I was out on some errands when who should I run into but my old friends Kevin and Marushka who moved out of the neighbourhood a few months ago. They were playing at being tourists on the street they know as well as I do. The good news is: as long as their fortunes continue to improve they will move back here in the fall. But it's a yin-yang world, isn't it? My old pal Gerry moved back downtown a few weeks ago. He says he was "tired of all the squeaky-clean white people walking their dogs and pushing their baby-carriages." And so it goes.

I know it's still Friday but already I'm thinking of returning to my old habit of making Sunday night a casserole night. I have countless recipes memorized from a tattered cookbook. Granted, a casserole is winter comfort food, just as reading Sherlock Holmes in bed at night in the winter is literary comfort food, but I'm willing to bend the rules as long as the heat and humidity hold off.

Hundreds of chestnuts fallen from the trees outside the nursing home...it's an image I remember from childhood. And years later, a knee-high memorial stone half hidden by summer grass. I have a head full of words so of course a quotation comes to mind. It's from Montaigne: "I hope death finds me planting my cabbages."

Alfie isn't afraid of thunderstorms. She's adopted a brave Shakespearean attitude towards the sound and fury. Like her late and justly famous predecessor she's found that sprawling on the kitchen floor keeps her cool on these hot afternoons. And when it's a downpour, as it is today, she hooks her thumbs to the windowsill and listens.

The following prose-poem was written a long time ago. The photo was taken in September 1993 in Dorset, England.

This is a photograph of me sitting by Hardy's statue. His enduring, heart-broken face is looking towards the street. My own face, pensive, faces the camera. The tree to the left hasn't begun to turn, and it towers, still green in September. My hair is longish; I'm bearded; I'm wearing a tweed jacket, my knapsack at my side. This is Dorchester, the town where Thomas Hardy left the human heart threadbare. The photo is a few years old. I look much the same though my beard is salt and pepper. I'm looking at this photograph late at night, far from Dorset. And I still believe the spirit can rise, rise and fall, without landing.

Deloney Reads Llewelyn Powys on a Saturday Afternoon

My stupid camera is stuck on an 18-second thing so I could only read a snippet of what I wanted to read. This would be the full text if I'd had the time:

"I appeal to youth, to boys and girls with senses uncorrupted, with senses fair and fresh. Do not be deceived, do not listen to the foolish talk of envious old women, defeated old men. The days of your youth are yours, the hours of your youth are yours, so few, so few. With concentrated purpose follow the deepest inclinations of your being, and snatch, snatch at happiness with passionate eagerness."

It's important to wash fiddleheads several times before boiling or steaming for at least fifteen minutes, even if you plan to sauté them later. They turn greener than any green you've ever seen. Briefly, briefly at this time of year they appear on the supermarket shelves like so many grasshoppers playing violins or green tambourines.