Just after midnight on Saturday I accessed my bank account
online and discovered that my income tax return had been deposited. That meant
that I would be able to continue building my bicycle starting at noon.
I was
excited when I got up that morning about soon having money to work on the bike.
But I don’t like being excited while I’m doing my yoga. Anticipation does make
for a very good song practice afterward though.
I finished
memorizing another French song and I’ve also almost fully learned by heart the
ten-minute piece that I plan on doing at the Smiling Buddha on June 3rd.
At about
9:45 I headed over to the food bank. The sun was shining on me as I drove west
on Queen and there didn’t seem to be as big a line-up as usual. I was behind an
Eastern European gentleman with whom I’d had a philosophical conversation at
the old food bank location back in the winter. We shook hands and discussed the
new place. He thinks it’s much nicer than the previous layout. I commented that
the space that food bank clients access now is actually smaller than before.
Because they are already in the basement now they no longer have a basement for
storage and so they are spread out over a larger area on the same level, which
I guess makes for less work since there are no stairs to climb in order to
stock the shelves.
It was a
windy day, which caused some of the shopping carts that were marking people’s
places in line to tumble onto each other like dominoes. While it hadn’t been
cold while riding there on the sunny side, we were on the south side and it was
quite chilly in the shade. Several of those that had marked their places in
line were standing in the sunshine on the north side of Queen while others were
defying the rules and warming up inside. It seemed that the only people in line
were the smokers, including the guy with the electronic cigarette, who was
close enough for me to breathe his second hand fumes as well. The research on
second hand e-cigarette vapour is far from complete and though the studies that
have been done so far show that inhaling it is considerably less harmful than
taking in second hand tobacco smoke, it can’t possibly be equal to fresh air.
The comparison might be more similar to concluding that a fifth of a teaspoon
of rat poison in your soup is less harmful than a full tablespoon.
My Eastern
European line-mate went inside to warm up, but his friend, who seems to be from
the same place and similarly septuagenarian, held their spot in line. Though
not as proficient in English as his compadre he expressed curiosity to me about
the e-cigarette and was wondering if it was full of herbs. He told me that he
was very glad to not have smoked for the last twenty years but confessed that
he was still burdened with the vice of drinking.
One
consolation of it being a breezy day was that I could just move upgust of the
most windward smoker and then I wouldn’t’ have to breathe what they were
blowing.
I was
reading the first tale in a dual-language book of French stories for which each
page has the translated version on the opposite page. I find it to be a
valuable learning tool. The first story is “Micromégas” by Voltaire and it’s an 18th
century work of science fiction about a godlike being that visits earth from
the Sirius star system. I was just two pages into the fantasy though before the
cold made it too uncomfortable to read.
Some people
just behind me were complaining about having to line up outdoors on the main
street. I repeated what I had been told by food bank volunteers before they
moved of how there were not going to be any more outdoor line-ups at PARC. I
suggested that they did not anticipate how difficult the PARC staff is to get
along with. One guy who said that he used to volunteer at PARC offered the view
that PARC people don’t get along with anybody.
The same guy, who was missing
several teeth, though probably only in his fifties, mentioned that they have a
dentist once a week at PARC and he had to take advantage of that. I can’t find
any reference to a visiting dentist at PARC on their calendar, but if it’s true
I wonder what facilities they would have there on a once a week basis and what
exactly a visiting dentist would be able to accomplish within those
limitations. I assume they’d just be able to do an exam and then a referral to
an actual dentist’s office.
When the
line started to move I did so more slowly than at the previous location, simply
because there was a much shorter distance at the other place between the door
and the food, whereas now it’s about ten times further, with lots of twists and
turns to slow people down. I was the last in a group of five to be admitted but
as soon as I entered the building I saw that my Eastern European friend had
been waiting in the entryway and since he was ahead of me in line I sopped and
let him go ahead. Meanwhile though, the line behind me had advanced into the
building as well and so I had to back them up in order to back up myself. I was
only moderately successful, resulting in the first five people in the line
bunching up in front of the entrance.
While
standing there I noticed a message that the Tuesday food bank would be
cancelled after April 25th, leaving only the four days from
Wednesday to Saturday.
I was at
the head of the next wave of five and since the door guy recognized me as
knowing the way down, he had me lead the way so he could go back to watch the
door.
Once I’d
wound my way to the food room, things ran fairly smoothly. I went up to the
desk and after they checked me off on the computer, I got number 19, which
proved my perception was off when I’d assessed that the line had been much
shorter than last time. The previous week I’d gotten number twenty.
From
Angie’s cold section I received a litre of milk. She offered me four fruit flavoured,
kid’s yogourt cups, but I saw to their left some Astro fruit bottom yogourt
cups and asked if I could have those instead. She let me have them but
confessed that she shouldn’t have brought them out until the other ones were
gone. She gave me a small bag of McCain’s frozen Masala fries. Those McCains
sure have come a long way since I swam in their pool in Boy Scouts and my best
friend played hockey with their kids back in New Brunswick. She passed me an
unbranded bag of small, frozen samosas and assured me they were delicious. Then
she offered me a choice of meat or pizza. I asked what the meat was and since
she showed me it was that generic ultra-ground mystery meat they often hand
out, I decided this time on the pizza, which was a boxed frozen Dr Oetker
Ristorante “ultra thin” goat cheese and vegetable pizza. Pizza makers must have
made a killing on the thin crust craze, since they don’t have to spend as much
on dough and they can charge more for it. It’s basically pizza toppings on a
big cracker. Angie’s offering were rounded out with a plastic bag containing
six eggs, which I held onto while the vegetable lady filled up the rest of my
backpack with potatoes, carrots, a big onion, a yam, a nearly perfect pear and
the rare treat at the food bank of two vine ripened tomatoes that had not
gotten soft at all.
From the
shelves I took a crumpled bag of President’s Choice All-dressed potato chips, a
box of non-flavoured gelatine and a handful of lemon flavoured, fruit and nut
Larabars. There was no spaghetti sauce but there were a few cans of crushed
tomatoes, which I guess is close enough if one has tomato paste and a good
spice rack. There was a good selection of canned beans and as usual I grabbed
some garbanzos. There was also lots of tuna and so I got a can of that. From
the soup section I picked another carton of chicken broth. The cereal offerings
were of chocolate, peanut butter or honey nut Cheerios so I determined the
Honey Nut to be the least disgusting. My helper said that I could take two
boxes this time. In the baked section I asked the bread lady for raisin bread
and she located some raisin buns for me. They were beside a big bag of
pretzels, which she offered and I accepted. That was already enough bread for
me, since I don’t eat very much flour made stuff anymore, but I guess we were
on a roll and so when she handed me a multi-grain loaf I didn’t reject it. She
said, “I know you like the healthy stuff, right?” I nodded and thanked her.
On my way out of the food room, the
door person was standing there, and so I asked him if they were ever going to
have indoor line-ups. He told me that it wasn’t possible because of all the
fire codes at PARC. Even though there was probably enough room in these long
twisting halls to contain the usual food bank line-ups, it was considered a
breach of fire regulations. That means that whereas before at the old place we
were able to at least stand in the sun on sunny days while we were waiting, now
we would always be on the dark side of Queen on cold days. Maybe by the time of
the summer solstice we would almost have some sunshine touching the south
sidewalk on Queen at the time of the late morning when we line up. But in the
summer we would probably want to be in the shade anyway. Next winter though was
going to be another very cold and shadowy story.
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