Salut!

Covid-19 Diaries: Toronto (36). When boys cry

The 36 is just the number of Bill Taylor's lockdown musings that have appeared here. He posted many more at his Facebook pages and, with his agreement, they re-appeared selectively and lazily at Salut!

 

Bill's description of an emotional cocktail of sadness, relief, weariness and maybe hope, after a year of Covid despair needs no protracted introduction. But as well as making us believe, at last, in the possibility of closure, he quotes from a wonderful (Scottish, Bill) song of parting. Different versions of The Parting Glass were discussed in recent edition of the Cover Story series at Salut! Live ...

 

 

Covid-19 Diaries: Toronto (35). Did a year of lockdown really make Bill look like Steve Bannon?

 

For several weeks last year, Salut! published the lockdown diaries of friends and acquaintances from around the world. Those from Bill Taylor in Toronto kicked off the series and accounted for 34 of those that appeared here (many more went on to his Facebook pages without Salut! lifting them). It seems right to return to Canada for an anniversary edition to which can be added birthday greetings ...

 

 

What did YOU do in the Great Lockdown, Daddy?

 

A year in the trenches. If this was World War I we’d still have another three to go.

 

But it isn’t (though it might be WWIII), which should be a consolation. All that mud, for one thing, and the dry-cleaning business not what it used to be.

 

This isn’t just the lockdown’s first anniversary, it’s also the month (though not the precise date) in which I find myself embarked, willy-nilly, upon my 74th year.

 

A faded red-letter day at best, all the more so because it was also the day last year that Mike Babad, one of my dearest friends, died.

 

It becomes more and more apparent that I’m putting down roots in my fourth country. England, the US, Canada. And now here I am, irrelevantly dwelling in L P Hartley’s “the past… they do things differently there”.

 

Incapable of playing the later editions of Trivial Pursuit because I don’t get one in 10 of the cultural references.

 

 

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 ...

 

 

Covid-19 Diaries. Toronto (33) Bonnie and Clyde minus the guns

Image: Jim Fisher

I call it Bill Taylor's 33rd Covid-19 diary entry but there have been more than twice as many, posted daily at his Facebook page and avidly followed by his friends there. The story of how Bill and Lesley met is a good one, made better by his amusing memories of the early part of their romance. The first photo was taken goodness knows how long AND promoted their friend Dale Brazao to offer the comment that gave me my headline. The second recalls our much more recent holiday together - remember holidays? - in Havana. The third has an explanatory caption ...  

Covid-19 Diaries. Toronto: (32) pure poetry

 

We haven't heard (here) from Bill Taylor for a little while but his daily slices of Toronto life continue to please his Facebook friends long after he announced that the time had come to end them. His followers saw things differently. 'Pure poetry' is how another friend described a previous instalment of Bill's diaries. This is just as good and is accompanied, as usual, by a photograph from his own repertoire ...

 

Covid-19 Diaries. Toronto: (31 going on 50) in a changed world

 

We all find ways of getting through lockdown. Go to Salut! Live, my folk and folk-rock music site, and see what I've been up to.

Bill Taylor contributes there as he does here. A few weeks ago, he also started posting daily Facebook updates, each accompanied by a photograph from his vast repertoire, on life in Toronto during the coronavirus crisis. He probably expected to run out of ideas after a week or so.

His readers lapped up everything he posted and have refused to allow him to let go. Today's piece is his 50th. Salut! started late but has reproduced just over half of them. Bill felt, as I did, that as a series here, Covid-19 Diaries had run its course. But I still publish any items my friends care to offer and dip into Bill's Facebook pages from time to time. He doesn't agree but I am sure there's a slim volume in these jottings of his, though it would require him or a publisher to move fairly quickly ....

 

 

Covid-19 Diaries. Toronto (30) baby steps in a frightening end game

Sweden never locked down and not everyone is sure they were right. Trump is intent on removing any remaining doubt that Kim Jong-un is not the craziest head of state after all. Germany locked down, relaxed and is wavering. New Zealand played it tough and the signs are encouraging, France is looking promising enough ... Bill Taylor wonders whether we should be careful about what we are wishing for. See all the Salut! Covid-19 Diaries at this link 

 

Covid-19 Diaries. Toronto (29) elephantine Trump and his Flu Klux Klan infantry

 

Bill Taylor is often whimsical in his lockdown notes from Toronto. Today, glancing to the south at what passes in Washington, DC for statesmanship, he is angry and apprehensive ....

Covid-19 Diaries. Toronto: (28) 'end times' will tell

 

 

Bill Taylor is on a roll. When I said the Covid-19 Diaries series was winding down, I didn't mean nothing more would appear (occasionally, friends even offer new entries). And when Bill writes like this - I call it Toronto (28) but it's been many more, all posted by him at Facebook - it would be a crime to call a halt ...

Covid-19 Diaries. Toronto (27) when not in Rome ...

 

I looked up Brunello wine and one of the commonly asked questions was 'why is it so expensive?'. Such detail will not get in the way of Bill Taylor's plans to ensure Lesley's cooking is paid the compliment of a wine of appropriate quality.  This is not really Bill's 27th instalment of lockdown notes from Toronto; he posts one edition a day at Facebook and I reproduce his writing here, only no longer every single day. That said, they are always interesting to read and confirm a serious writing talent. Canadian publishers would doubtless have launched a bidding war already, but for the circumstances ...

Covid-19 Diaries. Toronto: (26) man's inhumanity blights Nova Scotia

The only part of Canada I have visited is Nova Scotia. It was an uplifting experience which enabled me to write at first hand about a great music festival, Celtic Colours, held at the very time of year when the colours are quite sensational. From Nova Scotia last night came news of a shocking, tragic event. A worthless and presumably deranged individual identified as Gabriel Wortman, 51, had dressed himself as a policeman and shot dead 'at least 16 people' in a grotesque act of mass murder following which he, too, was killed.

I re-open the Covid-19 Diaries series to allow Bill Taylor to reflect, briefly from Toronto, on the 'evil and insanity' that may have combined in a bleak drama that started in the village of Portapique but spread ...