problems. Very few are still on the road nowadays.

One car stopped and the driver asked if I needed assistance. I said I was fine, but I asked him to call the police so I could make a report for the insurance company.

I waited for over an hour before the police cruiser arrived. The sun had set, the sky was clouding over and it was obvious that it would rain soon. I answered the officer’s questions while he filled in his report. Then we walked to the median to look at the beast that had wrecked my car.

The white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) was lying on its side, flies buzzing around its open eyes and foamy mouth. I thought it would be a shame to let 100 lbs. of good venison go to waste so I asked the young police officer to give me a hand carrying the carcass to my car.

The white-tailed deer is found in abundant quantities in America from Canada to Peru. It is a least-concern species in terms of conservation status since its principal predator is probably the automobile.

– Erm, I’m not sure about that sir. Hunting season is not yet open and you should report this killing to the Wildlife Service.

– But I was not hunting, it was an accident...

– Yeah, well, in any case, I think the Wildlife Service has to offer roadkill to public institutions first, you know, prisons, hospitals, orphanages...

Not wanting to be responsible for Oliver Twist starving to death and knowing better than to argue with the Law, I did not insist and asked the officer for a ride to a garage where I could get a tow truck.

– No need for a tow truck if you can start the engine, he said.

– But there’s no windshield on the car and only one headlight...

– You’ll be all right, good evening sir.

He left me on the side of the road while the rain started falling. I got into the car, turned on the ignition and drove 15 miles under the rain with no windscreen. I smelled like a wet dog when I arrived home.

The next day, after calling the insurance company to report the accident, I asked a friend to pick me up so I could rent a car to keep me mobile while waiting for the insurers’ damage assessment. My friend was glad I was unharmed and invited me to come for dinner later that night.

I arrived at his home around 6:00 PM with a bottle of wine but something was not right. His 5 year old daughter Mary-Ann who considered me as her uncle did not greet me as usual; in fact she avoided me, sulking.

As my friend’s wife was opening the bottle of wine and I was telling her that it might take weeks before I knew exactly what the actual damage to the car was, Mary-Ann came to me in tears, holding her teddy bear and asked:

– Is it true that you killed Bambi?

I was shocked as I looked at my friend who was suppressing a laugh. What a terrible thing to say to his own daughter! I then explained to Mary-Ann that it was not actually Bambi I killed but a distant, very old and very sick cousin and that I did not do it on purpose, that it was an accident and that I made sure the deer received a proper and dignified burial. Giving my friend a dirty look I then assured the little girl that I was really, really sorry and that I would have much preferred that the whole thing had not happened and would she please forgive me?

I guess she sensed my alleged contrition because she gave me a hug and we were able to move on to the dinner table.

A week later the insurance company informed me the car was a total loss and that they would cover for the rental car until I found a replacement.

I bought a used 1986 Pontiac Acadian, a sub-compact built like a tank.

The Pontiac Acadian is the Canadian equivalent of the Chevrolet Chevette. A sturdy car with lots of steel and very little plastic, it was built until 1986. It was characterized by a very roomy engine compartment. In fact the person I sold it to replaced the original 1.6 litre 4-cylinder engine with a more powerful V6 engine without further modifications.

A few days after I got that car, I was coming back from driving a friend to the other side of town at around 10:00 PM. There was a group of young people playfully wrestling at a bus stop on my right and a car waiting for me to pass at a cross street ahead.

BANG! I hit a german shepherd that came running out of a dark alley to my left. I had never had a car accident in my life and now in the space of two weeks I had hit two animals in a row! I parked my car by the curb and went to inspect the damage. The left headlight was broken and that was all. Then I walked over to the dead dog.

The youths had hopped onto a bus that was now driving by and there was nobody around. No cops, no Wildlife Officers and Oliver Twist was nowhere in sight.

For a moment I toyed with the idea of taking the carcass home, having it for supper and asking a taxidermist to stuff the head for mounting on the wall.

The Adventures of Oliver Twist, published in 1838, was Charles Dickens' second novel. It related the story of a young orphan in the shady 19th century London.

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Beware of the dog

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“Fiona! Fiona! Vulcan had a nice big poop!”

Nothing pleased me more than being awakened in the morning by my neighbours, Greg and Fiona, letting the whole neighbourhood know that their dog, Vulcan, a Bernese mountain dog of 100 lbs, could relieve himself.

Life had been good for Fiona and Greg. Both held good jobs: she was a legal secretary and he taught welding at a trade school.

The couple owned a quaint little house in the quiet neighbourhood where I lived. To compensate for the small size of the house, Greg, who was a handyman, built in the back a huge wooden deck surrounded by lattice.

Greg and Fiona were in their forties when their only daughter, Danielle, left to live with her boyfriend.

After her departure, Fiona and Greg were enjoying a warm Saturday evening on the deck when they realized that their home felt empty without their daughter.

“We could get a dog,” said Fiona.

In her mind, she imagined a shih-tzu, a French bulldog or a bichon frisé quietly resting in a wicker basket in the living room or sleeping at the foot of the bed. You can imagine her surprise when, a few days later, Greg showed up after work with a two-month-old Bernese mountain dog. The dog was shy, awkward and needed to be house-broken.

The Bernese mountain dog is a member of the Swiss mountain dog family. Despite his clumsiness, he is loyal and affectionate. Some say that around the mid 20th century, the Bernese mountain dog was mixed with the Newfoundland terrier to make him friendlier. Many thanks to Zebra Jay for the photo.

However, she quickly grew fond of the cute black, brown and white puppy with his long curly hair. Greg took it upon himself to train the animal. Every day he would take him for a long walk and after a few weeks he had managed to teach him to relieve himself elsewhere than on the living room carpet.

They decided to call him Vulcan, the name of the Roman god of fire, volcanoes and metals and patron of blacksmiths, because of his dark black hair. Greg knew firsthand that working with metals will turn you dark as a devil.

Months passed by and Vulcan was becoming an impressive dog who could bark very convincingly (much to the neighbours dismay). He would bark when cats, raccoons and skunks visited the backyard. He would bark at strangers although fortunately he became friendly once he knew them.

During summers there were lots of strangers because Fiona and Greg loved to entertain on their large deck and serve large quantities of barbecued beef and pork ribs with lots of wine and beer.

One weekend in June, Greg invited one of his foreign students and a few other friends for dinner.

Manuel was from Guatemala and was a mechanical engineer whose degree and experience were not recognized in Canada. Since he did not have the money to go back to university and repeat the courses he had taken in Central America, he registered for Greg’s welding classes.

Manuel was thin and in his thirties. He had dark, intense eyes and the proud posture of his Catalan ancestors.

The guests arrived and Vulcan started to bark ferociously only to stop once he realized that neither his territory nor his masters were being threatened.

Fiona brought out beer while Greg grilled the mouth-watering pieces of meat. When the guests sat down to eat their salad – served with lots of ranch dressing – a busy, friendly chatter was going on, jokes were flying between hosts and guests. It was turning out to be an enjoyable evening.

After the meal, Greg picked up his guitar and started to play and sing to liven up the party. Everybody loved his rendering of John Denver’s Leaving on a jet plane. After a few songs, Greg put down his instrument to get another bottle of fine Chilean wine from the cellar.

When he came back, the mood of the party had completely changed.

Manuel had picked up the guitar and was playing a Spanish song, compelling and suggestive. The spellbound audience was listening religiously. Greg sat down, stunned by the mastery of his student. Fiona was sitting by his side, mesmerized.

After Manuel finished playing to loud applause, he excused himself and said he had to go and could not play anymore. He thanked the hosts, said goodbye to the other guests and left, going quietly into the night.

A few days later, Greg was coming back from a long walk with Vulcan. As soon as they were in the house, Vulcan started barking and bolted, knocking over the little mahogany table where Fiona kept her African violets. He ran upstairs and kept barking ferociously in front of the closed bedroom door.

Greg swore at the animal as he removed his shoes. The mahogany table laid in pieces on the living room carpet and the flower pots had shattered in the hallway near the stairs. The huge dog would not stop barking even though Fiona was trying to calm him down.

When Greg arrived at the top of the stairs, he had quite a surprise: in front of the bedroom, he saw Fiona standing helplessly wearing only a camisole, Manuel busy buttoning up his shirt and Vulcan growling menacingly.

Since then, the house was sold but from time to time I see Greg walking Vulcan, alone in the park.

In the ruins of the ancient city of Pompei were found mosaics such as this reproduction bearing the inscription Cave canem, meaning “Beware of the dog.” Pompei was buried under ashes and pumice from the Vesuvius, a nearby volcano, in August 79 AD, after 10 days of celebrations honouring Vulcan. According to the legend, Vulcan caught his wife, Venus, cheating on him with Mars. All the cuckolds of the Roman empire diligently venerated Vulcan whose temples were guarded by dogs. Mosaic and photograph © 2012 Martin Clowes (many thanks!)

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The Conductor

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It was the last concert of the tour. Thirty North American cities in 40 days with a symphony orchestra performing works by Debussy and Satie, and The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky as the pièce de résistance.

The conductor would have leaned towards works by Berlioz, Boulez, Varèse, Schœnberg, or any of the younger 20th century composers but the public preferred middle-of-the-road music, and the promoters knew that by playing it safe they would sell out all venues, so that was that.

For all that mattered, the conductor did not mind. At 53 he did not feel like rocking the boat anymore. During his career he had risen to many challenges and he knew he had nothing else to prove.

The conductor did mind however that, as years went by, his tuxedo was getting harder to fit into. He blamed it on the many receptions his duties called him to attend, too many bottles of fine wine, and soft, fat but tasty cheeses.

So for this tour he decided to stick to vegetables – carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini, as well as all leafy vegetables – and to stay away from the ranch dressing fountain. Instead of wine, he drank carbonated water.

Vegetables are necessary to a healthy diet. The Canadian Food Guide recommends that a 53 year old male eat 6-8 portions of fruit and vegetable per day. However, balance is the key. Too much greens and not enough fiber might open the gates of Hell. Image: winnond / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This change of diet made him lose a couple of inches around the waist and he felt lighter throughout the gruesome travelling schedule.

However, there were unwelcome side effects.

As food travels through the eight or so metres of digestive tract, its nutrients are transformed into energy and the rest is turned into waste and gas. To cushion the passage of stool the anal canal is equipped with a network of vascular structures, called hemorrhoids, that facilitates a smooth transition.

A diet composed mostly of fruit and vegetable – compounded with mineral water – means that the soft excrement produced gets processed quickly yet unpredictably. Such rapid, frequent and brutal excretion of waste and gas imposes a great deal of stress on the hemorrhoids that tend to react by bleeding, hurting and itching.

For the last ten days, the conductor had been bearing the cross of his attempt at healthy eating.

There were uncomfortable moments, near-incidents, but overall the conductor managed well the crescendo building in his bowels, keeping everything andante and avoiding going allegro.

A conductor’s job is to keep a tight leash on the orchestra members, making sure that each musician plays his or her part in time and on tempo with the right amount of energy and emotion.

A talented conductor holds back musicians’ eagerness, controls their egos, fustigate their laziness, and releases them at the right moment to produce the most dramatic effect.

As the conductor walked to his lectern to begin the concert he was unaware that the harshest challenge of his career lay before him.

The first piece was La mer by Claude Debussy and it went remarkably well. It was followed by Première Gymnopédie and Gnossiennes no. 1, 2 and 3 by Erik Satie – all-time favorites of the public – which were wildly received by the audience.

At Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring things started to turn sour.

During the bassoon solo overture of the first part, the conductor violently and uncontrollably broke wind.

This totally took the conductor by surprise but noticing that the flawless acoustics of the concert hall had fortunately failed to convey the disturbance, he kept directing this difficult composition. The show went on.

But as the first part progressed he found himself struggling to repress the natural urges of his unruly digestive system.

The piccolos stirred his intestinal juices while the cellos and double-bass urged him in staccato to seek relief at once.

However years of classical training helped the conductor maintain the strict discipline necessary to quell the revolution threatening peace in the kingdom of his viscera.

The end of the first part brought respite and the conductor hoped that the quiet beginning of the second part might give him the strength to retain his composure.

He was not counting on the timpani joining the insurrection in polyrythmic fashion, vigorously demanding his surrender against the forces of nature.

With great difficulty he held his ground, mouth gaping, drenched in sweat, tightening his buttocks. To his dismay it felt like the great Nijinsky and the whole Ballets Russes were performing lewd pagan acts inside his large intestine.

With all the energy of despair, clenching his baton, he bravely fought the irrepressible forces while commanding the orchestra members to stick to tempo even through the brisk finale when the buildup inside called for immediate release.

Then he turned to face the audience which was already standing up in an uproar of acclamation.

He was exhausted and refrained from bowing to salute thus avoiding a disgraceful accident – a gesture the press would later interpret as snobbishness.

But at this point he did not care what the critics thought: he had fought the battle of a lifetime and came out as a conqueror.

If only he could make it in time to the restroom backstage...

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