The Danforth

(I'm not really as dour as I look here!)

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 23:33:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 19:23:00 +0000

I'm wearing my new Greek fisherman's cap. It was handmade by the angelic Louis, haberdasher extraordinaire. His business card, so expressive of his concern and kindness, reads: "All kinds of hats tailored to your head."

(I've noticed already that it fits as it ought to. It doesn't blow off on windy days. The cap I mean, not my head.)

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 01:05:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:55:00 +0000

Merry Christmas.

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:57:00 +0000

Alfie will one day inherit the Alfredo Sauce family fortune. It must be fun being an heiress. I think I'll stick with this cat.

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:52:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:02:00 +0000

The glow is beginning to dim over this old neighbourhood. It's not so much the crack-houses east and north of here. No, it's the new landed gentry!

I overheard a conversation between two young ladies as they plodded along behind their baby carriages. Their big complaint was the guy busking on the street corner. He was sitting on the sidewalk playing jazz guitar.

Young lady #1: "I can't believe they let him do that," she sniffed.

Young lady #2: "He ought to be arrested!"

Jeez.

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:36:00 +0000

statue of Rimbaud:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Arthur_Rimbaud.JPG

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:02:00 +0000

I've joined the Dandelion Club!

http://www.aboutderbyshire.co.uk/cms/news/dandelion-club-the-friend.shtml

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:36:00 +0000

One December my father bought a can of gold spray-paint. He had an award, a figurine he'd won in lacrosse when he was young. He spray-painted it gold. Many years later I went back to fix the old place up, throw stuff out and do all those things we have to do. In the basement I found cardboard boxes tucked away, boxes filled with hammers and wrenches, my toy guns, pieces of rope, knives and forks: everything was spray-painted gold.

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:56:00 +0000

The charm of Woodbine and Danforth isn't the corner itself which is rather bleak with its dusty shoe repair shops and all-day breakfasts. No, the charm is in the bus going south, past the picturesque cemetery, down to the boardwalk and the lake, and the gulls who accompany me above with impatient squawks. Like me they have a terrible thirst, in my case for a pint of Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale.

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:24:00 +0000

A trail of cats behind me (Merlin, Robin, Fanny -- each gone from this world --) and another one very much here...sniffing the air, eyes darting, tail up by the open window on this lovely and unexpected Indian Summer day.

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:23:00 +0000

She told me when she took off her earrings at night she'd put them on her dresser or a bedside table. She noticed after a while that one of the pair would often go missing. She suspected her cat but it was never proven. One year she decorated the Christmas tree with her collection of single earrings.

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:24:00 +0000

I pulled a muscle in one of my famous soccer legs. Hurts a bit, but it got me thinking. There used to be a restaurant/bar on Danforth called "The Pride of Erin." It was a bit of a dive and its unofficial name was "The Puddle of Urine." Still, it can't be denied that they served the most excellent mussels: fresh (more or less) from the east coast, and pulled from their shells we swallowed them whole.

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:04:00 +0000

The winter I broke my ankle it snowed every single day for months. I got to know all the eastend taxi drivers by name and they told me their troubles.

Hail, hail the blue-and-white Danforth taxis.

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:33:00 +0000

What is the temperature in Toronto? Oddly, if I want the answer in fahrenheit, I have to check msnbc. Canadian websites are in celsius, a language so lacking in the weather-beaten poetry of my youth.

32ºF

(brr)

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:31:00 +0000

I'm wearing my autumn colours because I want to blend in: rust-coloured pants and a green pullover. My pockets are full of woodchips and I smell like rain. People I don't know smile and nod when I walk by because I remind them of the harvest. Little do they know my antlers are clip-ons.

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:34:00 +0000

I found my copy of Gilbert White's "The Natural History of Selborne" -- an attractive 1st Penguin paperback edition 1941 -- in the litterbox. Alfie's bathroom reading? Smart cat.

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:34:00 +0000

Happy 250th birthday, Guinness!

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:52:00 +0000

Born in 1902, she taught languages - Latin and French - as well as English literature. My Complete Shakespeare, my Poems of Keats, my Essays of Emerson (five wee volumes), used to belong to her...a woman I never met, a distant relative, and her signature is on the front free endpaper of each book.

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:58:00 +0000

I believe (I do believe) the mouse I mentioned earlier has escaped Alfie's clutches. I saw it only once and that was weeks ago. I like to think the little critter found its way into "Adventures in Cheese," a shop not far from here...a magical land (one would hope) without cats or mousetraps.

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 20:04:00 +0000

I grew up in a milieu that might be rightly described as working-class. I learned my table manners, few as they were, and behaved myself. I didn't put my elbows on the table. I didn't eat spaghetti with my hands. Etc. I was chatting with a friend today, a friend who grew up in a very different milieu (I'm getting to like that word). Anyway, she said that in her family, a family with old money I should add, no one was allowed to blow on their food. No blowing on the hot spoonful of soup. No blowing on the hot piece of pork on your fork. Not allowed. It was considered uncultured. Never in my life have I heard of such a thing, so I'm asking my friends out there to tell me: were you brought up with such a pretentious, boneheaded rule? Of course if you were, and you still agree with it, you shouldn't fear to tell me. "Deloney, you blow," you might say and I won't get mad at you (I will). So pipe up, comrades, are you cultured or uncultured?

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:55:00 +0000

I haven't given or gotten a hickey since I was fourteen. I wonder if the kids still do such a thing to mark their territory...

This is a September thought, dropping like a bruised apple
into my psyche.

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:33:00 +0000

Serego Alighieri, an Italian red. Pairs well with my gluttony.

noreply@blogger.com (Deloney) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:12:00 +0000

A book came my way a while ago: "The Poems of Rowen Williams." Does the name ring a bell? No? Well, this likable Welshman happens to be the Archbishop of Canterbury, not a bad day-job if you're a poet. His writing is no Sunday pastime -- he's the real thing -- and in terms of style he's very much a modernist. I can easily imagine hanging out with the guy, chewing the fat over a couple of pints, this good man with his big Santa Claus beard, and whose theology, as far as I can determine, welcomes the most harassed and unlikely pilgrims.