June will change her tune in restless walks

Out at 9 am to walk down the long hill via Linden Avenue. I'll miss going by this route on a regular basis.

I'm brought to a standstill by these. I don't know what they are; Demeter would. They are buzzing with bees and fluttering with butterflies - none of which hang around for a photograph.

Never mind, I know that they're there, and, perhaps foolishly, they give me hope for the planet.

Please don't tell me differently.

Might have been the paint fumes (Write of passage number fifty)

The RFB and younger daughter elect to walk Demeter home after dinner at a Japanese restaurant to celebrate our wedding anniversary.

I'm exhausted after a long day of running errands, so I trot in the opposite direction to the bus stop, where an express bus is loading passengers. The express bus doesn't drop me off as close to our apartment as other buses do, but it's a Friday evening and I have no offhand idea about when the other buses might be coming, so I join the queue, and find myself an aisle seat, which is fine, because my destination is a few stops east.

"How are you this evening?" says a man sitting directly across the aisle, about two feet away. He is deeply tanned with grizzled stubble and dark brown eyes.

"Very well indeed," I respond automatically. It's Victoria, and this is a short ride.

"That's good! Where are you from?"

I'm a wee bit startled. "Pardon?"

"Where are you from? Are you anglaise?"

I'm even more nonplussed: a) because no one has asked if I'm English for years; and b) his accent sounds neither French nor Québecois to me.

"Well, I'm from here."

"Here?"

"Yes, I grew up here."

He launches into a description of his plans for the evening. He tells me he wants beer; he wants to bathe in beer.

"Well," I tell him, "fancy ladies use to wash themselves in beer."

"Ah, I paint all day," he says. (His clothes attest to this.) "I want the beer for my head; it will make me right."

I chuckle and rise. "Well, have a lovely evening!"

"Goodnight! I love you!" he calls after me as I step down on to the pavement.

The case against clairvoyance

The Resident Fan Boy and I are trembling on the brink of another major wedding anniversary -- but not this year. Next year.

I post a wedding photo on Facebook each June, in part to preserve photos on the internet, so I decided that this year, not being a major anniversary, but a sizeable one - they get bigger annually - I should skip the usual ones of bride and groom, and go for a shot of the guests.

I chose "before-and-after" shots of the moment that I, having been made to turn my back, threw my bouquet. In the first, the single ladies, all either born in the same year as me, or just a couple of years before or after, are standing in wait. In the second, Double Leo Sister is spiking the bouquet like a volleyball into the arms of a woman due to be married in a month.

And now, years later, I find myself gazing at the young women in their pretty summer dresses, remembering that, of the crowd, only one woman remains single. (She's school principal and a proud aunt.) Another died a dozen years ago. Of the others, about half divorced their eventual husbands; three married twice.

I look in the background, and see my aunt, and others who were middle-aged and older at the time -- all gone now; and a young man with his cup of coffee - years before losing a son to suicide.

Prescience would be such a burden, particularly at weddings.

Fear of watching

I've been trying to finish watching the second season of The Handmaid's Tale.

It's been on the PVR for months. I think I got something like two thirds of the way through.

The trouble is, I need three things in order to be able to watch The Handmaid's Tale:
1) I need to be alone because the Resident Fan Boy won't watch it, and younger daughter shouldn't watch it.
2) Because I have to be alone to watch The Handmaid's Tale, I need to be in a relatively sunny mood.
3) It has to be during the day, because no matter how cheerful I'm feeling, I'm not going to watch ritualized rape, tortures and executions at night.

Of course, now the third season's begun, and I'm really getting behind.

The thing about The Handmaid's Tale, it's well-written, well-acted, and way too damn plausible. Margaret Atwood always said there wasn't anything in the story that hadn't happened, or isn't happening to women.

While I'm trying to get my nerve up, I thought this 2017 parody, with the cast of Saturday Night plus guest host Chris Pine, might be bearable:



Well, I guess it is. It's still way too damn real.

Mapped out

About three years ago, I was trudging through a parking lot in the bleak landscape that is Hades in early May. Directly ahead of me, trundling down Loyer Street, was the Google Car with its tent-pole multi-directional camera perched on top.

It took some weeks, but the next time Street View was updated, there I was, looking a bit like a bear, carrying my cloth shopping bags filled with cake mix for younger daughter's approaching birthday. I screen-saved it, of course. It wasn't the most flattering view of me, but it's a memory, now long gone from Google Maps.

This morning, I walked past our future condo, and noticed the Sold sign from last week had disappeared. I guess it's pretty well ours now, although we can't go in until August. While I was thinking how glad I was that I'd taken a picture of the sign, a white car with a tent-pole multi-directional camera sailed by.

I checked the time. 9:48 on the morning of 26 June 2019. Persephone walking by her future condo on her way to Moka House.
I'll check Google Maps in a few weeks.

Unless it was an Apple Maps car. Or a Bing car. Or....

So swishy

With weekly excursions to Pic-a-Flic, I've been seeing a lot of films that I always meant to see. Last night, it was The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - a strange film, even for Wes Anderson. I had decided on it, because I showed Moonrise Kingdom to the Resident Fan Boy last week, and he had loved it.

Life Aquatic almost lost me in the first half, but things picked up. The film ends with a tribute to the march that finishes the 1984 flick The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, which, frankly, is the only memorable thing about Buckaroo Banzai.

Anyway, at the close of The Life Aquatic, Bill Murray hoists a young boy on his shoulders as the credits roll. As he struts determinedly toward his cartoonish boat, he is joined, one by one, by the other cast members. The gentleman in the beige jacket joining the group at just past the two-minute-mark is none other than Bud Cort, the star of one of my all-time favourites Harold and Maude (1971)

I loved the song they were strutting to, but didn't recognize it. All through the film, a crew-member sings various David Bowie classics in Portuguese, sometimes to a bossa nova rhythm. However, this finale was accompanied by the original recording of Bowie himself singing "Queen Bitch", which is from one of his earlier albums Hunky Dory. Apparently, Bowie wrote "Queen Bitch" after going to see the Velvet Underground in New York on his first trip to the United States, not realizing that Lou Reed had left the band.

This made me realize why I was responding to the song - it's very much like the Underground's "Sweet Jane".


I'm up on the eleventh floor and I'm watching the cruisers below
He's down on the street and he's trying hard to pull sister Flo
Oh, my heart's in the basement, my weekend's at an all-time low
'Cause she's hoping to score, so I can't see her letting him go
Walk out of her heart, walk out of her mind, oh not her

She's so swishy in her satin and tat
In her frock coat and bipperty-bopperty hat
Oh God, I could do better than that

She's an old-time ambassador of sweet-talking, night-walking games
And she's known in the darkest clubs for pushing ahead of the dames
If she says she can do it, then she can do it, she don't make false claims
But she's a queen and such are queens that your laughter is sucked in their brains
Now she's leading him on, and she'll lay him right down
Yes, she's leading him on, and she'll lay him right down
But it could have been me, yes, it could have been me
Why didn't I say, why didn't I say, no, no, no

So I lay down a while and I gaze at my hotel wall
Oh, the cot is so cold it don't feel like no bed at all
Yeah, I lay down a while and I look at my hotel wall
And he's down on the street, so I throw both his bags down the hall
And I'm phoning a cab 'cause my stomach feels small
There's a taste in my mouth and it's no taste at all

Bud Cort, incidentally, has a connection with the sort of arts scene that Bowie was witnessing on that trip. He was in a play, and living with someone whose name escapes me, who was either with Andy Warhol or the Velvet Underground (or both).

Moon moments

With our lives and living quarters on the brink of change, I find myself thinking of what I'll remember and miss about the apartment that has been our home for nearly two years.

Chief will be the view from windows and balcony, where we have a front row seat to the schoolyard, far more entertaining and less intimidating than we'd feared, and sightings of many of the celestial events on offer.

Six months ago, I had a cold and clear encounter with the eclipse of this year's Wolf Moon. First, the bottom was nibbled away and the orb seem to slowly vanish into its own cloud, leaving a pewter marble, with a hint of an orange glow,  hanging above the schoolyard.

As the earth's shadow finally engulfed it, the stars became clearer. There were two bright stars above it seeming to point to this globe that I could almost pluck out of the sky, and after a few minutes, I noticed the constellation of Orion twinkling to the right through the bare branches of the tree next door. Below, a group of men chatted as they passed around a telescope, and a woman strode down the sidewalk, not looking up at all.

I ventured out every twenty minutes or so, watching the dark disc rise higher and higher, and remembering another blood moon, maybe about ten years ago in Hades, when the dark red moon glowed between our house and our neighbours', and people trudged by. I wanted to shout at them: "Did you see it? Can you see it?" The Resident Fan Boy remembered another one in Victoria, when he couldn't convince four-year-old elder daughter to come see it. I was able to persuade younger daughter to come out on the balcony to see this one.

Six months later, a recent treat has been the Strawberry Moon, rising at the same time as an unusually close Jupiter, who glittered through the thick summer leaves, if you knew where to look.  Across the street, a rather grungy fellow had enthroned himself on someone's discarded armchair - it's also the season for our neighbours getting rid of unwanted furniture.  Not particularly wanted either, he grumbled to himself under the moon, and ignored the huge planet over his shoulder in the southeast.

Twenty-first century shopping

I was in quest of an appropriate gift for the daughter of Friend Who Sings and Gardens.  Having finished medical school, the daughter is off to my birthplace of Edmonton to do her internship.  This meant finding something that might help her through the winter, yet not take up space in her suitcase.

I decided on a Mountain Equipment Co-op gift card, since she might find something warm, or, barring that, something to ward off the summer mosquitoes.

The membership number on our MEC card had worn off twice over the course of seventeen Hadean winters, where Mountain Equipment Co-op is practically a matter of survival, either first or second-hand.  I was perfectly prepared to take out a new membership - even though you don't need one to purchase a gift card - but the cheerful young man at the till was game for some detective work.

I seemed to remember it was under the Resident Fan Boy's name, and the till-man found his name -- on the wrong street in Hades.  (The RFB has a rather popular name.)  After assuring him we'd lived nowhere else but in Hades and Victoria - at least since becoming MEC members, we tried my name.  No luck.  Did I remember my Ottawa phone number? 

Oh gawd.

I could remember the last four digits, then deliberately tried not actually thinking about it, to see if the full sequence came unbidden from the outer edges of my brain.

It did.  And there it was, on his database.  The RFB, for reasons known only to himself, had added some initials -- possibly due to that other guy in Hades bearing his name.

The cheerful young man scrawled the membership number across our ancient card in indelible ink, just as they had in Hades a dozen years ago.  It will probably wear off again.

Then I purchased a $25 gift card.

"She can get a nice pair of socks," he said.

Damn.

Writing a letter to myself

In the early days of the new summer, I find myself remembering this delightfully offbeat and aestival video from 1988, all shot in primary colours with people wandering and scampering in the fields in their socks.

Just write a letter and mail it to yourself
Read it out loud but to no one else
Pick your pocket a measure of time
And never leave these memories behind

 

You'll sing 'til tomorrow
And the days that will follow
But it's never the same
When you feel you're insane
On the bed where you lay
There's a plan that was made
But it's never the same
When your hopes go astray

 

Just write a memo, and hang it on your wall
A small reminder of why you're here at all
So look around, and groove to the sound
Let's see those feet rise up from the ground

Now the princess washes dishes
She's done more harm than any good
I am a witness of hugs and kisses
Loneliness is never understood

 

So paint a picture of things that aren't real
Remember shame when it's time to kneel
And don't forget the things that you say
Could all come back to you some other day

Reverse sunset

On the eve of the longest day of the year, and it's pretty long in Victoria - we're farther north than you'd think - we looked east out our window, and were startled by what appeared to be a sunset in the east, glowing pink and mauve.

Click on this if you'd like it to be bigger.

Racism and yelling and bullying, oh my

I was in the middle of my art lesson when the phone rang.

It was elder daughter, shaken, upset, and full of guilt.  She was on her lunch break, hurrying back from tending to the Accent Snob, who caught his paw in her apartment elevator as a fun conclusion to last weekend.  She's been soaking his paws in epsom salts.  He finds it very relaxing.  I'm not sure she does.

Heading back to her office, she walked smack into a situation.  Several people were waiting for the light to change at the crosswalk.  Out of the blue, a "scary and crazy" man started yelling about "Trudeau's immigrants", how they were living off taxpayers, and stealing jobs.  You know, the usual original ideas that obviously come from deep thinking.

Elder daughter felt helpless, wanting to stand up to him, but not daring to.

"What did the people he was yelling at do?" I asked, absent-mindedly adding a few strokes to my painting.

"Nothing; they kinda ignored him."

"Sounds like they had the right idea; you say he was scary and crazy."

Sitting with my paints in Victoria, I "walked" her back to work, listening as her ragged breathing slowed.

My fellow students discussed the issue after the call ended.  Best not to challenge a larger, nuttier fellow spouting epithets, they agreed.

Coincidentally, I'd sent elder daughter the following clip from John Mulaney, one of her favourite comedians.  It's about racism and bullying too, except with humour, something non-inclusive people often lack.
Elder daughter had already heard it, of course.

I like to think she appreciated the gesture.

A cold and friendless time

Nineteen years ago, when the move to Hades was looming, and the Resident Fan Boy was transferring, I'd take younger daughter to a gym class at the Y, while elder daughter was in school.  It was a fairly unstructured class, more of a playtime.  I'd hover while younger daughter climbed, and half-listen to a tape of Disney classic songs that played at each session.

There was one song, though, that, even if I couldn't quite hear the lyrics, always brought me to the edge of tears.  I'd swallow them back, and attend to the task at hand.


I'd never seen Pete's Dragon; it was one of those kids' films that post-dated my childhood, and predated my motherhood. (I did see the 2016 remake with younger daughter, and remember next to nothing of it.)

Listening to it today,  I'm just as glad I couldn't make out all the lyrics.  Mind you, back then, I probably wouldn't have realized how apt they were - although I think a part of me knew.  It's that desperate promise every mother longs to keep: that she'll always support you, guide you, never leave you.  Sometimes, she can manage it for the first fleeting years, but children can't be shielded forever.

I'll never let you go.

We have to, eventually.  It's the point of the exercise.

Nope. Gotta go.

Looking back across the canyon

Our favourite server at John's Place, near City Hall tells us it's her last week.  Her belly is billowing beautifully.

"Do you have an idea of who's coming?" I ask her.

Her face glows.  "It's a little girl!  I'm due in two weeks; I can't wait to get this over with.  I've had it with being pregnant!"

"Oh, I dunno," I say.  "When I was expecting, I used to tell people: 'Right now, it's all being done for me!'"

"That's a good point!"

I hasten to add: "But when the baby is out, you'll be doing the work, but you'll feel okay!"

There is a deep canyon that runs between certain women.  On one side, there are the women who've given birth, and on the other, those who have yet to make the perilous journey across the chasm.

Telling them the truth won't help.

Father's day

Nearly every Sunday morning, for the three years he was at law school, the Resident Fan Boy would pack the week's laundry into a duffle bag and ride the Bloor-Danforth line west, where he would join the Sears Man for church, Sunday lunch, and Sunday dinner.  Everything about the meals was Sunday.

Every Sunday evening, the RFB would return to his student digs, and groan the evening away after ingesting rich foods in several courses.

The Sears Man was an enthusiastic cook, and a generous host.  He and his family made their home ours when we visited Toronto with elder daughter and younger daughter when they were still quite small.  It was the Sears Man who rescued us when my daughters and I found ourselves stranded at Pearson International Airport during the big blackout of the summer of 2003.

It's another Sunday evening, and we've just learned that the Sears Man left the planet today.

On a Sunday morning.

On Father's Day.

It fits.

A moment's paws

When I look at older pictures of family and friends, I find myself peering at the backgrounds:  kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms.  Odd memories are triggered by the sight of long disappeared place-mats or floor tiles.

It occurred to me a few weeks back that there are little details about this apartment building that will vanish from my memory -- unless I do something about it.

So I snapped this photo of the doorstop in the laundry-room downstairs.  There's probably some story about it that I'll never know.

Canine caveats

One of my Facebook pals shared this very amusing cartoon today, but you know me - well, you don't, really - I like to cite sources. I noticed the signature in the lower right hand corner, and googled it.

Turns out this is by cartoonist David Coverly, which led me to another very funny canine cut-up.

Sometimes it pays to give credit.

Heart-heart-heart, gotcha daddy

Oh my goodness, I've been looking for this for years! This is Lily Tomlin and the All-Nurse Band in the sixth show of the very first season of Saturday Night Live, which aired November 22nd, 1975.

I've never quite heard "St James Infirmary" sung this way anywhere. (That's a ridiculously young Paul Schaffer, born in Thunder Bay, and relatively fresh from Toronto, playing the piano.)

st. james infirmary blues from jednooki jack on Vimeo.

For a more traditional (and infinitely weirder) take on "St James Infirmary", take a look at this clip of a beautifully restored 1933 Betty Boop cartoon by Max Fleischer, featuring the singing of Cab Calloway.

Rocking in the deep

Younger daughter has always been a Mr Bean fan, and lately has taken Mr Bean's Holiday out of the library more than once. We saw the film when it was in cinemas a dozen years ago, and I remember being rather bored by it.

It turns out that it's a film that improves with re-watching, but I was charmed in 2007, and remained charmed now, by the closing scene, where Mr Bean reaches his holy grail, the beach at Cannes, and is joined by the entire cast in a joyous rendition of Charles Trenet's La Mer.


La mer
Qu'on voit danser
Le long des golfes clairs
A des reflets d'argent
La mer
Des reflets changeants
Sous la pluie

La mer
Au ciel d'été confond
Ses blancs moutons
Avec les anges si purs
La mer
Bergère d'azur,
infinie

Voyez
Près des étangs
Ces grands roseaux mouillés

Voyez
Ces oiseaux blancs
Et ces maisons rouillées

La mer
Les a bercés
Le long des golfes clairs
Et d'une chanson d'amour
La mer
A bercé mon cœur pour la vie

Here is Charles Trenet singing it some time in the early to mid-sixties, judging from the beehives in the audience.


If the rather awful translations I've seen online are any indication, these are very difficult lyrics to render in English (the moutons - sheep - for example, probably refer to whitecaps). No wonder we ended up with "Beyond the Sea", which has its own charm, but has nothing to do with the original, aside from the melody.

The music of the spheres

It was one of those evenings - most evenings, to tell you the truth - when I didn't want to go out.

However, we had tickets for Tafelmusik.

Seventeen long years in Hades, and I never got the opportunity to see Tafelmusik. They were either sold out, or the schedule didn't permit. We made sure of this opportunity by buying a small subscription to the Early Music Society of Victoria.

Steeling myself against my Taurean tendencies to warmth, comfort, and indolence, I reminded myself that this was Tafelmusik, for heaven's sake, and that it wasn't raining, and that, instead of a long Hadean wait for a bus-ride, the Resident Fan Boy and I could take a fifteen-minute stroll to Alix Goolden Hall.

I forgot my cushion, of course. I have such first-world problems.

Fifteen musicians and one actor took the stage, and it was like a revolving constellation of waves of beautiful music. The narrative followed the day-to-day life of the citizens of Liepzig, where Bach and his large family lived. Without leaving our pews (Alix Goolden is, of course, a former church), we were transported by slide and music to the town hall, and the churches. We were shown where the music students lived. Concerts at the coffee house were re-created. The sumptuary laws of the time and place, which determined how different classes in Liepzig dress, were explained. There was a great deal of emphasis on who made the instruments and how, using images of current instrument makers.

There wasn't much mention of women, alas, although a third of the Tafelmusik ensemble - and their director - is female.

Still, it was like a time machine, and the musicians turned and swayed, and rearranged themselves, some dropping back to chairs to await their next turn.

At one point, the audience was invited to sing the eight notes that make up the Goldberg Variations; at another, violinists appeared like shadows in the balconies, passing along an air.

Tafelmusik performed two movements of the third Brandenberg Concerto, and Schafe können sicher weiden (Sheep may safely graze). I felt those around me pulled and rocked by the familiar music.

The rest was not quite so famous - although I recognized the tune of Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (Awake, calls the voice to us) as something sung in church to other lyrics.

Two women stepped forward for a brief bit of Klezmer in the section about market days, the only days Jews were allowed into the city. Everything else was very Lutheran.

At the end, I sprang (well, struggled) to my feet to applaud.  This is rare for me.

The performers bowed and bowed -- and left with no encore.

It was enough.

Hosts in the bathroom

We watched the Tonys last night, and they actually made some sense this time, perhaps finally recovering from the in-jokey weirdness of the 2017 Emmys, hosted by Ken Spacey, before his plummet from grace.

This broadcast actually featured shows that I wouldn't mind seeing - assuming I had scads more cash than I do - including the award-winner for new Musical - Hadestown. (Gee, I'd have to see the appeal in that one, wouldn't I?)

One of the more amusing moments was a special musical number parodying a musical that didn't feature in the Tony nominations at all, but might turn up in next year's, as it's new on Broadway. I don't remember much about last year's awards at all; I'd even forgotten that Sara Bareilles and Josh Groban had hosted.

I can't embed the clip; I suspect there were copyright issues, as James Corden had it up on his YouTube station this morning, and it has been taken down. However, CBS posted it on their Facebook page, and I believe you can still see it here.

And here's the original, from the musical Be More Chill. It's kind of a complicated plot, but you'll get the idea that it's about the usual teenage problems.

Only in Victoria

As I'm going into Pic-a-Flic, I have to make way for a gentleman who is emerging from the shop. He's rather memorable, being clad in - and I'm not making this up - an olive-green tweed suit with plus-four cuffed trousers and matching socks.  All this is topped with a clerical collar.

He looks like he's strolled out of a 1920s/1930s British novel, I'm thinking P.G. Wodehouse, or G.K. Chesterton - probably the former, as the collar looks more Anglican than Catholic, but what would I know?

I discreetly keep my thoughts to myself: I don't think we're in Hades anymore, Toto...

Flower children

I was an ESL (English as a Second Language - they call it something else now) teacher in my young adulthood, before second daughter arrived, and I discovered my ESL training would come in handy, even if I couldn't figure out what her first language was.

During one of the sessions in which I was an instructor, there was a 1960s theme dance. Instead of my usual bun - pinned up primly for my students, who were only a few years' my junior, yet thought I was as old as the hills (I didn't disabuse them of this notion) - I wore my hair down and donned one of those floaty, Indian-made frocks that usually sway on racks in front of the funkier shops.

I was standing with a fellow-teacher, when two Québecois students (not, thankfully, mine) approached.

"You look good," remarked one. "But then, it's your epoch, no?"

For the record, the sixties were not my era.

Last Sunday, we decided to support my Friend Who Sings and Gardens by attending a concert being given by her community choir.  This too was a Sixties theme, featuring lots of favourites from the late sixties and early seventies.

Most of the choir members had chosen to wear flower-power clothes.  The Resident Fan Boy joked that they had raided the backs of their closets - they looked pretty authentic - but, oh, it really hit me as I gazed at them, that these clothes celebrating the cult of youth make older people look ancient.

We've seen the choir several times; the members are on the mature side, but, dressed in evening wear, it's not the first thing you think of.  The tie-dyes, colourful prints, and scarves wrapped around their foreheads merely emphasized the years that have rocked and rolled away.

After intermission, they returned, dressed in circus garb, which, oddly, was more flattering.

This performance was in aid of a kids' choir programme set up some twenty years ago in the elementary schools.  Before that, most schools had their own glee clubs, run by teachers, and there was class time set aside for singing, even if a school pageant wasn't planned.  I know, from following both daughters through the school system, that this is no longer the case. You only get arts education if someone funds it.

So, in contrast to the aging hippies in the risers, several dozen children in gauzy white tops and dresses, looking to be mostly in the six-to-seven-year-old range, were guided on to the stage.  It really looked like herding kittens.

Once all the kids -- from the four elementary schools where the programme is run - had been shoe-horned into place, they sang three songs, and there was something to watch wherever you looked.

Three girls clutched hands, looking for all the world like a high school clique in bud. While many of the ankle-biters zoned in and out of concentration, one girl focussed on the director determinedly, singing as if the world depended on it.  Another had a similar focus, but on the audience on one side.  She stepped away from the others, angled her body to that section of the auditorium, and sang loudly and expressively.

It was a helluvan act to follow.  No wonder the grown-ups dressed up.

Time is starting to hurtle a bit

Change is in the air, something like the fleeting azaleas on Linden Street last week, along with a-not-so-fleeting Garry Oak -- although it looks like it's in a bit of a hurry too...

No, Perkins

With the television schedule full of D-Day ceremonies, and endless re-showings of The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan,I find myself looking for a little light relief.

I'm not sure this is it.

One of the earliest performances of the Beyond the Fringe skit "Aftermyth of War" took place at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1960. As you can imagine, there were far more World War Two veterans about in 1960, and, sixteen years after D-Day, these vets were still pretty young, vigorous, and easily annoyed by what appeared to be a disparagement of all their sacrifice and suffering.

The creators and performers - Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, the late Peter Cook, and the late Dudley Moore - maintained that the sketch was not meant as satire about the war itself, but of the way the war was portrayed in movies and other media.

This is the latter half of "Aftermyth", which contains all my favourite bits. Watch until the end to see the reaction of the audience, a few of whom are not applauding very enthusiastically. The dark humour of Beyond the Fringe was, after all, a bit ahead of its time.

Librarians have the best senses of humour

You'll need to click on this picture to enlarge it.

Gotta love a library with a Monty Python quote over the entrance.

Curfew shall not ring tonight?

Sometimes one wonders if the planets have lined up some odd way.

The morning had begun peacefully enough. I was up early and well on my way into Cook Street Village by 9 am. By 9:30, I'd answered an email, and sipping on an iced mocha, half-listened to the piped-in music as I arranged my journals ready for tackling.

That's when the phone rang.

Elder daughter had been ambushed by a major crisis at work, and had phoned me to vent, given that she has an open invitation to do so. I pushed aside my journals. While I was listening intently, I heard a beep that indicated another phonecall, something that almost never happens to me, as most of my communication is through texts and emails. My FitBit is linked to my phone, and it told me that the call was from Double Leo Sister in Prince George, whose calls are as rare as hens' teeth. Elder daughter understood the implication immediately, and rang off.

DLS was succinct - also unusual for her. The Lifeline people had called her, she said. They believed Demeter had fallen, and, as no designated neighbours had answered their calls, they were summoning an ambulance. I threw everything into my packsack, and fled north towards Demeter's condo, a five-minute walk, shorter if one is in a controlled panic.

It was 9:50. As I race-walked uphill, my phone rang again. Resident Fan Boy had been contacted by Lifeline. As I struggled to get my packsack centred on my back, and give a coherent answer to the RFB, a faint question was in the back of my brain: Why hadn't they called me?

However, all my thinking space was consumed with nightmarish scenarios and keeping myself calm.

Jigging from one foot to the other. Change, light. Change! No sign of an ambulance. I fumbled with the fob, eschewed the elevator to dash up the stairs, concentrated on getting the key in the door, and nearly fell in. My heart sank. Much of the apartment was dark.

But the kitchen light was on. And there was Demeter, fixing breakfast, and unaware of my precipitous entrance because she had not yet put in her hearing aids.

She started telling me what happened. On the fourth of each month, she presses the Lifeline button to check in with the call centre. Usually someone responds, Demeter reports in for the month, and that's it. It's the monthly test to ensure the line is open. This time, however, the phone rang and rang.

I was gesturing at my ears: "Put your hearing aids in!"

My phone rang. It was Double Leo Sister. As soon as Demeter could hear, I handed her my phone, and heard the rest of the story. Apparently, Demeter decided to call the local Lifeline office. A man answered and immediately asked if she needed an ambulance. She said she did not. They told her that her phone was off the hook, she insisted that it was not.

DLS rang off and I suggested that Demeter contact Lifeline to see about getting her machine reset; it was still blinking in alarm mode. I grabbed the opportunity to speak with the Lifeline gentleman and ask why I had not been called.

"Your number has been disconnected."
"Excuse me?"

He read off the number. It was our Ottawa number. I was flabbergasted. When Demeter went into hospital briefly last June - that's a year ago, folks - Lifeline called the Resident Fan Boy when I took her Lifeline pendant home from the hospital, because the knocking of my bag set it off, and made it appear that she'd had a fall. He gave them my cell number, and I told them what had happened, that I now lived in Victoria, that this number was now the correct one, and asked to be moved to the top of the contact list, as I was now the closest available family member. I guess that must have been the main office in Ontario; clearly the information had not been noted in the local records.

I consoled Demeter by telling her that this had been an excellent drill. Almost immediately, the phone rang yet again. It was one of the designated neighbours, who must have been out and come home to see the message.

Oh, well. You can't say there's no back-up. As calm as I thought I'd managed to be, when I went to leave, I noticed I'd failed to shut the apartment door.

Curfew shall not ring tonight ---- I think....

Dappled

I gave younger daughter my Nikon, so she could snap scores of pictures, a thing she likes to do at Butchart Gardens. This means waiting while she takes pictures of everything: the sky, the ground-cover, butterflies, the water, individual flowers, beds of flowers.

I looked down and saw this plant, which looks sun-dappled -- but isn't.

I used my phone.

The answer, my friend

Weather's getting warmer here in Victoria, but down in Fairfield, the ocean breeze is steady. I went in to pay the dentist's bill, and as I left, I stopped to admire this trio of seed pods, which blow in the wind -- whether it's there or not.

I'm not sorry I met you

Last weekend, CBC Music hosted its annual music festival at Echo Beach, Toronto - a place that will have echoes for anyone remembering Martha and the Muffins in 1980.

This year, one of the attractions was Stars, who would be performing their 2004 album Set Yourself on Fire live, from beginning to finish.

I got social media notifications throughout the day, hearing that the weather had turned rather nasty, and rained out a couple of the acts.

However, I got back from whatever I was doing, and tuned into the livestream, because Stars was (were?) on stage.  I'm not that familiar with the order of Set Yourself on Fire, so it took me a few minutes to realize that I'd missed the first song, which was, of course, the very song I wanted to hear.

I enjoyed the set, though.  The musicians moved through a haze that was, I think, a residue of the sudden storm.  Atmospheric, to say the least.

It was clear that there was also a haze of nostalgia.  The audience appeared to be in the 30's to 40s' age range, some hoisting small children onto their shoulders.  The expressions were of joy, and intense longing, these fans hearing songs that had meant so very much to them as teenagers and twenty-somethings.



When this single was released in early December 2005, I wasn't particularly aware of it, although I'm sure I must have heard it, on the periphery of my misery.  It was the end of a stressful and heartbreaking year,  when I had young children of my own, so this song doesn't have the stamp of a particular time and place for me, as it so clearly has for those young-ish adults in the audience at Echo Beach.

I do love the official video for the song.  It is so quintessentially central Canadian, appropriate for a band that has roots in Montreal, though its band members grew up in Toronto.  At the time, I was living five hours from Toronto and two hours from Montreal, so trust me: if you're going to lie down on the ice on a winter's night in central Canada, you'd better be more warmly dressed than Stars are.

Incidentally, the actor who points at us and declares, "When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire" (which, of course, is the title of the album), is the late Douglas Campbell, a venerated stage actor in Canada, who is also the father of lead singer Torquil Campbell (an actor himself).

God, that was strange to see you again
Introduced by a friend of a friend
Smiled and said, "Yes I think we've met before."
In that instant, it started to pour.
Captured a taxi despite all the rain.
We drove in silence across Pont Champlain,
And all of that time you thought I was sad,
I was trying to remember your name.

 

This scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin.
Tried to reach deep, but you couldn't get in.
Now you're outside me,
You see all the beauty,
Repent all your sin.

It's nothing but time and a face that you lose.
I chose to feel it, and you couldn't choose.
I'll write you a postcard;
I'll send you the news
From a house down the road from real love.

 

Live through this, and you won't look back.

 

There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave.
You were what I wanted,
I gave what I gave.
I'm not sorry I met you;
I'm not sorry it's over;
I'm not sorry there's nothing to save