Of boats and stuff

Today we went to some of the museums of Shelburne, including the Dory shop, where they continue to build dories, although not at the frenetic pace of the previous century.

A dory is a small boat for two men to go fishing out of, which can easily be dropped off the side of a larger vessel. Shelburne dories are lighter and ever-so-slightly smaller than Lunenberg dories, which means they can carry slightly less fish, but are quicker to build, among other nautical features I don't properly understand.

One chap with lots of white hair built 10,000 dories over the course of his lifetime, working on a daily rate of 45 cents. Although Shelburne is no longer the fourth largest city in North America, I don't think we can put the shrinking population down to a lack of 45-cent-per-day jobs. But I'm no economist, what would I know? Perhaps if we could persuade Canadians to move en masse to Nova Scotia and make wooden boats for less than a fifth the price of a latte at Starbucks then we'd revolutionise things.

Well, we might have a revolution, anyway.

Today we also had guests in town, which allowed us to get rid of some more of the wedding cake. It is becoming more and more clear that we ordered more cake than was necessary; having given away one layer to the hotel staff, frozen another layer, fed everyone at the wedding and had another cake eating party the day after, we still have about a fifth of the cake to eat. I'd be heartily sick of wedding cake by now, except each layer has a different flavour, and now we're on the sublime chocolate-strawberry portion. Hurrah!

Other things I've learned today: while 'gastropub' signifies to the British a pub that feeds expensively upgraded pies and sausages to braying yuppies in rugby shirts, for people from Montreal 'gastro' indicates the sort of situation where your body is purging itself from both ends as fast as it can. Which could happen after you've been to a gastropub, but is hardly a good advertisement. (Or, as the Canadians would pronounce it, "advertisement".)

Of course, if you're going both ends, that should really be a 'bistro' as one of our chums pointed out. Language is a wonderful way to convey the breakdown of the digestive system to people.

If that wasn't enough for one day, we went to the supermarket to find they've now tried to making shaving more exciting by attaching wheels to razors. No, really. I'll get a photograph soon to prove this ridiculous toy car/depillation device actually exists, or everyone will think I'm high on maple syrup and wild blueberries.

And hodge-podge, the traditional Nova Scotian delicacy. Which I've eaten enough of today to put me into a cataleptic trance. Once more, time for bed...