Bill Taylor is up to a dozen daily updates on life as he is currently leading it out in Toronto. A combination of culture, virtual get-togethers and an inventory of essentials gives you a general idea ...
Scattershot notes from the trenches:
I know we’re living in strange times but the first thing I did when I got out of the shower this morning was wash my hands. That’s just weird.
Routine check: How are we doing for toilet paper? Soap? Cat food? Cat litter? Wine?
Hanging in there. Need to watch the wine, though. Some of it’s not ready to drink yet and that could prove irksome.
Walking home a couple of nights ago with take-out food. And wine. A young couple coming towards us on the other side of the street. The girl yells, “I love your coat.”
We look over. She catches herself. “I mean BOTH your coats!” We all laugh. A nice moment. I thank her graciously but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t love my jean jacket. I’m not crazy about it myself.
Didn’t seem so at the time – how little we knew; how little we still know – but it was nothing but hubris to begin the first of these notes almost three weeks ago with: “I hiked yesterday and I plan to keep on hiking.”
And so I do. Or maybe even saying “plan” is hubris. I HOPE to. One of these fine days.
Hikers have been asked to stay off the trails and, anyway, the idea of driving for an hour and then getting out of the car and walking… maybe “wrong” is the wrong word but it doesn’t seem altogether right.
Lesley and I were able to see a couple of old friends, though – via a video-call to Miami. It was not, I hasten to add, a virtual breakfast, lunch or dinner party. Nary a stick of gum was chewed.
It’s not something we’ve tried before but, after my usual kneejerk initial reaction (“I’m not doing that!”), it was a great idea. It’s not quite a year since we saw them in Valencia and Seville. A la búsqueda del tiempo perdido (Spanish for À la recherche du temps perdu, but you knew that).
Off to the theatre this afternoon. Down in the basement (funny, this place looks just like my gym), where there’s a free TV screening of Richard Bean’s play One Man, Two Guvnors recorded at the National in London. They have a YouTube channel and we have front-row seats.
Culture is taking us over. I’m about to catalogue my Rupert Bear annuals. Hey, if Paul McCartney, aka Angela Lansbury, can be a Rupert fan, so can I.
Then I want to put my CD collection onto Spotify, though that’s looking like a contender for the 8th labour of Hercules.
Lesley’s studying Russian history online. She was already teaching herself Arabic. She’s a born scholar.
I can’t absorb anything in a classroom, even a virtual one. It’s why, apart from bone-laziness and teachers who were marking time until their pension, I flunked everything in school but English and was out on my ear at 16. I was just lucky enough to have a knack for stringing words together.
If I’m interested in something, I’ll read as much as I can and hope some of it sticks. So I have shelves of books about Wyatt Earp, Oscar Wilde, Jack Kerouac, old buses, the Hells Angels and Rupert Bear.
Mine is a broad church.
* Monsieur Salut! adds: I made a whimsical search about the missing apostrophe in Hells Angels and found this, right at the top of the Google results, from a site called How Stuff Works : "On the club's official site, [it] is explained away as being intentional. The site claims that since there are many types of "hell", no apostrophe is needed. However, even if "hells" is used in a plural sense, common rules regarding punctuation dictate it should at least end with an apostrophe." You didn't ask, but now you know.
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