The End of August at the Hotel Ozone

There's an end of August topos, sometimes: a sense of sun and large skies and happiness and freedom. It may owe, distantly, to the going-back-to-school of my adolescence; to early 80s trips to Europe or mid-80s Japanese film festivals and opera for the masses, down at Harbourfront when Harbourfront was bike-friendly and non-condo'd. But mostly I associate it with the brave new fannish worlds of Papuwa and Saiyuki and dragons, long ago as those were as well. Whatever, yesterday was one of those days--

--until the evening when it clouded over and I remembered the other end of August topos, one much more recent and pervasive: peevish, undistinguished, unsatisfying. Maybe it *is* all in the weather.

Whatever, Nora's Hugo has cheered me up immensely. Also abandoned Boccaccio for Holmes pastiche, which at least made a break from all those wives seduced by monks. Though I've now reached the original source of All's Well That Ends Well, which doubtless reads better in Shakespeare's version than Boccaccio's