lady with a plunger moved in and started sloshing away energetically at the pan! Over coffee Susan and I discussed the perils of being female and the usefulness of the title "Doctor" for squashing patronising people. Feeling suitably feminist after all this we went shopping. Shops in North America are open at all sorts of useful hours, all Saturday afternoon, at night until 9.30 every night, and even on Sundays! Therefore as well as visiting a gallery, which one might expect to be able to do on a Saturday afternoon, we were able to go shopping for clothes at Eaton's,' a large department store. I needed a sweater, because the wind was cool, and was pleased to discover that there is no sales tax on children's clothing in Canada - unfortunately just about everything else was cheaper south of the border. There really wasn't time for Susan to cook dinner before the BCSFC meeting, so we ate at an Indian restaurant called "Heaven and Earth". The decor of the place was weird – I formed the suspicion that it had previously been a seafood restaurant, which would explain the fishnets mixed up with the Indian artworks. We ordered "mild" curry, and maybe the cook misheard or maybe what was served really was their idea of mild curry. I assured Susan that Carey would love the place. The BCSFC meeting was in full swing when we arrived. I bandied insults with one Gordon McNab, and discovered that the easiest way to insult Canadians is to tell them that to the untrained eye they cannot be distinguished in any way from Americans. You should make sure first that your victim has a sense of humour. I introduced an angry penguin into the club story, a regular monthly meeting feature typed by anyone who feels like doing so, and sat enthralled before "Saturday Night", the sort of T.V. show I never thought Americans could make and which nobody in Australia in the dark days of 1976 would have dared to make. It was at this meeting that I was introduced to Henry Gasko (now an established Melbourne fan), whose head had been filled with all sorts of misinformation by the helpful people from the Australian Department of Immigration. On Sunday the weather was perfect and the haze had blown away, so we picked up Lyn Dollis and went for a drive north along the coast. All the way I gasped at spectacular views of mountains meeting water. After pausing at Shannon Falls we finished up at Squamish, a little logging and tourist town that seemed to be the base for a restored steam train that takes people for day-trips. We had lunch at a Dairy Queen, which had various sundaes illustrated on the walls in glorious technicolour, but all the passengers from the steam-engine made a lemming-like rush for the premises, so I never did get to try a Maple Walnut Sundae, Back at the house I turfed all the junk out of my shoulder bag. By now I had the transporting of my possessions down to a fine art; valuables in my handbag, bulky souvenirs and things that I wanted quickly (like writing paper and sunscreen lotion) in my shoulder bag, and the suitcase reserved for clothing, the towels I bought in San Francisco and things generally which I could do without if by some mischance they were off loaded at Winnipeg. For my visit to Seattle I decided to take only necessities, and to buy another carrying bag for any further purchases. Therefore I left my suitcase and a neat pile of assorted souvenirs on Susan's bedroom floor, Finally I managed to find room for my jar of Vegemite in the shoulder bag by removing the suncreen, which would have been quite superfluous in Seattle. At the airport, having assured the baggage clerk that I was – 16 –