Of Inuit and Epidurals

“I’m thinking buttercups, I’m thinking butterscotch, I’m thinking butternut pumpkin.”

Or so I imagine the stream of consciousness of the interior decorator. Sitting here in my new house (yes third in five months, a record even for me!), I am surrounded by yellow. The furniture is pine, there is yellow paint on the walls, the towels in the bathroom are yellow. The paintings on the wall seem to have been chosen, not for artistic merit but for their tonal palette of, you guessed it, orange and yellow. But beneath the yellow scatter cushions is a sofa bed, perfect for overseas guests, and outside lies a view that is quintessential Vancouver.
By day I look out over English Bay and the North Shore mountains. By night, street lights guide my eyes across the Lion’s Gate bridge to the lit-up ski runs on Cypress. And on mornings like this, when rain-heavy clouds hang low on the mountains, well at least I’ve got sunshine inside!

I’ve only moved a couple of blocks, but I’m now right in the heart of 4th avenue. I’ve got a supermarket on the ground floor, a bank, a pub and a bookstore within an easy walk. All this convenience means errands actually take longer because I’ll shop for one meal at a time, and then forget half the ingredients and have to go back. Each time I leave, the same homeless guy asks me for money. He’s starting to look familiar and I expect I’ll see a lot of him, now that I’ve moved into his neighbourhood.

Homelessness in Vancouver isn’t just an inner city thing. It ’s more than a Capital Letter “Issue” for politicans. It has a familiar face, and often a name. There’s Danny who sells the Big Issue equivalent outside Capers supermarket and works longer hours than I do. There’s Jack, who sits outside Duthie’s Books with a cardboard sign that reads “I am 71, tired and hungery, please help”. The man queuing at the hot dog stand is the one I normally see at the bus stop on Broadway. He has an odd looking nose which often bleeds. It’s probably cocaine related. The man with the stoop, talking to Danny is the one I usually see going through my garbage. He is looking for bottles. These have a 10c refundable deposit, and are a big industry for the homeless. Many don’t just have bags of possessions, but shopping carts, filled with recyclables. And I’d like to take a photo, but it seems a bit intrusive.

But often people see my chunky camera and ask to have their photo taken. For the homeless, it’s usually an opening line, followed by a request for money. It’s not much, just small change, and sometimes they’ve a trick to show me.



They’re not remotely interested in the photos. But often, it’s non-homeless people, who seem to think that the larger the camera, the better the pictures. So I wind up with a whole lot of random email addresses to send photos to, which I sometimes remember to do!

On a rainy day like this, catching up on a little correspondence seems like a good thing to do. And as I flick through my photos, I see some possibilities for a little interior decorating of my own. It’s yellow, but it’s also blue and it reminds me of home.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Canada, Expat life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.