Toronto
July 27 - August 1
Saturday - Day ThreePhilip's Day: Hoping to get the programmes sorted out today, Margot calls around trying to find a place that could do it and Nico makes plans to meet up with Keva so that they can do some shopping. Nico continues to try and find size four shoes somewhere in North America. Margot phones Kinko's to find out just how crowded they might be on a Saturday afternoon and also to get an idea on what the cost of this job might be. They are not very crowded but the cost could be quite high for what we have to do. Margot remembers that a friend of hers has recently purchased an iMac and she thinks that she might have the kind of printer that we need as well, so we call her to see if we could come around and get this task done. She says that there is no problem for us to come over there and do it. This friend of Margot's turns out to be my first cousin Celena Carroll whom I've not seen in over ten years.
Nico has also finally caught up with Nicola, a friend of hers from college. They have been playing phone tag for the past two days and missing each other but today they speak and Nicola wants us to come to her house tonight for a barbecue. Margot and I go over to Celena and it's really good to see her. She has some friends over and they are watching the movie 'Joan of Arc' and she is about to get a dye put in her hair. We say hi and talk for a short while and then she directs me to the computer and gets back to getting her hair done. Margot settles in to watching the rest of the movie with Celena's friends. At the beginning there were some problems with finding the correct fonts on Celena's computer so I had to hook up our laptop and email her the fonts and after a while everything that I needed was now on her computer and I could get down to printing the backs of the progammes. There are eighty of these things to print and they are being printed at the highest quality so it takes over a minute for each page to get done. I can see that it's going to be a long afternoon and I'm not going to make a seven o'clock barbecue so when I speak to Nico on the phone I ask her to see if Nicola could make it later and we settle on seven-thirty. Margot occupies herself after the movie is done by getting a haircut from Celena's friend and that works out well because it is something that she wanted to do for the wedding anyway. The boring job of standing there feeding each sheet of paper into the printer to ensure that they all get printed correctly moves into eight o'clock but by now Nico and Keva have already arrived to Nicola's house in our car and Celena and her friends have long since gone out and left me there to get the job done. Margot had also gone out to get some chores done and came back to collect me, just after eight o'clock, and take me to the barbecue. The job was done and I know that this will ease the pressure on Eddie and Tasha and give them one less thing about which they will have to worry.
Nico's Day: As Philip says, I have to go out looking for size four shoes. I'm also looking for work clothes, because Nassau is not like Victoria and what one wears to work is pretty well defined. No jeans and Docs for the College of the Bahamas. Margot has to take Bone (the dog) for another walk, and so she offers to drive me over to Mummy's hotel while Philip deals with the stuff he has agreed to deal with. I also want to wander around in town a bit to get a sense of what's changed, what's the same. A LOT HAS CHANGED!!!!! The first thing we do is comb the yellow pages and phone places, mostly shoe stores, to see whether they stock size four shoes or not - that way we can eliminate several of them straight away. We find out that the store where I have traditionally bought my shoes - Brown's - is still in business, and it is now carrying clothes as well. Mummy and I aim for the nearest one, which is quite a stretch away. We decide to check out places like Cotton Ginny and the Bay to look at their selection of petites as well, so we do. We strike gold in Cotton Ginny, where I am able to buy a set of separates to teach in (enough to get me through the first week or two at least, after which recycling and recombining is going to have to do). I get even more paranoid about finding shoes, and so we set off to see what we can discover. But hunger catches us, and so we stop before we get to the shoe stores, find a nice place to eat (the Bloor Street Diner - very trendy) and walk back to the hotel. Upon returning to the hotel, I find out that my friend Nicola, who is originally Jamaican (of Grenadian parents, with Martinican connections) but who is now married and living in Toronto, has tracked me down and has left a message. I phone her back and FINALLY we are able to talk (well actually I get hold of her husband Dave first of all - Nick has gone to the store - and then Nick phones me). She invites us all over to a barbecue, and we set the time for seven-thirty.
I let Margot and Philip know, and then Mummy and I take a cab over to Margot's. We wait there for a while, and then discover that Philip will not be finished with the programmes before a quarter to eight, so Mummy and I get in our car and drive over to Nick & Dave's. There, I meet Dave's older brother Peter, and talk to Nick, who is pregnant and due in October. The two of them live in a great house on Davenport Road, a house built up the side of the big ridge in Toronto, so that the front door is reached by a long staircase cut out of the rock, and whose back garden is a deck bordered by a series of narrow rocky terraces leading up to a fence. The focal point of the terraced garden is a waterfall that Dave built, which cascades into a small, deep pool in whose depths goldfish swim. While Nick gets drinks, Dave hands me fish food and invites me to help him feed the fish. Then we all sit down around the patio table and catch up on old times. Nick and Dave tell me about their resident frogs, who live around the waterfall and the pond. Nick says that last year, when the frogs were young and the fish were old (those fish have all since died of natural causes) the frogs used to sit on the lily pads and the fish would swim up and bite them on their bottoms. So Nick built rafts for the frogs. This year, there is a very small raft on the side of the pond, but as the frogs are now older and the fish all new (10c goldfish from the pet store) the frogs no longer need that kind of protection from the fish. Eventually Margot & Philip arrive. Philip is looking a little shellshocked after the afternoon in front of the printer, but we all relax into the gathering and have a very good time. The food is great - Peter (Dave's brother) barbecues chicken and pork, and Nick makes a salad - and there is lots of it. Dave and Nick tell the story of their house, which is quite unique. Originally it belonged to a German drug dealer. The terraces in the back garden, apparently, were used in the summer to grow lucrative plants, as was the basement in the winter. The front bedroom was a drying room for the produce, and the skylights in the roof made it a light, airy place. There was a secret compartment in the kitchen ceiling, which Nick and Dave discovered - complete with a stash - when they did some remodelling work, and apparently they have heard from people who knew their predecessor that when he had drugs available he would hang a hat on a tree in front of the house and then people would come and collect what they needed. Anyway. The dinner was great, and besides the discussion about the drug dealer, we talk about Nick's pregnancy, Dave's latest photographic projects - an exhibition of carnival photographs that is about to tour North America, and a new series of shots with wild animals, most of which he finds - of all places - in Barrie, where there is an animal sanctuary. All too soon the evening is over. Philip and I drive Mummy back to her hotel, and we meet Margot back at the house. That's all for the day. |
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