Covid-19 Diaries. Toronto (34th edition here): the end of the road or just a lay-by?

We should have been together in Rome at the height of lockdown, not two of us - Bill and Lesley  - making the best of it in Toronto and us - Colin and Joelle - waiting for the moment, which did eventually come, to flee London for France.

Throughout this grisly period, Bill Taylor has kept up a daily stream of funny, incisive, sad, angry, despairing, hopeful, reflective, downbeat, navel-gazing, pertinent, thoughtful diaries from Canada. He claims to have run out of his own adjectives and for the second time - there has been a comeback tour after his first announcement of the end of the series two or three weeks ago - Bill has decided to call a halt.

As you read on, you'll see it's not exactly definitive. It just won't be daily any more. The wonder in any case is that he's produced such gems every day for so long, invariably accompanied by his own photographs; 34 in the series as reproduced here doesn't tell half the story and only just tells more than a third of it. The rest is at his Facebook pages though I may well get round to bringing it all together here unless Bill gets the publishing contract his efforts clearly merit ...

 

 

Quarterly notes from the trenches:

 

Enough is enough.

 

No, not sourdough bread (but that, too).

 

This.

 

I kicked it off 13 weeks ago – 93 days counting today.

 

In those three months, and the high side of 45,000 words, I’ve pretty much said everything I needed to say and a great deal that I didn’t need to say. I’ve looked at this stupid pandemic from every possible angle and then turned it inside out and looked again.

 

I tried a month ago to give it up and – somewhat against my better judgement – was persuaded to keep going.

 

I just don’t see now that I have anywhere left to go.

 

You know the inner workings of my existence – how clean my house has become, how fearful I’ve been at times of leaving it, the emotional roller coaster I’ve occasionally ridden, hanging on for grim death.

 

You’ve been privy to my political thoughts, opinions and biases. You’ve borne my attempts at humour, satire, parody and probable blasphemy (that’s if you believe in blasphemy and, if you’ve been paying attention, you’re well aware by now that I don’t).

 

You’ve seen my life start to regain a little of its former teetering equilibrium. You know about my hiking excursions, my dinner dates, my upcoming dental appointment and cats’ visit to the vet. You’re aware of my TV-watching habits, my basement gym workouts, my newly adopted and still clumsy yoga sessions.

 

What else is there, other than repetition?

 

Not that I have anything against repeating myself. Just ask Lesley. But I try not to do it in writing. It’s too easy – “Aha!” – to check back and find contradictions.

 

And, anyway, I’m running out of adjectives for “notes”.

 

 

This thing we’re living through is far from over.

 

But it isn’t the Great Plague, the Black Death, just as I’m not Samuel Pepys. (He wore a wig, for one thing, and that’s the last thing I need. I have enough hair right now to make him another.)

 

If it suddenly rebounds upon itself and we regress back to total lockdown, maybe I’ll dig another foxhole, start peering over the top again and reporting what I see.

 

But for now, we’re inching forward into our variegated futures and it’s time just to get on with that.

 

As things strike me, and they inevitably will, I’ll still be writing. But on an ad-hoc basis, not as a daily… I hate to say chore but, yes, once in a while lately that’s how it’s seemed.

 

It’s no way to feel when you have an audience. I’ve written columns of one sort or another for most of my journalistic career – almost half a century – and there inevitably comes a point when you know it’s time to shut it down and move on.

 

(Not all columnists realise this, of course, and just keep Energiser bunny-ing on and on and on to no good end. I name no names. Ego is a fragile thing.)

 

So this isn’t an absolute, final farewell – it’s Facebook, for god’s sake; there’s enough melodrama without me shedding crocodile tears. I’m not sure you could even call it social distancing.

 

It’s simply, “See you tomorrow? Maybe not. If I don’t show up, go ahead without me.”

 

Elvis has left the trenches.

 

(Wearing a mask.)