Vish list

Cons and scams are not just for those we think of as vulnerable: the elderly, the ill-educated, the inexperienced, the chronically-ill. The fact is, we're all at risk, and we ourselves are naive if we think we're immune to nefarious tactics.

Take the Resident Fan Boy and me this morning. 6 am. He's in the bathroom, preparing for work -- and let's leave at that. I'm in bed, having taken two extra-strength night-time cold remedies the night before.

So when the ringing jars me out of my sleep, I think the worst. Demeter is elderly and, although at present in good health, spent a week in hospital for a digestive malady a couple of months ago. Elder daughter is in Hades, having just returned from a trip to London where she had a close encounter with a pavement while running to catch up with a walking tour, and just had a chest X-ray yesterday.

I leap to the phone, which, for logistical reasons, is perched across the room. (We need a landline to operate the entrance door to our apartment building.)

It's an automated call with a woman's voice telling me dispassionately: "We wish to inform you of two recent purchases on your Visa account. One was a (moderate sum) -dollar iTunes purchase, and the other was a (ginormous sum)-dollar eBay purchase. As these are not usual purchases for your account, we are alerting you to a possible illegal use of your card. Press 1 to approve these purchases; press 2 to cancel these purchases; press 0 to hear this message again."

I press 0, and in a voice hoarse with a miserable cold which has kept me house-bound for four days, scream for the Resident Fan Boy, who finishes what he's doing (don't ask), and lumbers over to listen. He asks me to hand over his credit cards and in the haze of pre-dawn panic, my first penny drops. His card isn't missing.

The RFB can't make out the numbers on his card, but as I go to the light switch, I say: "Shouldn't you call Visa?"

Of course, the next thing he finds out is that it isn't easy to hang up on the message. It doesn't occur to either of us that he can simply make the call from his cell phone -- where he apparently gets notifications of every Visa purchase.

While the RFB listens to Muzak, waiting for a Visa employee, the second penny drops for me. At no point has the RFB's name been mentioned.

Eventually my husband is talking to a polite and reassuring person who tells him that Visa would never call at that hour. Visa-guy also shares that he himself once got about fifteen calls in a row from a scammer. Something to look forward to, because, in his panic, the RFB pressed 2 to cancel the purchases, which means they know someone has answered, which puts us well and truly on the vish-list.

The RFB works for the CRA, and together, we have laughed heartily at the attempts to defraud us, particularly with the famous CRA scam. So you might think we'd know better.

Apparently not at 6 am.

Grief encounter

Nurses, I find, tend to be tough-love care-givers, with strong streak of skepticism and a sense of humour as dark as dried blood. I've worked with them as a youthful home support work, and as a hospice volunteer, and rather liked knowing where I was with them, even if it was a bit uncomfortable from time-to-time.

I ran into an ex-hospice-nurse last week. Our paths have crossed once or twice in the past few months, but she didn't seem to recognize me, so I didn't waylay her -- after all, I was just one of hundreds of volunteers. I remembered her as a mother of young children, with a grim set to her mouth (which may have been scar tissue), and a no-holds-barred way of speaking which was disconcerting even by nursing standards. I like her well enough, but was wary of her jarring candour.

I was striding up the aisle in a smallish drugstore, and I nearly ran straight into her. She greeted me by name, so she clearly remembered me, and as we caught up, I realized she wasn't aware I'd been out of the city for seventeen years.

Not that it mattered. Her husband died a couple of years ago. He had a neurological disease, and being an LPN himself, didn't want to stick around for the inevitable, so he committed suicide. All this related matter-of-factly, of course.

Since we were both hospice veterans, I found myself casting around for the training I'd been given years ago. The volunteers were trained in what was called "active listening". The point is to feed back what you're hearing, so that the speaker can hear what you're understanding. It's actually a pretty exhausting way to listen, and I'm out of practice, which is a shame, because it's a useful skill.

She spoke of the toughness of the second year of loss: "During the first year, there was such a lot to do, to iron out. Now I feel his absence. I wish ---" She pauses, and grimaces. I remember that about her. "I wish I knew where he was. My children dream about him. I guess I don't because he's in my conscious mind all the time, and dreams come from your subconscious. I wish I could feel him."

I say, "The older I get, the more I think that every gift we're given will be taken back."

That's not active listening. But I feel a nasty jolt of truth when I say it. Probably not helpful for her.

She embraces me as we say goodbye. She says she's seen me many times. Perhaps as many times as I've seen her?

At the time, it was also the smoke from hundreds of wildfires....

....but we won't discuss that.

The summerside

Everyone talks about summer being over, even when it doesn't officially end for at least another three weeks.

This is the time when Ottawans steadfastly put on their autumn clothes, despite the humidex -- just as they don open-toed shoes in late March to walk through the slush.

However, we're in Victoria, which never was that clothes-conscious, probably because we're not that seasonal.

I've been inside with a miserable cold for two days, but there are lovely views out the window, but not this one, which is a few blocks away.

Taking direction

So I'm crossing Fort Street at Linden Avenue. It's a well-marked zebra crosswalk without a light. In Ottawa, no one would stop for it, but I'm in Victoria, so a car stops, and because I'm not quite the fool you might think, I smile and peer nervously around the halted vehicle to make sure I won't get mown down by whoever is coming up in the right lane.

It's a motorcycle and as I catch his eye to make sure he's stopping, he calls out to me.
"Am I heading downtown?"
"No, it's behind you."

He turns right on Linden, and by the time I catch up to him, he's consulting his phone.
"You can turn right at the next corner to head back," I tell him.
"Wouldn't it be easier to head back down Fort?"
"Well, Fort is one-way. You could take Ormond." I point out the street, which we can see from where we're standing. "Ormond will take you to Yates, and Yates will take you right back downtown."

He shakes his head doubtfully.
"I think I'll just turn."

Off he goes, hanging a right on Rockland.

It's only later that it occurs to me that Rockland only goes as far as Vancouver Street.

Oh, well. Maybe he'll listen to somebody else.

Securely locked out

The problem with moving between provinces is that the email I've used for about 15 years became unusable last November when we hooked up the computer in our new apartment, complete with new service provider.

This was fine until my laptop got fed up with my failure to update and rebooted itself in a fit of temper, apparently taking my password with it.

This blog continues to be under my extinct email address, which means I can't have a new password sent to it, and was forced to access another ancient Yahoo Mail account. Then Blogger refused to let me sign in a series of passwords.

This was last spring.

It's taken me the summer to summon up the courage to try again, while I came to terms with the possibility of never being able to access this blog again. However, I tried from our main computer, instead of my rapidly aging and cantankerous laptop, and I'm here!

Now I'm terrified to try to sign back into my regular account...

Cold water wash

I don't want to complain, but I'm battling a spring cold, which is only a shade less unnatural than a summer cold.

Periodically bursting into lopsided nasal showers, I do the relay up and down the stairs to the laundry room. Sharing machines with the thirty-four other units in the building is something I haven't had to do for years. Doing it with a cold is even less fun.

Young daughter is rehearsing this song for her spring recital. I find myself tearing up a little as I listen, partly because I'm sick, partly because it's a song sung by a girl with her arm in a sling because her boyfriend beats her and she's dreaming of a life with a kind man, and partly because -- dammit -- I miss having my own washer and dryer.

Staring at my hands

I played this for younger daughter in preparation for seeing a local production of Working. I've loved this song by James Taylor for years.

Now, my grandfather was a sailor
He blew in off the water.
My father was a farmer
and I his only daughter.

Took up with a no-good
mill-working man from Massachusetts
who dies from too much whiskey,
and leaves me these three faces to feed.

Mill-work ain't easy.
Mill-work ain't hard.
Mill-work, it ain't nothing
but an awful humdrum boring job.

I'm waiting for a daydream
to take me through the morning,
and put me in my coffee break
where I can have a sandwich
and remember...

Then it's me and my machine
for the rest of the morning,
for the rest of the afternoon,
and the rest of my life.

Now my mind begins to wander
to the days back on the farm.
I can see my father smiling at me,
swinging on his arm.
I can hear my grandad's stories
of the storms out on Lake Erie,
where vessels and cargos and fortunes
and sailors' lives were lost.

Yes, but it's my life has been wasted,
and I have been a fool
to let this manufacturer
use my body for a tool.

I ride home in the evening
staring at my hands,
swearing by my sorrows
that a young girl ought to
stand a better chance.

So may I work the mills,
just as long as I am able,
and never ever meet the man
whose name is on the label.

Perpetual light

On the morning of my nicest birthdays in a long time, I headed down Linden street, which has been in a perpetual state of spring since January.

They've just planted one of these in front of our apartment building and the tag is still on it, so I know that this glorious melding of scarlet leaves and dangling white bells is a japonica ("Mountain Fire" variety, I think).

This has been their week.  The relay of cherry blossomings across the city is coming to an end; pink magnolias are littering the sidewalks now, and the star magnolias are constellating all over the place.

And this birthday morning was perfection.  My kind of perfection.  I perfected it with some happy noodling on my family history timelines, then we strolled out -- the Resident Fan Boy, younger daughter, and I -- to rendezvous with a pal at a deconsecrated church where the Tallis Scholars were appearing in Victoria for the very first time.

As the singers entered, there was a powerful wall of applause -- as if they'd already performed.

An expectant silence, and then -- a creamy blend of ten voices - two in each vocal range - pouring out Josquin, Palastrina, and other choral composers of the 15th to 16th centuries.

I nearly burst into tears.

They didn't sing this, and some of the singers were different, but it will give you an idea.

There were two items from the twentieth century. The first from Arvo Part (famous for his heart-rending Spiegel im Spiegel).  This was called The Woman with the Alabaster Box -- a sort of tone poem based on the gospel story of the woman reproached for "wasting" the expensive oil on anointing Jesus.  (After the concert, I reminded younger daughter of the version of the same story that is part of Jesus Christ Superstar.)

During the intermission, I was reminded, yet again, that I'm in Victoria.  A woman approached me, head cocked to one side, saying my name in a tentative manner.  She apparently remembered me from my hospice volunteer days - of which there were several.  She definitely remember elder daughter, who was something of a hospice mascot as an infant and toddler, so I could place this lady in time, but not quite in face.  I gazed into her eyes and saw vestiges of familiarity, inwardly marveling at her ability to recognize me after all this time and too abashed to ask her last name.

I'd also recognized one of the singers from last summer's ChamberFest in Ottawa.  He'd been one of the members of Cinquecento  - another transporting musical experience.  Elder daughter confirmed that he also sings with the Tallis Scholars, and that he's "very gracious and very British".

With the second half came the second 20th century composition, surrounded by beautiful, more ancient numbers - mostly masses for noble patrons and patronesses who had died five centuries ago, with lots of  "Dies irae" and "Let light perpetual shine upon them".

But this was a song for a young woman who had died in a cycling accident when elder daughter was one year old.  A family friend of the composer, she had loved Shakespeare, poetry, and drama.  It was extraordinary to hear "Song for Athene" by John Tavener sung by only ten voices -- especially given that the bass continuo was performed by one person, who seemed to not pause for breath during the entire seven-minute piece.

I don't have access to a recording of the Tallis Scholars singing this, but here's a very lovely recent rendition:
When the last note died away, the applause rose amid rolling stamping.

And we moved out into the late afternoon, down the cool but sunny streets, to my favourite Italian restaurant, where I ate risotto, and was toasted by my husband, younger daughter, and good friend in the light of the candles and fireplace.  Not perpetual, but few lovely things are.

Prepared

This has to be some kind of new record for me.  I've seen seven of the nine Oscar nominations for Best Picture this year, and I would have seen eight, if this weren't Victoria, where movies rarely stay for more than a week or so.  However, Victoria is also the reason I've seen the seven films; we now live within easy walking distance of two of the city's four multiplexes, and one of the city's two art-house cinemas.  (Also, this is one year when I actually wanted to see most of the films -- except Get Out, because I'm not great with horror flicks, no matter how witty.)

One film I caught last summer.  Younger daughter wanted to see Dunkirk because Harry Styles is in it.  I was keen to see Kenneth Branagh and Mark Rylance.  It was clever and sprawling; I'm not sure it would work on a small screen.

We saw The Darkest Hour because Gary Oldman is a front-runner for Best Actor.  Excellent cast, dark, bleak -- and I'm afraid I nodded off at one point.  Woke up and Churchill was sitting in the Underground - had no idea why.

The Post is another Stephen Spielberg patriotic epic; it reminded me strongly of Lincoln in scope and attitude.  It's set up - probably not deliberately - to segue into 1976's All the President's Men.  It has Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, fer gawd's sake, and has proved to be extraordinarily well-timed.  Recent events in the current American administration have made it all too pertinent, and there's more than a nod to the renewed awareness of women's rights - or lack thereof.

Lady Bird was our New Year's Day film this year.  I like Saoirse Ronan, and have always adored Laurie Metcalf.  The film is charming, heartbreaking - and also a bit alarming that we're clearly moving into Aughties nostalgia - the film is set between Autumn 2002 and 2003.

The Resident Fan Boy loved The Shape of Water -- I didn't.  He says it's because I'm not crazy about science fiction.  Maybe he's right.  I thought the art direction was amazing, with the feel of the early 1960s -- even though there's not enough men wearing hats; they wore hats, people.  However, I didn't enjoy the gratuitous violence, particularly an unnecessary scene showing the villain rutting his helpless wife. This was a long movie, that somehow didn't find the time for character development.

Elder daughter particularly wanted to see Call Me By Your Name.  I don't think she did, but I just managed to catch it yesterday, when it showed up unexpectedly at the art-house cinema.  It's undeniably well-done, and is being sold as a bitter-sweet coming-of-age flick.  Okay, a seventeen-year-old boy falls in love with a twenty-four-year-old man.  It's 1983, just before AIDS became well-known.  It's Italy.  The parents are unobtrusive, and understanding - as is the shoved-to-one-side girlfriend.  Suppose females were cast in the lead roles.  Would it be believable?  Would it be uncomfortable, rather than bitter-sweet?

Which brings me to Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, a film I was rather scared to see, as I've seen a live production of The Pillowman, and a "live-stream" Cineplex presentation of an English production of Hangmen, both harrowing, both by Martin McDonagh, who wrote and directed this film.  I did know that this would mean fabulous writing.  And I adore Frances McDormand.

So I went. By myself.  And was engrossed.

Wonderful acting.  Character development.  Unpredictable plot.  We have a winner.

Tonight, I'll watch the Academy Awards.  I may be tempted to throw snack food at the screen, although,  if Three Billboards doesn't win it, I'll be fine if Lady Bird does.  I have a feeling The Shape of Water will win, so I'm keeping the vacuum cleaner charged.