Since my mother’s passing over ten years ago, all sorts of material from her life has surfaced now and again: school books, journals, communion photos and correspondence of all kinds. My aunt cleans out the basement or an uncle reorganises the attic and more emerges.

There are a couple of audio cassette tapes my aunt passed on, audio letters my mother recorded and sent after moving to Karachi in the late 1970s. I love these. I can imagine my mother sitting in front of the tape recorder in the evening, my dad putting on music in the background, both of them smoking.

My mother talks about looking for work, what she’s eating, her day-to-day schedule, stories about the strangeness of her new environment. My dad occasionally takes over to offer a lengthy political analysis in a soft voice and broken French. Sometimes there’s a little bickering which ends with my mom laughing it off.  It’s sweetly mundane.

At one point after a click in the tape and the hiss of a new recording, my mother proudly announces that my Pakistani grandmother has a message and is now going to speak French. Huh?

Next thing I hear is my grandmother croaking: “Bawnjhoogh.”

After the message my mother explains the process. She translated my grandmother’s message into French and sounded the words back out to her so she could transcribe them into Urdu. And it worked, her French is strange but understandable.

I liked hearing the worlds of my two families come together in that moment. I can hear my mother’s energy and creativity (it was definitely her idea) and my grandmother’s careful ear and speech.

Transcribing it myself it was neat to see how my grandmother would have understood those sounds.

I wonder what it would have sounded like for my other grandmother to sound out Urdu, transcribed into Italian… that would be quite a conversation.

I met this gentleman in St. James’ Park. Apparently this pelican has become quite attached to him. Followed him into the park café once, too.

He’s named it William so I’m not sure who’s more attached to who, but they seem pretty tight. He’s also friends with other birds and various critters. He feeds the squirrels, chats with William, and growls at the children chasing ducks.

“No supervision at all,” he muttered, “These children need a good kick in the arse!”

Lots of people took pictures. I took pictures. A group of German students were determined to pet William, which the pelican wasn’t so keen on.  Gruff demeanor aside, I think the guy enjoyed the attention.

Have launched a new little tumblr project with a good friend of mine who constantly sends me news updates from the wild of the colonies. Oh! Canada is a visual roundup of true (and truly) Canadian headlines. Articles include breaking stories such as:

Teen charged with tractor theft after low-speed chase

“He was having some difficulty, I guess, manoeuvring the tractor, probably due to lack of experience,” Sgt. Jamie George told CBC News on Monday.

George said the police were able to run up to the tractor on foot and jump on it to pull the driver off.

Enjoy, eh.

Little photo-video from moments gleaned on the island of Bozcaada, Turkey.

Thorpe Park, 2009.