Hi from de road.
Returning from a three night stint in TBO (The Big Onion). Not a bad time actually.
Dined well on Saturday evening when it was party time with first and second cousins, and first and second cousins once-removed, as well as with my mother’s sister, Auntie Lottie and her two daughters – married Deanna, her husband Michael, their daughter Adrienne, her husband Oren, and their three kids (the latter three not actually at the party, two great-granddaughters and one great-grandson for my mother’s lovely sister, my Auntie Lottie). Avra, – Lottie’s daughter, Deanna’s sister – was also there. Avra’s a great daughter, living with and taking care of good old Auntie Lottie.
My articling lawyer-nephew was there too with his girlfriend, the lovely and talented Meg and it was with him that I spent most of my conversation time.
I had intended to tell my cousin, Deanna, off for dissing me but I guess the opportunity to do so never surfaced and I’m glad that it didn’t. Even though I believe that Deanna does deserve an at least slight dressing down, I’m happy I never gave her a piece of my mind because had I done so, I would have been feeling slightly down every time she crossed my mind today and tomorrow possibly even the next day even though the dressing down which never happened had been well deserved on her part.
I am sorry I never got the chance to spend some time with my nephew yesterday but he worked until around 8:00 and I dozed off, never called him back. Sorry, Ad. Next time.
Toronto the Good. Toronto the Peaceful. Toronto the Quiet. Everybody walks around, minds their own business, helps if and when this is required – from holding open a door to feathering up fallen change for a Scleroderma victim who can’t do this for himself – and never knowing, apparently, how to respond to my “thank you very much. Your help is greatly appreciated” therefore remaining silent in the face of my effusive gratitude. “You’re welcome”, isn’t so hard but at least there’s no shit coming down the pipe for saying “thank you,” instead of “merci.” Just kidding. That never happened to me at home in Monrayall.
Je m’ennuis du francais. I do miss hearing it in the streets, bars, and restaurants. I see a so-called leviathan coming into a bar, stripping off the layers of clothing he is wearing to protect himself from the bitter wind and the cold too that comes with it and out of that swarthy mouth comes a sea of … English. “Fucking blowing in from the north,” instead of the “Tabernacle. Ca fait froide day or” that I have become used to.
Fucking freezing out there and it’s windy as well. Really happy to be home after a 1250 km. round trip to Toronto in the Beast. It was cold outside but warm and cozy in our lovely, warm as toast caddy, cruising there and back on dry pretty empty highways and byways.
Very polite drivers in Ontario, from what I saw on Friday and today (Monday). Sometimes they end up going the speed limit in the left hand lane but immediately pull over when they noticed me behind them, I didn’t even have to honk.
Which brings me to honking in traffic and England and how they never honk over there at drivers in front of them, regardless of what those drivers in front of them are doing and in what situation those drivers have found/gotten themselves in/into. In other words, a driver who is on her cell illegally and tying up traffic in the process doesn’t get the horn nor does the taxi driver blocking a exceedingly narrow street while he assists a physically challenged client in the latter’s effort to actually get out of his cab.
Since I realized this about British conduct behind the wheel, how considerate they are, I have made a conscious effort not to honk my horn even in situations where the driver in front of me has earned a good honk. I have in fact failed to control myself twice and felt bad about losing it after grasping on to the much more civilized and quiet English way, compared to traffic mores in New York and Montreal, for instance. So I honked twice at people in the cars in front of me, twice since I came back from a ten-day visit to England on July 10th, not bad, honking twice in more than five months. Way to go, Jer. Fight!
My sister decided not to show up at the family get-together in TBO* on Saturday night and I can’t say that I felt either happy or disappointed about it but I can say that I did feel surprised, both about the fact that she chose not to show up and also about the fact that my brother-in-law, this sister’s husband, did come but about an hour after we did and we were an hour late ourselves. *The Big Onion (T-O)
As I said in yesterday’s JuicyLesson, my brother-in-law parked himself at our table beside his son’s girlfriend and spent the entire meal time focussed on his son, my nephew, no problem.
What I am uncertain about however is why my martyr sister would have stayed away in the first place. Martyr in whose eyes? She wouldn’t make any headway in her dispute with me by acting the martyr and I think she knows that. I hope she does anyway. Same with her husband. He knows her too well to be taken in by this type of histrionics, of my sister having a cow. I don’t think a lot of people would have even noticed her absence if it wasn’t for her husband Geoffrey’s presence, which is maybe one reason for my sister’s scheme to send her hubby there in the first place and making sure that it was good and late when he arrived so he would be noticed. I wonder what the thought processes involved in that type of behaviour were. Did my sister manipulate her husband, did he manipulate her, or was there some kind of mutual manipulation far too convoluted for me to even begin to try to fathom or figure out, but I sure hope that my sister and her husband know that they’re playing in the big leagues now and that they can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
So as I was saying,Toronto streets aren’t the ultimate in terms of testing out certain hypotheses or of trying out funny things. People running around, they don’t know what they’re doing, been lost so long they don’t know what they’re looking for, the United Nations ain’t really united and the organizations ain’t really organized. (Thank-you for those pearls of wisdom, singer-song writer Donovan Leitch.)
Peace out.
No Comments