After watching Charley Boorman, partnered with Ewan McGregor, travel around the world in the television series Long Way Round, and from the tip of Scotland to the tip of Africa in Long Way Down, I wasn’t sure what to expect from By Any Means, where a McGregorless Boorman makes his way from Ireland to Australia using a wide variety of means of transport.

And after watching the first episode, where Boorman, his director Russ Malkin and camera operator Paul Mungeam, make their way from Wicklow to the English Channel, I was prepared to give the series a pass: Boorman without McGregor was a little bit like Hardy without Laurel, and I found myself missing the partnership. Something that wasn’t made any better by a cameo by McGregor early in the episode just as the team heads out.

But I decided to give another episode a go, and they’ve managed to bring me around. While billed as a three-man trip, By Any Means is really a solo adventure with a smaller support team: Malkin and Mungeam make occasional appearances, but they’re a supporting cast at best with the focus strongly on Boorman.

And perhaps it just took an episode for Boorman to get the confidence needed to host alone; while the first episode was scattered and Boorman appeared distracted, once things got seriously underway he seemed to perk up, and the trip, and the program, became far more compelling.

I’ll have more to say once they’ve made it all the way to Australia, but if you’re interested in journey-oriented travel television, you might want to check out By Any Means for yourself.

It took me 10 years of living on Prince Edward Island before I felt capable of attending New Years Day levees here in Charlottetown. Initially I was confused about the whole idea (we never had levees in Ontario, at least not in my social class), and then later I was confused by the confounding requirement for a “calling card”:

I was afraid to ask anyone what a “calling card” was for fear of being called out as a neophyte — “Why good sir, have you not a goodly supply of calling cards in your saddle bag? Forsooth every noble Islander has always one at the ready!”

It took my brave friend G., back in 2004, to get me over the hump: he convinced me that I didn’t actually need a calling card at all. And so off we went.

If you are a levee virgin, here’s a set of pointers that you might find useful to get you over your own fears and into the levee habit:

• While children generally aren’t taken to levees (although in recent years even this barrier has been breaking down), everyone else is welcome, regardless of religion, gender, social class, noble rank, etc. Certain levees may feel unusual for certain people for different reasons, but I’ve yet to see anyone not warmly welcomed at each and every levee I’ve attended.
• The proceeding is the same at every levee: you show up at the appointed time and get in line (the later you show up, the longer the line will be); sometimes you’ll be offered the opportunity to check your coat, sometimes not (it will be obvious); the line generally leads to a receiving line of your hosts — the Mayor and Councillors, or the President, or the Premier or the Bishop — who shake your hand and wish you a Happy New Year. At the end of the line there are refreshments.
• The refreshments are vary greatly from levee to levee: sometimes there’s alcohol, sometimes not. Some levees have sandwiches and snacks, some just sweets. You don’t have to pay (there are a few exceptions to this where you’ll find a cash bar; this will be obvious).
• After milling about for what seems like an appropriate amount of time, you gather your coat if you’ve checked it, and head off to the next levee.
• The role of the “calling card” is to allow the person running the receiving to whisper your name into the name of the Important People (or, sometimes, to just hand them the card so they can greet you by name). Some levees have blank cards and pens available for those without; if you end up without a card, fear not, as you can simply introduce yourself in person.

Here is the schedule for the levees in and around Charlottetown for January 1, 2009. The only event that hasn’t been verified yet is HMCS Queen Charlotte. Note the changes in venue for the Diocese of Charlottetown, and the change in venue and time for University of PEI. Please alert me to changes or additions.

You can also grab an iCalendar file of the levees, suitable for import into iCal, Google Calendar, etc., or see the levees on a Google Calendar.

If you are a calendar-and-dates nerd, there’s an elegance about February 2009, with four perfectly aligned weeks:

My old friend Sam, who knows more about cars than anyone I know, weighs in on the relationship between gas prices and auto preferences.

Rob “Attenborough” Paterson shows off his party igloo across the river in Stratford.

Years after the independent video rental market has all but dried up elsewhere, we’re very lucky here in [[Charlottetown]] to have That’s Entertainment — it’s a tour de force that makes renting from the multinationals feel like eating cardboard.

Last Sunday I stopped in to rent a menagerie of DVDs to tide us through the winter storms and holiday week; they’re due back tomorrow and we made it through almost everything (credit to my in-laws for putting up with the box-set marathons). Here’s what we’ve seen:

• Long Way Down is the television series about the motorcycle journey by actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman from John o’ Groats at the tip of Scotland to Cape Town at the tip of South Africa, a follow-on from their Long Way Round journey around the world. They’ve done a decent job of turning what could have otherwise been endless footage of motorcycles on dirt into compelling viewing, and they deserve credit for shining a light on Africa as a something other than an endless crisis. The soundtrack is particularly impressive.
• Ballykissanel Series 3 is twelve episodes of quirky Irish dramedy. It’s the season I’ve dreaded watching since I became a fan many years ago; suffice to say that episode 11 is a shocker. Perhaps an acquired taste, but if you manage to acquire it, you’ll find all six series at the Provincial Library as well as at That’s Entertainment.

• The Shop Around the Corner is a 1940 starring Jimmie Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. The film served as an inspiration for the 1998 You’ve Got Mail starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, and the broad themes of the two films are very similar. The Shop Around the Corner is set in Budapest, but although the names of the characters are Hungarian, the films entirely in English and might as well have been set in London or Chicago. Not a must-see movie, but well-acted and interesting nonetheless.

Thank you, Charlottetown, for purchasing every copy of The Old Farmer’s Almanac at Indigo but one (and I’m this last one will go before the end of the day). When you buy the Almanac you’re supporting [[Reinvented]] putting the food on our family’s table.