THE WORST PUB

A village's pub is the soul of the community.  It's where you catch up on gossip, have a pint after work, meet friends and neighbours.  Not here.  Not in our village.  Even before our pub was condemned and closed it wasn't very inviting.

When we first looked at living here we were forewarned. "If you're looking for a village with a good pub, it's not this one.  Our pub is crap."  Point taken, but we loved the area and a pub was not going to make or break our decision, besides, we learned there were at least seven good pubs in a six mile radius, who cares if our local stunk.  "But you've got to pop in for a pint anyway," we were advised, "it must be visited."

Don't Go Here

Soon after we arrived we decided to check it out.  I've written about this place before... the low ceiling Husband cracked his head on, the dim lighting, the complete silence when we walked in the door, all eyes on us as we sat on the ancient cracked bar stools, the fire-place you could pitch a tent in. When the murmur of conversation resumed it became apparent that each and every one of the regulars knew who we were, while we had never laid eyes on any of them.  A guy at the end of the bar quoted Thomas Hardy's A Trampwoman's Tragedy at great length, then leaned in to us conspiratorially and announced in a beery, cheery voice, "There's wife-swappers up on your hill."

Husband and I weren't sure we'd heard what we thought we'd heard.  We looked at each other for corroboration.  Yes... he'd said there were wife-swappers on our hill!  Who among the elderly church-goers, the hard-working farmers, the sheep and the big black and white dairy cows, swapped wives? From then on we looked at our neighbours wondering, but never knowing.

Do Go Here

A man sitting next to us struck up a conversation.  A commuter, an outsider like us, he told us he pops in for pints every day on his drive home.  Within moments we realized he was a Man Who Knows Everything; the history of the old Bristol Road, where to travel in Albania, everything you never wanted to know about the Imperial measuring system, the body count of the Monmouth Rebellion, the best recipe for Spotted Dick, the origins of the Somerset accent, the meaning behind village names like Compton Pauncefoot and Nempnett Thrubwell, and on and on and on and on.  Husband reminded me of an imaginary commitment.  We excused ourselves and left. 

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com
/recipes/2686661/spotted-dick

The next time we dropped into the pub was many months later.  "Where have you been?" the barkeep said, like we were regulars who'd somehow slipped off his radar. 

My cousin in the Midlands called.  'So, I read about your pub in the paper while I was doing research for our trip to you,' she said.

What?  We immediately Googled it.  There in black and white in a local Somerset paper was the down and dirty on our publican and his wife.  Seems they had a neighbour, a recent widower suffering from dementia.  Seems they were assigned power of attorney over said elderly pensioner, and then pilfered funds for a splashy wedding for their daughter, and proceeded to drain his bank account.  They were charged and found guilty, and yet remarkably, they were still running the pub and not in jail... only fined.  However, we were told, they were running the pub accessorized by House Arrest Ankle Bracelets.

Evening Wear Ankle Bracelet

It was at this time we learned the difference between a Free-hold pub and a Lease-hold.  Free-hold means the publican owns the pub outright and can serve whatever he wants to serve.  Lease-hold means they have a lease, usually from a corporation, usually from a brewery.  Our local is a lease-hold, which means some brewery somewhere let ankle-braceleted felons pull pints.  

Beasts! we thought, how dare they roam free, well, semi-free, and serve the public.  Not for long.  One day we saw a big notice plastered across the pub's sign offering anyone with a pulse the opportunity to live the dream of running a pub.  The place had been shut down.  Again gossip filtered to us.  Turns out the pub's kitchen was a nightmare.  A real nightmare.  An unusable nightmare.  

A Business Opportunity

The publican was a large man who traveled in an electric scooter.  Unwilling to let the minor detail of a condemned kitchen hamper his food service he came up with an ingenious way around it.  There was a perfectly good kitchen in his home on the other side of the street; a major street, more like a small highway.  So the answer was simple.  Customers would place food orders at the pub.  Food would be prepared at his kitchen across the street, then the publican would ferry the orders to the pub across the busy main artery that connects this area to several other towns that actually have wonderful pubs.  He did this on his mobility scooter.  We were told that once this was discovered, it was the nail in the pub's coffin.  

A village without a pub is like a day without sunshine.  So this summer saw notices everywhere announcing pop-up pub nights on the cricket pitch.  What a perfect way to spend a summer eve, on gorgeous green lawns sipping a glass of wine, and watching a cricket match... all proceeds going to the club.  It was the best antidote to the bad taste left by the pub-that-will-not-be-named.   

VILLAGE LIFE

     I have been blog-less... buried up to my ears with a revision and then tending to my irascible father in Toronto for a spell.  An eye-opening experience on many levels.  In the Leszczynski house there are three topics of conversation; tomatoes, kittens, and the end of the world.  Enough said. Then Husband and I took advantage of a wonderful opportunity to travel a bit and so, I remained blog-less.  No more. 

  

More Travel

A Little Travel

Husband as Amsterdam
Art Installation

Once Upon a Time... in Metz

     

Arty Husband at Centre Pompidou, Metz 

     We were gone but were not missed.  We barely ever see anyone in our tiny village.  We have met people, but they live in other nearby villages.  We don't encounter neighbours on the street.  Few people walk here... unless they have dogs, which function as a social introduction.  'What a lovely dog... what breed is he?' proving social status leeches into the four-legged world.  Nope, we are not only aliens, but we walk without a dog.  Freaks.  

Husband Tries to Poach Other's
Dogs in a Feeble Bid to Fit In

     Actually,  I exaggerate.  The friends we did make, who all moved away (was it us?), have said that even people who've lived here forty or fifty years are outsiders.  The only real insiders are the families who've farmed the land for centuries.  The rest of us are upstarts, interlopers, or as they say in Somerset, grockles.  Still, in spite of this isolation, the fact we have no shops, and that the pub was shut down for health reasons (more on that in the next blog) we manage to reap all the gossip that's fit to repeat. News migrates through town, and sometimes beyond, with the speed of a brush fire.  It is gleaned in the farm shops, the post-office, and a small local paper.

Rush Hour in the Village

      

     Big news in the village was the arrival of a new peacock.  It's probably the topic of village conversation, not that we are in those conversations, wherever they might occur, probably behind drawn drapes.  Just before he moved, our friend across the street called to say 'There's a peacock on our roof', knowing Penny the Peahen winters with us and occasionally drops in during the summer months.   

     

     Husband skyped me in Toronto with the news.  Upon my return, we heard the bird for ourselves; saw him far off perched on rooftops, screeching at dusk and dawn.  Wonderful!  A mate for Penny!

Look Closely... There's A
Peacock on that Roof

     

     We went over to see the new bird for ourselves.  He's beautiful.  Brilliant blinding sapphire feathers.  We tried to take pictures but it was too dark.  His calls were piercing and fearsome, and no one nearby could sleep through them.  A neighbour peeked out from behind his hedge, saw us admiring the fowl.  'Bloody loud,' he said, 'wish the bloody thing would just go away.'  Husband and I exchanged a look, 'a Pea-hater!' we both thought. 

     

     Husband and I tried to match-make... we're romantics at heart.  Poor lonely Penny didn't have to be lonely any more.  Had the new boy in town arrived looking for true love?  Would he and Penny settle in the neighbourhood and have pea-chicks?  We enticed the potential lovebirds with a buffet of every exotic bird pellet and seed we could find.  We left the gate ajar hoping the two would find the Pink Cottage a suitable and safe place for their tryst.  We stopped just short of strewing the driveway with rose petals.  It was not to be.  Shortly after the peacock's arrival an agitated Penny ran onto the property, looked around frantically, pecked at some insect nibbles, heard the shriek of the newly arrived male, and then bolted like the demons of hell were after her.  Then nothing.  The male's calls rang through dusk and dawn, but Penny was silent.  Husband was distraught.  Penny seemed intent on remaining the virgin queen of the village.  

What Am I...An Escort Service!

     

     Never mind the birds... there was other huge news.  A moving van arrived in town.  Two sets of neighbours became near and dear to us, one relocated to a nearby village, the other pair went to Portugal.  In order to achieve the latter, a moving van was hired to remove their life to the Algarve.  It was quite a substantial moving van, and brought the neighbourhood to a stop.  People stood on the street hands on hips, they peeked over hedges, slowed down in cars, rode by on bikes, trotted by on horseback, necks craned, to look at a moving van.  It was the talk of the town.  We have never seen more of our neighbours out than we did that day on the street surveying the van. Now it is gone.  Everyone has receded behind drawn drapes and closed blinds again... and we miss our moved neighbours.     

     

     News in our village travels so quickly, it can move over land and sea. We were in Belgium when an email arrived with a picture sent by friends staying at the Pink Cottage.  It was a picture of Penny the Peahen at the Pink Cottage.... with TWO PEA-CHICKS!  

Meet the Pea-Chicks

Penny and the Pea-Chicks

     Husband couldn't believe it.  To use a local expression, we were gobsmacked.  Apparently Penny's annual spring time disappearances are born of the fact that she goes off somewhere safe to lay eggs.  Each year, for six years, she has sat on her eggs, and each year no pea-chick has sprung  from any of the ivory orbs.  A sad fact Husband had discovered, but kept from me deeming it too upsetting.  But this year is different. As it turns out love did bloom in the village. 

Strolling Pea-Chick

     

     We found ourselves abroad, wishing we were home to see the chicks.  The pea-chick news ricocheted round the world, via internet, to Guernsey, Belgium and Portugal, and then over to Toronto to my sister and now, after this blog, it will shoot through the US and Canada and the UK... making Penny and her pea-chicks possibly  the most viewed pea-family around.  

     Husband and I are besotted.  We stare at the pea-chicks like we hatched them ourselves.  They all sleep out behind the house, up in a tree.  Penny tucks the two little chicks under her great wings, so only two little pea-heads are visible.  It was all I could do to keep Husband from pitching a tent under the tree and arming himself with a shovel to protect the birds from foxes and badgers.  We are smitten with our new friends in the village.  

The Happy Family

THE MADMAN AND THE PEAHEN

   We first laid eyes on Penny the Peahen when we arrived at the Pink Cottage on a frigid March day last year. 

My Name's Penny. I'll Be
Your Peahen on This Trip

She's a startling fowl with her nugget sized head, lumbering body, and perpetually perplexed expression.  Frost clung to her weather-beaten wings.  The wind whipped the paltry crest feathers clinging to her head.  She looked bedraggled and miserable.  It was love at first sight.  We'd never seen anything like her.  She waddled around the garden eyeing us while we tried to woo her.  Give us an animal in distress and we're putty. 

Seeking Refuge From 
Foul Weather 

     As our circle of local friends widened we asked questions about the bird. Everybody in this village knows everything about everyone else, and Penny had been hanging around for a while. Someone must know how this lone peafowl got here.

     
     'There was a break-out from a breeder's place over in Baltonsborough a few years ago,' we were told.  I pictured a huddled mass of peafowl plotting a great escape. 'There used to be two but Penny's mate was electrocuted by a sheep fence,' someone else said.  That tugged on our heartstrings... a tragic peafowl love story, now only a heartbroken hen left, never to know the joy of parenting peachicks. She had us wrapped around her gnarly claw. 'We call her Doris,' another neighbour chimed in.     

Don't Think You Can Ignore Me!

I'm Coming In

      Husband started Googling peafowl facts.  Our expeditions to local farmers markets included hauling back bags of suet to feed the bird. There are two flavours, Husband said, insect and fruity; she prefers the fruity nibbles when it’s warm, and the insect nibbles when it’s cold. The bird began to plump up, look healthier. Every night we watched from the window as she performed the maneuver to get up to her perch.  Peafowls sleep in trees to elude predators. "What if she gets too fat to fly into her tree at night?" I asked Husband.  

Penny Well Fed 

Thanks so Much for Planting
These Seedlings for Me

     
















     
     One day, instead of hanging around outside the house, Penny headed down the road. Husband watched her, crestfallen.  'Where is she going?'  She began to disappear each day, only coming back to roost at night. 'Someone's feeding her something she can't resist,' he said, 'they're trying to woo her away.' Husband started buying fancy seed mixtures. 'No!' he said to me in the pet store, 'Don't get the black and white sunflower seeds, she only likes the all black ones.'  Still, she kept wandering off. 'Pea-slut', he muttered under his breath as she lumbered down the road.

     
     One morning last May a big bounding Dalmation loped onto the property.  Penny's honks of distress blasted through the entire village. We raced out of the house in time to see Penny's bulbous butt airborne, like a feathery dirigible flying across the street.  She landed on the rooftop of a neighbour's house. That was it. She didn't come back. Husband was bereft. We could hear the nightly sound of her taunting honks from trees elsewhere in the village.  Friends visited.  'Where's the Peahen,' they asked. 'Gone,' Husband answered sadly.

     When my mother died we decided we would go to Canada for a while to help out my dad.  A week before leaving, after an absence of three months, Penny showed up.  Husband was thrilled to see her.  'What will she do when we're gone?' I said.  'Exactly what she's been doing for the last three months,' Husband answered, 'sleep around.'

     
     Three months later Husband returned to The Pink Cottage on his own. 'She's not here,' he said miserably on the phone.  But several days later she stumbled up the driveway, wretched and scrawny in the soggiest Somerset winter in decades.  Husband was ecstatic.  For a month and a half he took care of her; worried about her when the wind howled, and watched anxiously as she clung to her tree-top boudoir through outrageous stormy nights.  

Foul Weather En-Route

     
     On my first morning back at the Pink Cottage, Husband leapt out of bed at dawn. 'Where are you going?' He looked at me like I was an idiot. 'To open the work-shed for Penny,' he answered.  The shed is huge.  You could park four cars in it. He'd been housing the bird indoors during the torrential rains.  I went out to see her.  She stood staring at me.  I heard a voice.  What the....?  I went closer.  'Well, as Wittgenstein said in Notes on Logic...' someone announced.  Penny's pea-head cocked as though she were listening closely. 

     
     'The bird is listening to Radio Four,' I said to Husband back in the house.  'She prefers it to music,' he responded. 

Shhhh... I'm Listening to
The Archers

     
     Later, Penny showed up at the back door. 'Could you give her some cheddar cheese,' Husband asked. I obediently went to the refrigerator and retrieved a chunk to break up for her. 'Not that one,' he said, 'the mild cheddar!  She doesn't like the mature.'   

Friend and Beastly at the Shore,
Happily Away from The Bird

      One day Friend showed up with Beastly the dog. 'Better keep that dog on leash,' I said as we watched Penny admire herself in one of the several strategically placed mirrors on the property, 'Penny's beak could puncture a hole in Beastly's skull.' Friend looked anxiously at the bird and plucked a candy colored tidbit from a bowl, popped it into her mouth. 'You just ate an insect nibble,' I told her.  

Mirror Mirror in the Hedge

     Husband kept careful care of the bird. Months passed, and then it happened again. She began to wander off, just like she had at the same time the previous year.  We realized it wasn't because she had found a better buffet elsewhere, but that it must have something to do with the season and the thickening foliage in her roost of choice.

A Boy and his Peahen

     


     We watched her waddle off one day.  'I had the strangest dream,' Husband said, 'I dreamed that I was at a carnival with Penny.  We were walking along like she was my pet dog or something.  We came to a stand manned by a Bird-Whisperer. The Bird-Whisperer held out his hand.  Penny went up to him and pecked out a message in his palm with her beak. The Bird-Whisperer turned to me.  She wants me to tell you something, he said.  She says,  'Tell him my name is Erica."' 

     'You dreamed that?' I said. Husband nodded.  Penny disappeared down the street. Maybe, I thought, it's not such a bad thing she's going. 

      'She'll be back,' Husband smiled and went back into the house.   

Springtime

  

Bye

CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES

     Living in a large city like L. A. you come to expect a dollop of criminal activity.  I had a car, the same car, stolen twice.  Husband was mugged on the subway.  Living skid-row adjacent Husband and I were privy to lots of shenanigans.  Husband's computer was stolen from our living room while he was out on a ten minute errand. 

No Shortage of Police

 One morning at around six am, I glanced out our window to see an impressive act of multi-tasking in the parking lot below; a gentleman with a prostitute and a crack pipe; using both simultaneously.  Police cars raced down our street frequently and helicopters hovered overhead. Houses have alarms and bars.  Some people have guns tucked away under their beds.

     I expected no crime out here in the country.  Certainly not in our immediate area with its population of about 705, drawn from three little villages.  Our village has no shop, so there's nothing to hold up.  There's no cash machine, so there's no swiveling head, hunched-shouldered protecting of pin numbers.  Some people here don't even lock their doors.  Deluded... all of them. 

     We purchase our eggs from a stand by a house in plain view of chickens pecking contentedly in rich soil across the road.  We took our half dozen, and went to drop our one pound twenty in the ceramic bowl that acts as the 'till', instead we found a note.  Our money dish has been stolen, it said, please deposit your payment directly into our mailbox.  

Scene of the Crime

Husband and I looked at each other aghast.  Theft!  Here? We couldn't believe it.  We felt violated.  We put our money into the mail slot and hurried home through the fields, crestfallen.

     Suddenly our verdant outpost was not the pristine paradise I believed it to be.  A by-product of urban dwelling is a vague alertness to potential danger, a little inner antenna that prevents total relaxation.  I'd released that defense mechanism here.  One swiped money dish and I was back on high alert.  

Droves of Danger

     In my mind, ramblers on otherwise empty lanes and droves became potential muggers.  It didn't matter that they were pensioners dragged along by corgis.  A non-descript windowless van became the transport for kidnappers, though who would want to kidnap us and why is a mystery. 

     "Maybe we need a guard dog," I suggest to Husband, "We could borrow our friend's vicious hound, Beastly."

Beastly and Bits of Burgler

Kidnappers?  No, it's just 
the neighbours.

     Out of our window we see several structures.  One is an old farmhouse, another is a 17th century barn turned spiritual center (remember, we're in the Vale of Avalon).  There is a light on in the farmhouse every single night.  It is as reliable as the sunrise.  Then one night, there was only darkness.  Odd, I think.  A second night.  No light. On the third day I call Husband to the window.  "Look!" I point at the police car parked in front of the house.  "He's been murdered," I announce, looking solemnly across the field.  Fourth day the light returns and I have to focus my paranoia elsewhere.

     I shake my head at the foolishness of unlocked bikes leaned against a fence by the cricket field, left with the expectation they'll still be there when the school bus dislodges children at the end of the day.  In a nearby village a woman bakes cakes and puts them in a giant red and white polka-dotted cupboard.  Customers pick a treat, and drop coins in a plastic container.  "You'd have thought she knew better," I say to Husband, recalling the egg dish caper.  The sound of kids playing up by the Hood Monument on a sunny Sunday become vandals screaming.  

The Cakehole

Trouble at the Hood? No, Just Husband.

     









     
     We find dog poop outside our front gate.  "That was no accident," I search our hedge-lined country lane for the culprit.  I become obsessive about locking the door.  Two boys stand on the road trying to cajole Penny the Peahen down the drive to the gate.  I go out, hands on hips, a warning to these pint-sized Pea-nappers. "You've got to be vigilant," I tell Husband,   "You're crackers," Husband says. 

     We're in town one day picking up provisions and I spot it... my vindication.  I grab a copy of the Central Somerset Gazette from a nearby stack.  "Ha!" I announce to Husband.  "What?"  Husband sighs. I point to an article.  "See... " I  hold it up for him to read. A headline states in bold letters; THIEF HID HOT FOOD DOWN PANTS.  

Hot Pasty

 http://www.centralsomersetgazette.co.uk/Glastonbury-shoplifter-caught-stuffing-hot-food/story-20829060-detail/story.html

     Seems a drunk twenty-five year old staggered into a grocery store, and stole oven fresh piping hot pasties and sausage rolls, then stuffed them down his trousers for safe keeping.  He might have gotten away with it, but two bottles of wine he stuffed down there to accompany his meal smashed on the ground.  Two weeks later the same felon was caught putting a pair of bolt croppers down his pants; surely even a drunk man must realize the potentially life-altering repercussions of this act.  

"See, it's a crime wave," I tell Husband.

"Darling, I think you're losing the plot," Husband says.

LEARNING THE LANGUAGE

     Relocating to another country should involve learning the local 
language.  In England they speak English... so we've got that covered. 
Except it's the accent that everyone covets.  Who doesn't love a proper English accent!  

Chronically English Madge

Born here, I left too long ago to retain mine.  I'm certainly not going to adopt it now, like the kid I knew in high school who returned from a three week stint in London with a full-on British accent, or Madonna.  Some people seem to absorb it just flying over UK airspace.  Not me.  I can't even say 'cheers' without feeling like a pretender, as out of place as a badger in the Mojave.  I have one holdout from childhood... I say toe-mah-toe, Husband always ridiculed me for it.  He says to-may-toe.  Over here everyone says it my way.  Husband had to back off.

     Husband and I speak in a pitch different than our British friends.  
There is a musicality to their speech, the words lilt at the end of a sentence, like they are full of joy and possibility.  When they say 'good-bye' on the phone, there is a pleasant upswing on the second syllable, like parting is such sweet sorrow.  When Husband and I speak in our flat dull tone we feel like knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, only a few syllables away from a grunt.  We stand out like sore thumbs.  It's different in London where you're surrounded by every language imaginable.  Here, we're the only aliens in the village.

      The British are extremely polite and everyone knows it's rude to stare, but when people hear us speak, they do stare.  Unspoken questions traipse across creased foreheads.  'What the bloody hell are you doing here,  talking like that?'  Everybody knows who you are, even if they haven't met you, which is sometimes kind of nice.  Like being a bizarre celebrity because of an unfortunate speech pattern.  In the market towns we frequent we have become familiar oddities; our flat voiced cadence is our calling card.

Why Do You Talk Like That?

Try to Ignore Them.  I do.

     

    








     
     England has many dialects.  You can travel from one end of the country to the other and encounter vast differences in vernacular.  People from all over the UK live in Somerset but it's the local West Country dialect that I love, with its hard S's that almost sound like Zeds and rolling Rs, so that Somerset sounds like, Zomerrrrzet.  It's like living amongst pirates.  I think of Long John Silver and Robert Louis Stevenson.  It takes you to an imagined world  of adventure and swashbuckling.  I want to head to the nearest coastline, and find the cave where the gold doubloons are hidden.  

Could You Please Direct us to 
the Gold Dubloons?

You're Sure He Said This Way?

     Only problem is, sometimes, when the accent is really heavy, we aliens are lost without translation.  You can only say 'pardon me' so many times before you become an irritant.  We smile and leave a conversation clueless; we'll never find where the buried treasure is.   Given instructions by a farmer we cannot understand, we nod dumbly and head off happily in the wrong direction.  He watches us go, a word bubble forms over his head, 'Village Idiots,' he thinks.

    

An Idiot in the Village

     Language isn't just words, it's also intonations and attitudes, the unspoken.  There are rules for discourse here.  Husband and I don't know them all quite yet.  In fact, we barely know any.  We have learned it's rude to ask too many questions.  That restriction goes against every instinct I have.  I'm an inveterate question asker.  I ask more than most.  Lots of questions.  Irritatingly so.  Some people like it, it shows you are interested in them, others don't, perceiving it as prying.   

     Husband and I like to chat with people we meet.  We strike up a conversation with a man on a moor and I ask why he's harvesting thistle?   Because the seeds are good for his budgerigars… duh.   I ask the farmers what kind of cattle are those?  Can a limousin really clear a five foot high metal gate?  Is it still too wet to plant?  How long until the levels drain?   How often do you have to re-thatch your roof?  How many miles is it to Burrow Mump?  When did Saint Wulfric arrive in Haselbury Plucknett?  What's a faggot? (A traditional food made of offal)   

Faggots and Peas

      As we pass on our perambulations we look at people and say hello and smile.   They avert their gaze to the flock of birds overhead.  Is that an Iberian Chiffchaff or a Pied Flycatcher, I ask?  

Why Do You Talk Like That, 
Said The Iberian Chiffchaff?

Sometimes people just narrow their eyes and say , I don't know.  Other times they are surprised and happy to answer questions not put to them before.  We can't help it, we're curious though apparently extremely impolite and irritating Canucks.  

     
     Another thing we've had to curtail is our unbridled enthusiasm.  People here are much more reserved than we.  But we love it here... perhaps deliriously so.  Like true aliens, we are discovering a new world.  The sky is so blue!  The air is so clean!  The lambs are so cute!  The grass is so green!  The rain is so wet! 

Why do you talk like that?

     Often we sound positively giddy.  Last week at the Wells' Market Husband was thrilled to find his favorite baker had his favorite chocolate cake.  "My husband has been dreaming of your chocolate cake!"  I exclaim loudly, a slight tinge of lunacy in my voice.   The baker blushed red, and looked down at her feet.

Go to Wells for the Chocolate Cake

Forget the Cathedral....

  

     And so we continue to roam the moors and frequent the villages, insulting or startling the population every time we open our mouths.  But that's okay, because, as Canadians, we're also masters of the word, "Sorry."