Eternally North (4 page)

Taking in the scene
before us, we turned to one another and began jumping and screaming
around the room.

"We are going to
Jamaica!" shouted Tink in blissful happiness.

After a thirty-second
hysterical celebration involving hip bumps and high fives and
tit-to-tit taps, I turned to the TV to bask in the joy of our chosen
new home and abruptly noticed the snow.

Wait... snow?

"Erm, since when
do they have snow in Jamaica?"
Did I miss something in
Geography class?

Tink looked over my
shoulder after expertly rounding off his cartwheel and said, "Well,
dip me in shit and roll me in breadcrumbs. You're right, Wilbur, look
at the sign – 'Winter Olympics 1988, Calgary’."

"Calgary. Canada.
Gosh! Canada, Tink, we’re moving to bloody Canada!" I declared
with an Irish jig.

Several dances and
Cool
Runnings
quotes later – 'Kiss the egg, man' being the favoured
line – it all began to sink in. We were headed to the Great White
North.

I glanced at Tink, who
was midway through a Fosse-inspired routine using the staircase
banister for a ballet barre and said, "Well, kid, it’s you and
me against the world, or
Girls Gone Wild
in Calgary. I’m not
sure which?"

He circled towards me
on a pirouette, floated across the room and grabbed my arm with a
lustful look upon his face. "One word makes this all worthwhile,
Wil," he said, his eyebrows jumping up and down in a dastardly
villainous fashion.

"And what's that?
The Rockies? Hockey? Syrup?" I laughed, goading him on.

Shaking his head, he
smirked and smouldered in a raspy voice, "Even better."

I held a breath in
anticipation, eager for the response.

Closing his eyes and
puckering his lips he answered, "Mounties!"

Enough said.

"Glynis, I’m
gonna need my Munro Clan kilt and my steel-capped boots, the ones
that can break coccyx!" screamed my father.

The next day, after
seven pints of water and a restorative fry-up, I was sitting at the
farmhouse-style kitchen table of my parents’ house on their farm
trying to gently break the Nathan-bomb to them. As you can see, it
was going well.

"Dad, calm down,"
I pleaded. I
sooo
did not need this right now.

With a slammed fist on
the breakfast bar, my father, turning a lovely shade of crimson –
and was that..? Yep, smoke coming from his ears – shrilled in a
battle cry-type manner.

"The scrawny
English bastard!” Cue excessive rolling of R's. “I'm going to
kill the Sassenach prick. As my ancestors before me, I will paint
myself blue and cut him from naval to nose. Let the fields of
Bannockburn rejoice in the sacrificial slaughter of one Nathan
Skellet, another casualty of the Scottish cause: ridding the world of
wee English shits! Especially those that fuck with my family!"

I threw my head in my
hands.

My father – Gordon -
is the best man I know. He is also the craziest man I know. He is
100% Scottish and proud of it, as well as the most hot-headed and
impulsive man on the planet.

"Calm down!"
I yelled.

"I will not! That
beady-eyed wee fucker slighted my daughter and thus he must pay!
Glynis, get my Sgian-Dubh… and make sure its sharp!"

I jumped up and headed
after my father’s retreating form. "Okay, okay Braveheart, sit
down," I said, grabbing his arm and returning him to his seat.
"For a start, there will be no battling on my behalf. We are no
longer living in the Middle Ages so 'slighting your daughter' is
perhaps too dramatic a term to use towards my ex that I lived with...
out of wedlock. And Dad, your Sgian-Dubh is purely decorative for
your kilt and about two inches long, so, unless Nathan has joined
ranks with Grumpy and Dopey in the last twenty-four hours, it's not
exactly an appropriate weapon to wield if you want to be successful
in the slitting from naval to nose!"

Taking a deep breath,
Dad seemed to mellow out.

"Plus we ran out
of your blue face paint at Halloween when we dressed up as Smurfs."

Huffing out a sigh at
not getting to beat some English meat, he seemed to restrain himself.
"I'm just so angry, sweetheart. I'm raging, you ken?"

"I know, but let’s
just forget it and move on. Hey, with any luck I’ll get myself a
Scottish boy next," I laughed.

"Aye, that'd be
good. But no fenians, you hear? If they support Celtic, dunnae even
bother bringing him home! You're my little girl. My miracle," he
sniffed, and wiped away a single tear.

I laid my head on his
shoulder. "I know, Dad."

One parent appeased, I
turned to my mother to see her bottom lip beginning to tremble.

Great, here come the
water works!

"Oh, my sweet
girl, how could he?" she said, rushing over to me and crushing
me into her ample bosom. "And on the imported Italian leather
L-shape? Has he no shame?"

"Mam, I’m fine,
really," I managed to mumble out of my current suffocation.

Letting go, she grabbed
my cheeks and looked me in the eye to check for fibs.

"Honestly, Mam, I
think it’s for the best. You know I don't let things get to me.
Especially after speaking to the homeless man. I'm just pissed off
that he threw a whopping spanner in my life plan. I mean I’m
twenty-eight and no spring chicken, but, thinking about it, I never
really
loved him; he just fit the profile I was looking for in
a potential partner."

My parents furrowed
their brows at how I could talk so coldly about someone I had been in
a relationship with for three years, but it was true – I don’t
think I ever really loved him. He was just... convenient.

"But how could
he?” my mother continued. “After all you have been through, the
insensitive little shit! Wait, did you say you spoke to a homeless
man?"

I waved my hand in
front of me, dismissing her worry. "It doesn’t matter about
the homeless man, Mam. Please stop worrying. I’m not a charity
case!" I shouted in exasperation.

My mam tutted at my
little outburst. "Firstly, I do not think you are a charity
case, but you have had more than your fair share of bad luck in this
life, and I for one cannot believe that Nathan, knowing all of that,
still betrayed you in such a way," she cried into her hands.

"I know, Mam, but
it’s done; I’m moving on. I think it was a blessing in disguise
anyway. It saved me from a messy future divorce and gave me a new
perspective on life."

She sat beside me,
stroking my hair and holding my hand, nodding and staring into space.

"Erm, guys, I have
something else to say in regards to said, new perspective," I
started again, wanting to keep the momentum of the revelations going.

"What is it,
flower?" asked my mam.

"Tink and I are
moving to Calgary. In five months," I said in an upbeat tone.
"Ta-daa!" I added weakly, as an afterthought, incorporating
my award winning jazz hands into the reveal.

"I dunnae feckin'
think so!" My dad rose to his feet and began pacing and spouting
expletives again.

I looked in my mother’s
direction. She was looking a deathly shade of white and had
definitely stopped breathing, slouched over Brunhilde, the Munro
family dachshund.

My father halted in his
rant abruptly and looked me in the eye, no longer upset. "Let me
get this straight. Yesterday you were living your life as normal,
yes?"

I nodded.

He continued. "Then
you go home and find your boyfriend with another woman, break up with
him, go to Tink’s, get blindingly drunk and decide to move to
Calgary, Canada?"

He waited for my answer
in silence.

"Erm, in a
nutshell, y-yes," I stammered. It did sound kind of random,
hearing it said out loud.

"You need to
answer a few things for me."

"Okay." All
eyes were on me.

"What the hell do
you think you are doing?"

I cleared my throat.
"Well, I realised yesterday that I needed to get back some
joie
de vivre
, and unfortunately it took my boyfriend’s infidelity
to show me that. Then I went for a walk and asked for a sign, and,
Jane Austen spoke to me from the grave telling me to seize the day
and then Tink and I got drunk and I decided that a change of scenery
was exactly what I needed.”

My father shook his
head in disbelief. "I've have never heard anything so feckin'
stupid in all my life!"

"I second that
motion!" piped up my mother dryly, with her arms crossed firmly
across her chest.

That’s it!

"Whether you like
it or not, I am doing it, so you have five months to come to terms
with it. That may sound harsh, but I want to do this, and I’m old
enough and stupid enough to go through with it!"

I walked to each of my
parents and kissed each of them on the cheek, and made my way out of
the house feeling like Xena Warrior Princess at standing up to my
somewhat over-protective elders. I was sure they would come around in
time – but until then, I headed back to my favourite fairy. It was
time for another drink!

* * *

To say the following
months were a blur would be an understatement. Dorothy in the tornado
on her road to Oz had more structure and organisation than I did.
Tink, on the other hand, was as cool as a cucumber. Having years ago
been left a hefty inheritance by his eccentric and fabulously wealthy
artist uncle, he had no reason to work.

However, Tink being
Tink felt that not working would be to deprive the world of his
unrivalled social skills, so for years had held gainful employment as
a waiter in our local Italian restaurant, to enhance his verbal and,
most importantly, flirting communication. Tink loved nothing more
than feeding his espresso addiction while chatting to anyone and
everyone about anything and everything. Coincidentally, Mario, the
owner of the Italian restaurant where Tink currently worked, just so
happened to have an friend in Calgary who was more than happy to
organise a similar job for him there.

Luckily for Tink, and
due to his healthy bank balance, his visa to Canada was accepted
immediately. I, on the other hand, had several things to sort out.

I handed in my
resignation at work and although it was sad to leave such an amazing
team behind, I was excited for the future. My boss, Maureen, had seen
a job on an online educational site that she thought I would be
perfect for and after a particularly horrific Skype interview and a
few tense days wait, I was offered the 'Social Science' Head of
Department position at 'The Calgary School of Excellence.'

So, I was in the final
stages of tying up my Newcastle life. My apartment was handed to
Nathan the dick who had quickly moved in his new blonde bint – not
that I was bitter or anything! I had a new job in place and all the
visa paperwork had come through successfully, so my fairy and I were
all systems go!

My parents, as
predicted, slowly came round to the idea. Of course I had to convince
them on more than one occasion that black bears could not stealthily
sneak in through bedroom windows on the top floor of apartment
complexes. Within a couple of months they had stopped threatening to
chain themselves to the airport runaway to stop the plane from taking
off and all plans to call in hoax bomb scares were put on hold
indefinitely - I saw this as progress.

* * *

Tink and I arrived at
Calgary International airport on July first – Canada Day – after
a nine hour aeroplane ride which was made particularly uncomfortable
by a moaning Tink who had bitched non-stop about the fact that his
bubble-gum pink chaps were chaffing his member on the cheap polyester
seats. Yep, chaps. My dad – in all his wisdom, and potentially as
revenge for my moving – had thought it hilarious to give Tink a
full pink cowboy ensemble complete with glitter rhinestone accents to
celebrate our move to Canada’s Cowtown. I had, as usual, reaped the
benefits of that little gift, and had the burst ear-drums to prove
it. The outfit did however, help my camp cowboy bag a post-flight
date with an air steward who had been eye-fucking my bestie for the
majority of the flight and had eight hours free for a scheduled
layover.

Tink exchanged his
digits with his date and we jumped off the plane with uncontrolled
excitement and swiftly passed through customs after receiving a very
cheery ‘Welcome to Canada’ and ‘Have an awesome day’, from
the enthusiastic immigration official.

We grabbed our mountain
of luggage and stumbled out of the airport to meet Suzy, our
‘realtor’ who had been a godsend during our planning and had
nabbed us the super extravagant condo, a black Smart car ‘For Two’
for me and a very American yellow-and-black Camaro for the Tinkster
(yep, you’ve guessed it, it’s ‘Bumblebee’!).

“Well, suck me dry
and call me dusty!” declared Tink as we entered our new condo on
Seventeenth Avenue, downtown.

It was unbelievable. A
brand-spanking new penthouse with floor-to-ceiling glass and
panoramic views of Calgary. Not the best financial move, but with
millionaire Tink and my whopping contribution, we had decided to
throw caution to the wind and splurge.

“Well,
Dusty
.
It is unreal. Can you actually comprehend that this is our new home?”
I said, my voice filled with awe.

“I can and I do. Now
for my little extra surprise. Come now, my little Porky Pig,” Tink
said as he grabbed my arm and dragged me onto the roof-top patio.

“Tah-dah!” he
shouted as he pointed to the monstrous hot tub set to the left of the
patio.

It was huge. As in
orgy-huge.

“Tink! Wow! This is
amazing! It’s practically a flipping swimming pool. Thank you!” I
squealed as I launched myself into his arms.