Vacation Diary, Days 3 & 4

Quotation of the day: Ray Davies -- Thank heaven for this holiday, holiday / I'm leaving insecurity behind me. / The environmental pressures got me down, / i don't need no sedatives to pull me round, / i don't need no sleeping pills to help me sleep sound.

Yay, Toronto, and the day began with a good laugh.  I had to pass my place of employment on my way to the train station and obviously the person who was doing my job in my absence, hadn't arrived:  he has the key to the place and two staff members and a repairman were standing outside waiting to get in.  Two staff members who annoy me hugely, btw.  If it hadn't been for the repairman i would have called down a torrential downpour upon them, but, alas, it was a beautiful morning, not a cloud in the wossname, and besides i don't have that much influence with the weather gods. (I certainly wasn't going to let them in, though!)

But then i got to the train station and learned that the train was going to be late.   In fact, when we arrived, eventually, at Union Station, i had to go straight to my lunch date at the Wolf & Firkin pub with Julian, Gloria, Paul & Imogen -- basically the only friends i'm still in touch with from when i lived in Toronto 25 years ago.  And lunch lasted a very civilised two hours.

I had the Chef's Mac and Cheese -- which was very good but really wasn't much more than macaroni and cheese with a couple of slices of bacon on top, plus garlic bread.  Oh, but the Wolf and Firkin is a really nice pub, i always visit it when i'm in the big city.



And then, and then, everyone else had to go back to work and Imogen and i went for a walk, and we wound up on the patio of The Black Bull -- Toronto's oldest pub (first built in 1833, although the original building burned down at some point so it's not Toronto's oldest continually operating boozer). (I think that honour goes to The Wheatsheaf.)

It was a perfect day for sitting on a patio -- quite mild, not a cloud in the sky.  Absolutely brilliant.

But then we had to split up and i looked at my watch and, oh shit!  I had only a couple of hours before the train home.  Where had the day gone????

 Well, it was, perhaps, Prometheus who said "tempus tends to fugit when you're having fun."  Well, maybe not Prometheus, but one of those classical lit. chaps -- maybe Paul McCartney...

And so, i headed east to Sherbourne Street, hoping maybe to find my friend Barbara's shop--she only just opened and i'd love to see it, but wasn't sure of the address, but gave up on that (i should have persevered -- i have since learned that it's only a little further east).  But then had to reverse course and head west for the train home. (Ultimately I would have found her shop but then said, hi, well bye GTG catch a train). I had hoped to spend some time browsing through book and CD shops -- and i did, with an air of desperation, but had to leave each one without making any purchases.  No time left.

Well, i did in fact have time for one more pint, in a pub called The Sherlock Holmes in The Esplanade -- it was horrible and noisy -- grabbed some street meat from a vendor (sausage on a bun) and made the train home with minutes to spare.

And that, as they say, was that.

So, overall, a very good visit, but not all i had hoped it would be.