Raccoon Ignition (Remix)

It's the remix to Ignition, hot and fresh out the kitchen.... Something something something. Isn't it odd to think that R Kelly is real? Living. Breathing. Rapping. Learning something new about midgets every single day.

Here's something else that's both odd and real: the raccoon. In the glorious Canadian cartoon of the same name, raccoons rode bicycles, wore monogrammed sweatshirts and even owned dogs. They had pleasant picnics in the woods and only occasionally fell out with their neighbour Cyril Sneer (who was an aardvark, according to google - not a shaved bear, as I had suspected). Until last week, I had never had reason to stop and think about real raccoons; not in any meaningful sense. "Oh, that bin has been tipped over," Heather would say. "Must be the raccoons." Cue my daydreaming of Bert, Ralph and Melissa playing tennis or scrumping apples or something.

L-R: Scarf, ganzie, crop top

But raccoons are real, man. Really real. How do I know? Because we had a close encounter with one; an episode so dramatic it warranted its own 999-style commentary by Michael Burke. Allow me to set the scene: David and Heather are on the balcony to measure for patio furniture. David crouches down, tape measure in hand, and he notices a tell-tale sign in the corner of his eye...

POO. In fact, TWO POOS. Big ones. Comfortably bigger than a cat's. A frown creeps across my befuddled face. "Heather," I manage to emit, "one of our neighbours has been throwing dog shit up here." Tony says little, but I can tell that she immediately suspects the two dog-owning smokers across the way. Their house is up for sale and she's already decided what she thinks of it: not as nice as ours. Which makes them bad people.

Before we can speculate any further ("Turkey vultures?") there is a rustling; a growing sense of dread; a noise from a corner that ought to be silent. The barbecue is alive, breathing, sneaking.

We stand still and slowly turn our heads in the direction of the disturbance. A bandit's face slowly, very slowly, emerges from the canvas barbecue cover. I do what real men do: hazard a wild guess as to what it is and what it wants. "Heather... IT'S A FOX!" I cry, momentarily forgetting that foxes are physically unable to scale the sides of buildings and drop onto balconies. The face's creepy, sinewy, human-like hands slide into view and the game is up: it's a raccoon, and we're facing certain death.

Our stares meet - its evil shrimp eyes and my nice blue ones - and its expression speaks a thousands words, a thousand sentiments, but mostly this: "I shat on your balcony and slept in your barbecue. And now I'm leaving." With that, the Bastard of the Woods (TM David Welsh) slunk over the neighbour's wall, presumably to curl out a Cleveland Steamer on her spotless Muskoka chairs.

Dirty Bertie

Fast-forward 10 days: we've just about recovered from our ordeal, and Tony - at long bloody last - has bothered herself to pick up the poo using a plastic bag as a glove. Judging from her face as she was doing it, I made the right decision to delegate that particular task. But there's a sting in the tail as we notice a gassy smell outside. Not a big deal, we think; not after our indoor gas leak last month (another story entirely). It transpires that the raccoon didn't just relieve his bowels on our woodwork and snooze where we prepare food: it also took it upon itself to release the gas valve and turn one of the burner controls. The upshot is a gas leak we knew nothing about for the best part of a fortnight.

That absolute BASTARD had better watch himself when our gas bill arrives.

House!

What a difference a year makes. In October 2011, I had just left my part-time job in Newcastle in preparation to move to Toronto. Fast-forward a few months and I had a canny job; fast forward a few more and I'm a homeowner. Officially.

I've had houses before, of course – they just haven't been mine as such. They ranged from grubby to grand, but my new gaff trumps them all in the sense that it's actually insulated. It's also slug-free, non-leaking and devoid of noisy neighbours. So far.

Much to my surprise, my first house isn't a Money Pit

I haven't had much time to think, never mind write – hence the recent blog blackout – with the purchase, then the moving, and a Christmas trip home in-between. My world-class patter has certainly taken a hit with the added weight of responsibility on my broad, muscular shoulders, but I'll soon adjust to the idea that so much of my wealth – and my debt – is invested in the bricks and mortar I now call home.

Besides, I can no longer afford to go anywhere, so I'm sure I'll be posting here more often to report on house-based hilarity, sports-based misery and the latest cat videos on YouTube (note to self: finish that 15,000-word piece on your all-time favourite videogames: "From Alex Kidd to Nathan Drake: Living Vicariously Through Pixels").

After my first two weeks as a cripplingly-indebted first-time owner, I have been able to make some observations worth sharing.

• Master the thermostat and you rule the world. "Is the heat up?" asks Tony. "Oh, yes," I reply, "Two degrees higher than yesterday." Little does she know that I'm conducting experiments as to how low I can set the temperature before frost develops on the carpets.
• Dishwashers are canny. In the last house, ours was off-limits in favour of hand-washing. After all, we never had enough dishes to justify setting the bugger off. But now we're footloose and fancy-free, using the dishwasher whenever and however we please. As long as it's only once every four days.
• Know your area. The street's bank of mailboxes is in the shared playground. Ergo, volunteering to collect the mail means a free go on the slide. I think that's why Tony insists on going every night when we get home from work.
• A living room is only as good as its sofa. Our furniture still hasn't arrived, so our living room is less about relaxing, more about perching uncomfortably and trying to fill the awkward silence.
• Cable TV is dreadful. Don't bother. And if they try to charge you $20 a month for the one channel that shows Premier League football, don't be daft. Unless you really want it. Like I did.
• Don't expect anything to work as it should. Internet radio. The landline. HDMI adapter. Another internet radio. Maintenance fee payments. Address updates. It'll all go wrong. Just accept it and get on with your life.
• Good neighbours become good friends. We've so far exchanged a few sentences with a nice Italian-looking lady. She knocked on the door to tell me I'd left the garage open. I introduced myself. She didn't give her name.

Further wisdom will occur to me as and when, and I'll be sure to share my pearls with you all. The long-term plan is to have my own property show on public access TV, like Carole Smiley, Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen or Craig from Big Brother. After all, if Colin and Justin  made it big in Canada, anybody can.

PS. If you'd care to visit, you're more than welcome. We have two spare rooms. No spare beds, like, but the upstairs carpet isn't quite as itchy and abrasive as it looks.

Voting Rights and Wrongs

In GCSE History, we learned about the Suffragettes. We heard how they took a militant approach to attain the vote, and listened mouths-agape when Miss McCabe told us how Emily Davison had thrown herself under King George V's horse at the 1913 Derby (the horse race, not the Tyne-Wear Classico). But these were the cool, crazy days of 1998: disenfranchisement couldn't have been further from the thoughts of a skinny white schoolboy in the 24-hour city of Wallsend.

I'm bloody furious now, though. Absolutely radged. I've moved to Toronto to live in a metropolitan paradise, to experience the rich tapestry of human existence, to immerse myself in cultures new and old (and get a job, like) - yet I find myself paying a shedload of taxes every fortnight to live under the tyrannous yolk of a hilariously inept mayor and there's nowt I can do about it because I'm not allowed to vote.

As long ago as 2006, 49.9 percent of Torontonians were immigrants and 15 percent were non-Canadian citizens. The latter figure equates to 400,000 people - a larger population than most of Canada's other provincial capitals. They pay their taxes to fund the city, from rubbish collection and street lighting to an ill-regarded public transit system, but have no say in how their money is spent. To use a phrase I didn't think I'd encounter again after revising my A-Level French Revolution notes, it's taxation without representation.

This could easily be a Toronto neighbourhood. Easily.

On a national level, I can sort of appreciate the situation: Canada is so large that it's an abstract notion to me, and it doesn't make a jot of difference to my everyday life whether a Liberal, a Conservative or a Quebecois PM sits in Ottawa. But the city is different, and its current incumbent is a walking disaster - demolishing bike lanes, failing to understand what "conflict of interest" means, framing any criticism of his actions in deeply unhelpful terms like "left-wing conspiracy". If I'm paying for City Hall's self-destruction, shouldn't I be able to register my distaste? It's not as if non-citizen voting is an outrageous concept, especially on a municipal level. As Scott Bernstein explains:

Non-citizen voting is not something unheard of.  About 40 countries around the world - including 17 countries in Europe - allow for some form of non-citizen voting.  In many cases, non-citizens only have to live in a place for a year to get the full franchise of voting.  What these experiences have shown is that non-citizen voting increases the participation and integration of immigrants into society.  Non-citizens who were allowed to vote progressed on the path to citizenship faster than in places without voting (that is very understandable if you imagine that the taste of participation in a democracy empowers people to imagine their participation on a broader level and encourages them to take the necessary steps).  It's a win-win to use a cliched expression.

So why am I only complaining now, more than a year after arriving in T.O.? I suppose it's because the place is starting to feel more like home (or a second home) and my arrangement doesn't feel so temporary anymore. Well... that and the fact that as a new homeowner I have to fork out thousands for the Ontario Land Transfer Tax and the Toronto Land Transfer Tax.

Unlike this hypocritical arse, I'm happy to pay tax.

So I'm a card-carrying member of the pissed-off permanent residents brigade; a half-million man march made up of poor sods like Ms Sambrano and Mr Acosta:

After an application process and day-long training session, they're practising their English in preparation for voting day, when they're volunteering at an east-end polling station in the ward next to theirs - giving directions and multilingual instructions to Torontonians coming in to vote. But they won't be among those casting a ballot. Ms. Sambrano and Mr. Acosta, who came to Canada from Bogota, Colombia in 2007, are among more than 300,000 Torontonians who have permanent resident status but aren't Canadian citizens. They pay property taxes and fees, and use public services; according to statistics published last week, they're disproportionately more likely to live in under-serviced pockets of the city that are becoming increasingly stratified. But they can't vote to elect the politicians whose decisions have the most direct impact on their lives.

Toronto is an incredible city that owes everything to its vibrant immigrant community - a community that makes up more than half of its residents - and it beggars belief that so many Torontonians are disenfranchised at the municipal level. I can't write to my councilor or MP because I don't have one, so it's time to daub a catchy slogan on a bedsheet and march on City Hall... once the weather improves.

PICTURE SPECIAL: Royal Agricultural Winter Show

I'm mad keen on animals, me. I remember when all this was fields and we'd tempt horses to the fence with crudely chopped carrots. I even rode the little one for a few feet before we both got too scared and scampered in opposite directions. God knows how many cow pats I trod in as we snuck through the herd's field, now Newcastle United's academy pitches.

So this weekend we took the opportunity to visit Toronto's 90th Royal Agricultural Winter Show, our hearts positively palpitating at the prospect of goat judging, hen handling and more ten-gallon ascots than you can shake a riding crop at. Livestock-wise, we weren't disappointed - a two-tonne heffer here, a freshly sheared sheep there - and the food hall delivered as ever (Mexican poutine, since you asked), but the stalls were a little odd, and often only tenuously agricultural. Looking for a shower head that works with a low pressure water supply? Then you may live on a farm. Looking for ladders? They're useful for fixing leaks in barn roofs. Looking for a comfy leather recliner and five minutes on a Sony Vaio laptop? Sure - you farmhands deserve a break.

It's always a pleasure to visit Toronto's many exhibitions, even if it's a rather steep $20 to get in and $11 for a beer, if you're so inclined. There are few better ways to start your weekend than gawping at a glass tank full of new-born chicks, delivering judgement on the butter sculpture contest (not pictured, sadly) and breathing in lungfuls of sordid air in the ill-ventilated sheep enclosure.

Feeeeeed meeeee...

I still don't know if this was real or not.

The McDonald's exhibit.

This whole area HONKED.

As instagrammed: criminally insane sheep.

Equestrian demonstration, beautifully photographed.

CIBC Run For The Cure

It was a long, hard slog; a journey of self-discovery that could only be made by pushing the body to its limits; a grueling feat of endurance in which the indomitable human spirit shines through despite physical exhaustion. It was... Okay, it was a five-kilometre jog, and hardly the sort of achievement to write home about, but the cause was worthy (Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation) and there are worse ways to spend your Sunday morning.

Sadly, I was unable to threaten the world record, but I did set a PB, 25.59, which represented an improvement of three minutes over the course of a week's training (better late than never, eh?). It would appear that the 22-minute target set for me by my good pal Andy Graham was a little optimistic: I'm not sure how he came to the conclusion that I'm a world class fell runner, but a 22-minute 5k extrapolates to a half-marathon time of 1.30. Aye, right. Given that he turns up to the Stadium of Light and awaits three points for the home side, I think Mr Graham may have a problem with unrealistic expectations...

The run itself was not half-bad, taking in the University of Toronto's downtown campus on a balmy Sunday. Finding myself towards the back of the starting pack, however, I was soon finding it difficult to overtake groups of walkers and actually break into a run. By the time I reached the horseshoe section going down University Avenue, there were already runners coming back up the other way, grannies and toddlers among them. "Right," I thought to myself, "I didn't come here to play games."

So I turned on the afterburners and went hell-for-leather down University Avenue's grassy central reservation, leaping down stairs, dodging flower beds and overtaking my shell-shocked competitors. It was like a low-budget cross between The Matrix and Purely Belter. 

I powered back up the course, driven on by the aged crones who threatened to leave me in their wake, resisting the urge to check my time for fear of depressing myself long before the end. I even managed a smug glance at runners who stopped at the halfway point for a swig of water, among them a group of Hooters waitresses who looked like they should have been able to run a marathon, top-heavy weight distribution notwithstanding.

Rounding the final corner, I knew I was on for a half-decent time (by my standards). Sadly, the organizers had decided that the final straight should be a) narrow and b) on cobbles, and so I finished less than gracefully, my face flushed and gurning as I nimbly overtook premature celebrators and glanced at my watch. I had broken the 26-minute barrier; an achievement on a par with my keepy-up record of 250-plus, set during France 98.

So a great big thank you to all who sponsored me. Your kindness and generosity knows no bounds. To those who decided against sponsoring me, you should take a long, hard look at yourselves in the mirror. That should be punishment enough.

Will I ever run again? Of course. At least until I can find a cheap road bike and spare my knees the punishment. Will I return the expensive running shoes that successfully replicate the feeling of running barefoot on a pebbly beach? Only if I can find the receipt.

I look 52% like Barry Manilow

GIGANTIC PICTURE SPECIAL: New York City

New York, New York. So good they named it twice, and ever since watching taped-off-the-TV Ghostbusters, I've harboured an ambition to go there. Last weekend we finally went - taking a one-hour flight direct from Toronto city centre - and enjoyed the best city break EVER.

Okay, so we didn't get off on the right foot: Tony questioned my research of the route we had to take from Newark Airport to our hotel overlooking Ground Zero and I went a touch acka. A matter of seconds later, we were stood at the platform at Newark Airport Station, awaiting our connecting train. The conductor, however, hung out of the approaching engine and hollered at us to NOT ATTEMPT boarding even though he was coming to a stop and opening the doors. "Go to the other platform and get the next train!" he bellowed. Put me in mind of a certain scene from another New York-based movie...

Nevertheless, we arrived in the Big Apple and proceeded over the course of the next 2.5 days to do absolutely everything we could. Statue of Liberty; Ellis Island; Rockefeller Center; Times Square; Central Park; Lower East Side; Greenwich Village; SoHo; Chelsea Market. Photography was not permitted, unfortunately, at our highlight event: a guided tour of the NBC studios at 30 Rock, where we were taken around the sets of Dr Oz (who?), Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and, best of all, Saturday Night Live.

We also decided to save our pennies by dumping the tour bus in favour of the subway, which turned out to be a good move: with the help of an excellent Trip Advisor app, we made our way around the city with ease and only encountered mentalists on a handful of occasions.

Further hilarious anecdotes will emerge as and when I remember them, but for now - on with the photojournalism! (click to enlarge)

I'm not normally excited by food, but this was the best bagel of all time.

Wall Street, just as two tornadoes touched down nearby (no, really).

"I'll meet you at the corner of PEOPLE WITH AIDS PLAZA and POLIO ROAD."

Dynamic car park! Sadly, we didn't get to see it in action.

Little Italy. We were en route to the excellent Tenement Museum.

The view from the Rockefeller. I think that's the Chrysler Building.

Central Park.

It's a-me, Baldio!

Times Square.

Freedom Tower... or is it OneWTC? Not sure what it's called.

The view from Battery Park.

Don't put too much effort in, Heather...

Luggage at Ellis Island.

On the stairs up, doctors would determine if immigrants needed a medical inspection.

Central Park. Again.

He's about to leap over these tourists!

Ice cream at Chelsea Market.

Walking down Canal Street...

Beer with dinner = clarting around with camera settings.