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(Snorts gently) I have darned a sock and in consequence the world is mine. Well, at least, the grey wet wanhope and depression of the last few days has turned itself around and now I feel quite cheerful. (Look, darning a sock when you're astigmatic and cataracted is no mean feat. Requires bifocal contacts, reading glasses, strong light, and much swearing.) I also mended the collar of my coat, and then, inevitably, was moved to tidy and swifter the side bedroom and throw out handfuls of trash and scrub the bathroom sink. I *know* Clean All The Things is a fail-safe anti-depressant. I know; but I do not approve; and I am not resigned damned if I will even if it makes me feel better.
As to *why* I was darning a sock when socks can be had for nothing at the dollar store-- compression socks cannot, and cost $25 a pop. You betcha I darn them till there's nothing left to darn.
Actually was feeling better earlier after my mandatory morning walk. I stopped in to suss out the new Snakes and Lattes place which is always crowded with people playing board games. Had a latte and a ninjabread man (sic) which is a gingerbread ninja and very good. Place is jumping-- reservations recommended for you and your party to play whatever it is you want to play (choice of 1000 games available.) I'm amazed, but then I'm not a board gamer, and apparently this is what Toronto has always needed. I'd hoped there might be something on the order of a permanent floating Settlers of Catan game or something, but nope. Bring your own players, evidently.
Walked the Bloor walk, cruised the used book stores, remembered Patricia Wrede's name but found none of her books. Then I wanted lunch but my usual Japanese restaurant was closed. Stick-in-mud me is always reluctant to try new places, but I went to a new old place instead, the Japanese-Korean place in the old MacDos on Markham. With misgivings: I was at its former incarnation a year ago, and found it beautiful and upscale and intimidating, and of course it closed six months later. Arisu is also beautiful, with Japanese antiques rather than Korean this time, and not quite as upscale price-wise as the other. Ambiance still requires sitting up straight with attention to how you hold chopsticks and tea mugs; fortunately another of the things Kurotsubaki is good for is showing the body language of refayned females. I was next to a booth of young Japanese women, all thin and straight-haired and mile-a-minute Japanese, who did the elegant relaxed thing without even thinking. As with the French, I always wonder Where did they learn these things? Who taught them? I shall never know.
And then I walked home on the dry grey snow-flakey afternoon. A small wind from the '70s was blowing down the street. I must have met similar winter winds in the 40 years since that time but I can't remember doing so. The 80s were snowy and damp; the 90s I was in Japan; the oh-noes were snow over the ankles or too warm. But this was back in university, brown corduroy jeans and lapsang souchong tea and Plato's Apology and Japanese films up at the Science Centre. All those things I smelled on the wind, and then it dropped and I was back here.
As to *why* I was darning a sock when socks can be had for nothing at the dollar store-- compression socks cannot, and cost $25 a pop. You betcha I darn them till there's nothing left to darn.
Actually was feeling better earlier after my mandatory morning walk. I stopped in to suss out the new Snakes and Lattes place which is always crowded with people playing board games. Had a latte and a ninjabread man (sic) which is a gingerbread ninja and very good. Place is jumping-- reservations recommended for you and your party to play whatever it is you want to play (choice of 1000 games available.) I'm amazed, but then I'm not a board gamer, and apparently this is what Toronto has always needed. I'd hoped there might be something on the order of a permanent floating Settlers of Catan game or something, but nope. Bring your own players, evidently.
Walked the Bloor walk, cruised the used book stores, remembered Patricia Wrede's name but found none of her books. Then I wanted lunch but my usual Japanese restaurant was closed. Stick-in-mud me is always reluctant to try new places, but I went to a new old place instead, the Japanese-Korean place in the old MacDos on Markham. With misgivings: I was at its former incarnation a year ago, and found it beautiful and upscale and intimidating, and of course it closed six months later. Arisu is also beautiful, with Japanese antiques rather than Korean this time, and not quite as upscale price-wise as the other. Ambiance still requires sitting up straight with attention to how you hold chopsticks and tea mugs; fortunately another of the things Kurotsubaki is good for is showing the body language of refayned females. I was next to a booth of young Japanese women, all thin and straight-haired and mile-a-minute Japanese, who did the elegant relaxed thing without even thinking. As with the French, I always wonder Where did they learn these things? Who taught them? I shall never know.
And then I walked home on the dry grey snow-flakey afternoon. A small wind from the '70s was blowing down the street. I must have met similar winter winds in the 40 years since that time but I can't remember doing so. The 80s were snowy and damp; the 90s I was in Japan; the oh-noes were snow over the ankles or too warm. But this was back in university, brown corduroy jeans and lapsang souchong tea and Plato's Apology and Japanese films up at the Science Centre. All those things I smelled on the wind, and then it dropped and I was back here.
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Ahhh those time winds ... the 80s blew cold West Yorkshire moorland breezes of always warm afternoons in the glorious Blue Rooms, now apparently called the Oak Rooms (http://buttes-chaumont.blogspot.com/2009/12/north-country-arcadia.html) I am so very glad that The Byram Arcade () is still standing. The Brits thankfull are not one to pull down their wonderful buildings. I read for my degree in in the Ramsden Building (http://www.hud.ac.uk/uni_history/1883_ramsden_gallery.html) and it was all marbled wide stairs, bannisters you could slide down on, old lift shafts that may have echoed the comings and goings of mad science prfessors off to some dastardly chemistry experiment, always wonderful, more than a little bit creepy late at night, drafty and extremely cool. At the time (in the 1980's) I'm sure the wooden benches and the gas taps to our bunsen burners were still the same ones installed in the 1880's.
I have a love for Huddersfield, I spent four years that had to be spent there and another two that I need not have. (that sentence is just wrong I know but *eh* the grammar, I failed it) It was not just the people, and it certainly was not the weather, a lot of it was just the sense of place (http://huddersfield1.co.uk/huddersfield/huddsinterest.htm) I guess that can never be found in somewhere like where I live now.
I am so glad that I chose it, to do my studies at/in. It's a little gem of a somewhere. I do apologise that your post made me nostalgic of a time long gone, and again I have rambled. Just be glad the 90's was made of coming home. Which was an entirely different kind of tropical hurricane all of its own.
Happy new year and new decade my dear.
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the gas taps to our bunsen burners were still the same ones installed in the 1880's.
That sounds positively dangerous.
the sense of place I guess that can never be found in somewhere like where I live now
Oh come. Singapore is storied enough to have its own slew of very special ghosts. I mean, it's not much older than Toronto (googles: we're twenty years older than you) but it has twice the atmosphere.
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