My neighbour’s been to Canada, and now he knows all about it. As far as I understand he’s only been to Toronto and somewhere nearby called Krankie or some such where his sister lives, but now he’s an expert on everything Canadian. What’s more he wants to bring me up to speed, so he keeps buttonholing me in the drive or over the back garden fence. ‘Did I tell you about the post offices in Canada?’ he’ll say, and then launch into an exhaustive account of buying a stamp. Or, ‘They’re great cat lovers, the Canadians. For instance, did you know ….’ etc etc. Well, I certainly do now, even though I didn’t want to. I hope some of it comes up in the pub quiz, but what’s the chance of that?
The other day I’d only just disengaged myself after a gruelling ten minutes on the wonders of Canadian toothpaste by insisting that I had a train to catch, when he ran up behind me as I was rushing into the station. ‘Mike, I forgot to tell you – what am I like?! – the Canadians have got their railways really sorted. You wouldn’t get any of this nonsense.” He waved his hand towards the queues of people at the ticket office and machines. I joined the shortest one but it was looking hopeless. As the minutes ticked by and the queue hardly moved, Clive rabbited on at my side. When the announcement came that the 8.15 for Marylebone was about to leave, I let out a groan. ‘There you are, Mike! You wouldn’t be missing your train in Canada, it just doesn’t happen!’ I scowled at him. ‘No, you’d be better off in Canada, Mike, that’s for sure. We all would. I haven’t told you about the car parking, have I?’
‘No,’ I snapped, ‘and I don’t want to know!’
‘Ah, well,’ said Clive, ‘you don’t now, but one day you’ll hear someone talking about international parking comparisons and you’ll think, ‘If I’d only listened to Clive, I could have chipped in about the Canadian situation.’ ’
‘Yes, I might well think that if I’ve gone totally doolally by then. And if not, I’ll be glad that I know nothing whatever about it. Why on earth would I want to know anything about it? Whatever use would that be to me?’
‘Knowledge is power,’ said Clive, ‘collect it where and when you can, that’s what they say’.
‘Who do?’
‘The Canadians!’
I winced. I couldn’t believe that I’d fallen into that trap.
Clive continued. ‘Yes, they always subscribe to that point of view in Canada, I can tell you.’
‘Please don’t,’ I said as I passed through the ticket barrier onto the platform, praying that Clive wouldn’t follow me. He didn’t, but he called after me, ‘They make the ticket barriers in Canada much wider than these!’
‘Presumably because they’re all so fat’, I growled.
That evening there he was again; as soon as I went out to water the chrysanths he popped his head over the fence.
‘You won’t see anyone with a watering-can in you-know-where,’ he said, evidently sensitive to my hatred of all things Canadian. ‘They have these little black pipes laid all over, automatic watering systems they call them. It’s ideal. You can get them here, now, you know. I’m going to buy one in the September sales. Do you want to come with me? or I could get one for you, for your little patch.’
Little patch?! It was a lot of work, my back garden, but well worth it. It looked a treat. Whereas his – ! He’d already had it all paved over ‘like they do over there’, so where the watering system would come in I couldn’t imagine. And wasn’t about to ask.
‘I suppose they all have huge gardens in Canada, like bits of prairie,’ I said as sarcastically as I could manage.
‘Oh yes, Mike,’ said Clive, seemingly oblivious to my tone, ‘that’s right. Well, they need plenty of room for their cars, and motor homes, boats of course, and lots of them have those hot tubs, if they haven’t got an actual swimming pool – or of course they might have both.’
‘Don’t the swimming pools freeze solid for most of the year?’ I said. ‘Maybe they cut a hole in the ice to get though to swim.’
‘You’re just showing your ignorance there, Mike. Listen and learn. You’re thinking of the north, Eskimos and such, but mostly it’s not like that at all. No polar bears in Toronto, Mike! It gets quite hot there. In July, for instance, the average temperature is 22C and the rainfall 68mm.’
I turned my back on him and concentrated on filling my watering can.
‘Ask me what the average temperature is in August, Mike. Go on!’
I ignored him, pretending that there was a problem with the tap.
‘Well, I’ll tell you. It’s 21C and rainfall 70mm. You’ll be glad of that info when you’re deciding where in Canada you’d prefer to live.’
‘Thanks Clive,’ I said. ‘As long as you’re living here, I think I would prefer to be in Canada. As far away from here as possible.’
‘That would be the Yukon, obviously,’ Clive informed me, ‘but the Canadians, they don’t like living there. No, to a Canadian that would be the pits. You know what they call a person from the Yukon, don’t you?
‘Let me guess. Is it what we call you, Clive? A ghastly irritating little twat?’
‘No, Mike. That wasn’t a very good guess, was it? I’ll tell you the correct answer when you’ve apologised for that remark’.
I watered on in silence, while Clive hovered expectantly. No apology was forthcoming.
After a few minutes, as I was refilling the watering-can again, he said, ‘I’m going to let it go, Mike, because I know how hard it is for English people to admit they’re wrong. A Canadian would not only have apologised for any offence, he would have insisted on taking me out for a meal or at least a drink.’
‘Do you want a drink, Clive?’ I said. ‘Here.’ And I emptied the contents of the full watering can over his head.
‘That rather proves my point, doesn’t it?’ said Clive. ‘Let’s resume our conversation tomorrow, Mike, when you’re in a better mood.’ And he squelched off into his house.
I was making some practice swings with the garden spade, imagining clouting Clive on the head and burying him under his Canadian-style patio paving, when he opened an upstairs window and leaned out.
‘By the way, you’d be fined loads for wasting water like that in Canada. They’re strict on that, very harsh in fact. But on the other hand, what I was going to tell you this morning, you can park anywhere for free. Imagine! Anywhere! It’s paradise, Mike, it really is.’
I wasn’t sure that I entirely believed that, about the free parking. But I had to admit, just to myself – that it did sound like paradise.