It’s been far too long since we last made an entry in our travelogue – guess we haven’t really been traveling. Victoria, here we… still are. We have laid down our transitory bundles, arranged their contents in the nooks of our cosy abode, and embarked on another odyssey; that of establishing a new life.It’s not exactly been uneventful. Two visits to Galliano Island, a backyard pot-luck wedding, preceded by the traditional bride and groom rituals, a couple of days spent exploring around Sooke, job hunting, cultural eventing, and a great deal of eating and beer drinking in between, speckled with a planeload of relatives including most of Laura’s family from New Zealand. We have only just farewelled Heather, John and Isla, and miss them already – it’ll be two years before we see them again if all goes to plan. I guess that’s what it’s about now – making the plan happen; down to business, our business socks securely attached.
The fringe festival recently finished up here after a successful season. Heather Fyfe bought us tickets to the finale; “Curtis Eller’s American Circus” – a performance by New York City’s angriest yodeling banjo playing carnie where folky tales of escaped elephants, lost aviators, the civil war and demented presidents were punctuated with agile displays of appendage manipulation. If we had been allowed to drink in the theater Curtis would have been a lot more comfortable: audience participation was invited at a few points and our efforts were, well, sober.
One thing that we’ve found interesting here is the control over alcohol sales. Unlike the USA, reassuringly, you can’t buy suds in a chemist, or pick up a flat and a box of ammo at a drive-through “beer and bullets” depot. But strangely, to us liberal kiwis anyway, the supermarkets don’t sell wine or beer, and not all outlets have chillers, which equals warm Pinot Blanc (a common grape variety grown in the Okanagen Valley, interior BC) and Pale Ale. Moreover, the stores with the common sense to provide refrigerated beverages charge a premium on top of an already heavily taxed commodity. The provincial government runs a bunch of “BC Liquor” shops, all fiercely union controlled, offering generous hourly rates and cushy benefits – unsurprisingly staff turnover is low, and these places just hum on a Friday night.
Canadians love their beer, and there are a vast number of independent breweries around producing mouth-watering ales, but in these parts there is another increasingly popular option on the alcoholic beverage market – the you-brew facility. The customer drops by, selects one of the commercial recipes, mixes the ingredients leaving the brewmaster to take care of the fermentation process, at the end of which you make another visit to capture the amber liquid. There is some leg-work involved, but once you have accumulated a set of bottles and a little experience, you get a lot of tasty, professionally made beer at about half the price. Many hands make light work in the brew-house, so it is common for friends to chip in and get a couple of different batches going in parallel. Such was the case for my second-cousins Hamish, Simon and their accomplice Chad. I chipped in, keen to get a glimpse of beer factory processes, and to sample some while i was at it.
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