Doona Brouhaha

Simple tasks are often the hardest. I was never one for this sort of trite wisdom until I tried to purchase a duvet* cover in Montreal. Duvet covers are impossible to find here. It is absurd. Initially I thought I'd be able to find something with a bit of personality to replace my Strawberry Shortcake duvet cover from Melbourne, but after a couple of hours of searching I realised this would be impossible. As well as duvet covers being extremely scarce in this city, if you do happen to be lucky enough to find one it will be decidedly stern and adult. The most perplexing thing about this is that you can find sheets no problem. You can find colourful sheets, you can find stripy sheets, and you can even find sheets with butterflies on them. Now this would be wonderful, if it weren't for the fact that sheets are ridiculous! Seriously, who can sleep with those things? They always end up half off you, or pushed down to the bottom of the bed. Sheets do not have a significant enough weight to maintain their position throughout the night. They are useless. Duvet covers, however, are not useless. They are useful. As well as providing comfort and warmth, duvets are quite often the centrepiece of the room decoration and therefore should be a reflection of some of the personality of the person who sleeps underneath it. A dull and adult duvet cover is not for me. I eventually managed to find a red one, however it is a rather dark and glossy red and not ideal. Unfortunately it seems it is the best I can do in this city. It did come with its own matching pillow cases, but I think I will attempt to find some different coloured pillow cases in order to give the bed a bit of a spark.

*I'm writing "duvet" because this is for an international audience, however I must make the point that every time I type "duvet" I am thinking "doona" in my head. I may have moved countries, but I haven't abandoned my roots. I'm still Granty from the block.

After purchasing the above mentioned duvet cover I discovered something about this country that took absurdity to new levels of extreme ridiculousness. I had thought it was about time I got myself a phone number. I had my phone from Melbourne so I decided to just go and buy a Canadian SIM card. Whilst talking to the shop assistant she informed me that in Canada one has to pay for incoming calls. Now let me just rephrase that in a couple of different ways in order to get the full impact - You have to pay to receive a phone call. It costs you money when someone calls you! Is this just not the most Bizarro World insane thing you've ever heard? Now some of you may think I'm just making this up in order to mess with your heads about Canada - "Yeah, in Canada they wear their underwear on the outside" - but this is an actual fact. Do Canadians not feel they're being taken advantage of here? Are they that placid that they would not challenge such an absurd malpractise? Revolutions have been started over less. Am I the man to lead them into the utopian world where receiving a telephone call costs you nothing? Maybe I am. Someone needs to take a stand.

Aside from this, I'm listening to the new Joanna Newsom album and becoming obsessed with Lonelygirl15 on YouTube.