I thought Dennis my UK yob of a squirrel was rude but here the squirrels are actually a little frightening. They have black fur and less puffy tails so more 'rat-like' AND they go through the rubbish like old pro’s. They are completely unfazed by humanity often standing in groups and yelling obscenities at passing people.
I have passed several squirrels panhandling whilst walking West down Dundass and Bloor into the heart of Toronto over the last few days. It is a fascinating trek, walking through eddies of different cultures; Polish, Italian, Portugeuse, Chinese. Ramshackle houses become sturdier the closer downtown you get and shop fronts become more inviting but I quite like the strangeness of the edgier bits of town. Is it a deli or a fur shop? Hard to tell.
Yesterday I walked down Parkside to the Lake. On one side was was High Park and on the other the posher suburbia; large chocolate box houses with yellow school buses dropping off clean, healthy children herded home by shiny smartly dressed parental figures. It looked both idyllic and a little unreal as if everyone was acting on a huge film set.
Back at the apartment my friend and I sit through the entire series of The Office to remind me of what I am missing back in UK.
I go to bed subdued and depressed. I have not yet heard back from the various job applications I put in before I left UK and I can’t sleep for thinking about how to reduce my grocery bills without cutting back on the gin.
My bed is over a warm air vent which blasts every few minutes and I begin to worry about inadvertent mummification and then my brain adds some bad old memories, a infuriatingly catchy line from that horrid 'Umbrella' song by Rhiannon and a faint unsettling feeling that I have left a window open back in Cambridge. No sleep for the rest of the night then.
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
Saturday, 26 April 2008
Tinku or bust
The Tinku Gallery opening was lovely. Lights, flowers, smart people and erudite conversation. No, really! My friend, A looked very glamorous and elegant in a crafted little black number and just the right earrings. She had lent me a dress that had a neckline that plunged so dramatically it was just managing to cling precariously to decency. This would have been fine had I the confidence to carry it off but I kept having to glance down at my own breasts to ensure they hadn’t broken cover completely which was disconcerting for anyone trying to make small talk.
What is the difference between throwing a party here in Toronto and throwing one in London or Lusaka? Well I will tell you:
There is booze left over…not just in the bottom of glasses either but actual bottles…uncorked. I kid you not
There are snacks left over, without cigarette butts in them and no one has taken handfuls from the bags of surplus cheese crisps under the table
Only one glass is broken and apologised for. It is not thrown at someone’s head. It is knocked over in conversation.
NO ONE, not even me, nicked the gorgeous soaps and hand cream laid out in the bathroom.
Everyone left calmly on time and when we cleaned up we didn’t come across the lone random drunk sitting sobbing and cursing in a corner and refusing to leave
Although people may have turned up high not one person bought a hooker.
As you can imagine this is all rather unsettling for me used to more unsavoury end of party episodes. I became obsessed with the hand cream in the loo.
‘You’ve left it unprotected,’ I mutter nervously to A.
‘Someone from England will steal it’
She looks at me with pity from under a mountain of flowers and gifts.
‘You have trust issues,’ she says sagely. ‘Hey I think your nipple is showing….’’
Thursday, 24 April 2008
The end of the influenza
Ok I admit it. I am still not 100% . I am still snuffling and snorting and aching. Its been weeks now and I had had enough this morning. I am in Toronto after all. The sun is shining and the weather is sweet (yeah Marley maaan!)
‘I am feeling better!’ I announce. I make myself leap from bed and do some sun salutes.
’See, see just how healthy I am world!’ I wheeze.
I dress flamboyantly in blue and big hat and skip out of the house.
However in just a few minutes I began to get the familiar cold sweats and the haze over my central vision. I grit my teeth. I will walk into the heart of the city. I will.
‘I will not oh excuse me ….let this..ouch opps sorry…sodding cold….whoops…ruin my experience of Toronto…… ‘
When I nearly upend the 15th baby stroller trying to share a pavement with me I go into a deli to cool down and can’t even see the coins in my hand let alone what they are. The Polish woman slicing salami looks at me with sympathy and shakes her head.
‘You are ill?’
‘No oh no! I’, say coughing like a hag. ‘I’m dandy thanks. ‘
She backs away from me with her hands trying to protect her meat counter. ‘Dandy’ is obviously another word for tuberculosis in Polish.
I give up and stumble off back to base. Later this afternoon I will walk healthily in the park..but first..perhaps just a short nap...
‘I am feeling better!’ I announce. I make myself leap from bed and do some sun salutes.
’See, see just how healthy I am world!’ I wheeze.
I dress flamboyantly in blue and big hat and skip out of the house.
However in just a few minutes I began to get the familiar cold sweats and the haze over my central vision. I grit my teeth. I will walk into the heart of the city. I will.
‘I will not oh excuse me ….let this..ouch opps sorry…sodding cold….whoops…ruin my experience of Toronto…… ‘
When I nearly upend the 15th baby stroller trying to share a pavement with me I go into a deli to cool down and can’t even see the coins in my hand let alone what they are. The Polish woman slicing salami looks at me with sympathy and shakes her head.
‘You are ill?’
‘No oh no! I’, say coughing like a hag. ‘I’m dandy thanks. ‘
She backs away from me with her hands trying to protect her meat counter. ‘Dandy’ is obviously another word for tuberculosis in Polish.
I give up and stumble off back to base. Later this afternoon I will walk healthily in the park..but first..perhaps just a short nap...
Wednesday, 23 April 2008
Canada very dry
‘Can we help you…?’
I am standing glumly unsure about whether to wait for assistance from the BA ground staff (will they make me sit in a bloody wheelchair again) or just take pot luck and stride off in the general direction of customs when I hear this question from the couple in front.
It is apparent they are not going to move or let anyone else off the plane unless I capitulate so I fall in line behind them and grab the woman’s elbow as we hit the terminal.
By one of those marvellously strange twists of coincidence it turns out that they are filmmakers screening a documentary at the Hot Docs festival and that the first film the chap made back in the mid ‘90’s was about an English man with…guess what…. Retinitis Pigmentosa!! In the short walk through to baggage we discussed methods of exposing film to simulate sight loss, colour vision and the red spectrum and the problems of guiding and being guided.
My beautiful friend A met me at the airport and we drove around to her new little gallery on Roncesvalle St. Having not slept for over 30 hours I was beginning to hallucinate so the art on the walls seemed to be 3D and wobbling and I made some complementary noises about the ‘installation’ only to realise it was the storage area. The gallery itself was lovely with sunlight streaming in through the windows and everything painted and primed. The opening do is on Friday and A is a tiny powerhouse of energy, holding down a fulltime job and pulling this business venture together in her ‘spare’ time!
Toronto by the way is blazing hot. I however packed for sleet and snow and am feeling a bit foolish and in need of some sandals. I have yet to see a Mountie and have not had a chance to eat anything with maple syrup in it.
I am standing glumly unsure about whether to wait for assistance from the BA ground staff (will they make me sit in a bloody wheelchair again) or just take pot luck and stride off in the general direction of customs when I hear this question from the couple in front.
It is apparent they are not going to move or let anyone else off the plane unless I capitulate so I fall in line behind them and grab the woman’s elbow as we hit the terminal.
By one of those marvellously strange twists of coincidence it turns out that they are filmmakers screening a documentary at the Hot Docs festival and that the first film the chap made back in the mid ‘90’s was about an English man with…guess what…. Retinitis Pigmentosa!! In the short walk through to baggage we discussed methods of exposing film to simulate sight loss, colour vision and the red spectrum and the problems of guiding and being guided.
My beautiful friend A met me at the airport and we drove around to her new little gallery on Roncesvalle St. Having not slept for over 30 hours I was beginning to hallucinate so the art on the walls seemed to be 3D and wobbling and I made some complementary noises about the ‘installation’ only to realise it was the storage area. The gallery itself was lovely with sunlight streaming in through the windows and everything painted and primed. The opening do is on Friday and A is a tiny powerhouse of energy, holding down a fulltime job and pulling this business venture together in her ‘spare’ time!
Toronto by the way is blazing hot. I however packed for sleet and snow and am feeling a bit foolish and in need of some sandals. I have yet to see a Mountie and have not had a chance to eat anything with maple syrup in it.
Sunday, 20 April 2008
Friday, 18 April 2008
Man flu
My mini man flu flattened me. My head felt as if it had swollen to twice its size and my sight got as foggy as my brain. Even today, three days later I am still in pyjamas and still feeling as if I have been on a very long uphill walk when the truth is I have done nothing but lie down.
I have managed to drag my suitcase into the middle of the living room and when I get my breath back I shall start throwing things at it….looks like its going to be bloody chilly in Canada so will dig out the fur knickers. I desperately want to be well as I need to start getting fit for summer and I have put on a lot of winter weight. I promised myself I would learn to run properly and to date all I seem to have achieved are blisters and flu and I will need to start all over a bloody gain. (Hmmm.. that was a girlie sick winge was it not? My typing got really shrill. Sorry.)
I believe that in Canada I will get to hike, run, eat well and booze less to kick start it all. But I also believe that the earth is mounted on the back of a huge turtle who in turn is balanced on two elephants.
I am glad they caught that shipment of arms heading through SA to Zimbabwe…wonder who broke that story and what will happen next? They can’t let it through…can they? Can they?
Oh and the radio piece worked really well! Another one in pipeline out on Radio 4’s In Touch programme soon.
I have managed to drag my suitcase into the middle of the living room and when I get my breath back I shall start throwing things at it….looks like its going to be bloody chilly in Canada so will dig out the fur knickers. I desperately want to be well as I need to start getting fit for summer and I have put on a lot of winter weight. I promised myself I would learn to run properly and to date all I seem to have achieved are blisters and flu and I will need to start all over a bloody gain. (Hmmm.. that was a girlie sick winge was it not? My typing got really shrill. Sorry.)
I believe that in Canada I will get to hike, run, eat well and booze less to kick start it all. But I also believe that the earth is mounted on the back of a huge turtle who in turn is balanced on two elephants.
I am glad they caught that shipment of arms heading through SA to Zimbabwe…wonder who broke that story and what will happen next? They can’t let it through…can they? Can they?
Oh and the radio piece worked really well! Another one in pipeline out on Radio 4’s In Touch programme soon.
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
Blimey!!
‘Blimey!!’
I am standing in the bathroom peering in the mirror with a steri-strip thermometer plastered to my sweaty forehead. I am trying to read my temperature but it looks to me like I am in rigor mortis. Fuzzy and aching I find the magnifier and after a long and complicated thought process manage to turn the thing the right way around. I am not actually cold but boiling. I have a fever. I am sick.
‘Cripes.’
I still have to go into the BBC London to edit the radio pieces the next day and only notice the strange stuff I am saying when some silly woman refuses to accept that I DON’T need assistance and instead insists on guiding me onto the WRONG train so I, late and with cracking headache, go the WRONG way and get spewed out at Caledonian Road instead of Tottenham Court Road saying,
‘Goodness. Blimey. Lawks a-mercy’.
That is not me. I have a foul mouth. Not as foul as the Komodo dragon of couse, that poisons its prey with its saliva…well that and its knifing, tearing teeth. If you kick a komodo dragon in the shin (aww go on go on go on) the expletives it hisses will turn its mouth blue. When you kick a human..say the person who told you this was the right train..in the shin they also swear. Apparently swearing, like the gutteral noises we make when exhausted or when making love, come from the depths of our limbic system..from the ancient lizard part of our prehensile brain. We swear because in part we are all komodo dragon ..but without the poisonous saliva… (add in your own joke here…I am too knackered!)
Having possibly infected the entire BBC staff, including a very handsome voiced continuity man, with my mini flu I creep ill-ly off to a friends’ house.
‘Blimey – that was one doosey of a day!.’ say I, crawling up the stairs and collapsing jellyfishlike on their sofa.
‘You have an anti-Tourettes infection’, says my friend looking anxiously at his wife.
She kicks me in the shins.
‘Dang’, I say.
‘You are bad!’, says she ‘I haven’t seen it so bad. ‘
My friends confer, put Kinder and Dorfmeister on the sound system and begin feeding me take away curry and cider.
‘I have to go to bed,’ I whimper an hour or two later.
‘How badly?’ they chorus
‘A fuck of a lot,’ I say.
They nod smugly and release me to the futon.
‘She’s cured,’ I hear him say.
‘Blimey Moses..that was close..’, says she.
I am standing in the bathroom peering in the mirror with a steri-strip thermometer plastered to my sweaty forehead. I am trying to read my temperature but it looks to me like I am in rigor mortis. Fuzzy and aching I find the magnifier and after a long and complicated thought process manage to turn the thing the right way around. I am not actually cold but boiling. I have a fever. I am sick.
‘Cripes.’
I still have to go into the BBC London to edit the radio pieces the next day and only notice the strange stuff I am saying when some silly woman refuses to accept that I DON’T need assistance and instead insists on guiding me onto the WRONG train so I, late and with cracking headache, go the WRONG way and get spewed out at Caledonian Road instead of Tottenham Court Road saying,
‘Goodness. Blimey. Lawks a-mercy’.
That is not me. I have a foul mouth. Not as foul as the Komodo dragon of couse, that poisons its prey with its saliva…well that and its knifing, tearing teeth. If you kick a komodo dragon in the shin (aww go on go on go on) the expletives it hisses will turn its mouth blue. When you kick a human..say the person who told you this was the right train..in the shin they also swear. Apparently swearing, like the gutteral noises we make when exhausted or when making love, come from the depths of our limbic system..from the ancient lizard part of our prehensile brain. We swear because in part we are all komodo dragon ..but without the poisonous saliva… (add in your own joke here…I am too knackered!)
Having possibly infected the entire BBC staff, including a very handsome voiced continuity man, with my mini flu I creep ill-ly off to a friends’ house.
‘Blimey – that was one doosey of a day!.’ say I, crawling up the stairs and collapsing jellyfishlike on their sofa.
‘You have an anti-Tourettes infection’, says my friend looking anxiously at his wife.
She kicks me in the shins.
‘Dang’, I say.
‘You are bad!’, says she ‘I haven’t seen it so bad. ‘
My friends confer, put Kinder and Dorfmeister on the sound system and begin feeding me take away curry and cider.
‘I have to go to bed,’ I whimper an hour or two later.
‘How badly?’ they chorus
‘A fuck of a lot,’ I say.
They nod smugly and release me to the futon.
‘She’s cured,’ I hear him say.
‘Blimey Moses..that was close..’, says she.
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