Flower Shopping

            On Wednesday I set about with my second try of finding a birthday present for my daughter. The guitar-banjo stand idea fell through because she already had a stand. Often I just go and buy some interesting candy but it seems kind of tedious to do that as a gift every year. I thought about just browsing around places like Value Village to see if anything caught my eye, but I predicted that would be time consuming with a high potentiality of no payoff. I didn’t want to just give her some junk that she doesn’t need and I didn’t really know what she needed. She’d recently posted something about her and her partner painting their apartment this summer and so I considered looking for something that might help with that but again it would come down to second guessing what she needs from the standpoint of total cluelessness. The time is long gone since a Transformers knockoff from the Bi Way would be a thrilling present or longer still when the box in which a gift came was more fun than the toy or even a stick picked up from the ground was just as exciting as anything one could buy her. I remembered her mentioning that no one had ever sent her flowers and though she probably wasn’t thinking of me, I thought that I might have found it kind of cool if my father had sent me flowers once.

            Around midday I rode up to Sham Florists at Dundas and Dufferin to inquire if they connected with florists in other cities to make deliveries. I found out that they did but that the minimum charge would depend on that set by the flower shop at the other end. That meant that the match in Montreal for a bouquet of flowers from her store might cost six times more with the minimum. But if I bought a larger order that was the same price as the minimum then the only extra charge would be the delivery fee, which was only about $10. The other problem was that there was no guarantee of the same flowers being in the shop in Montreal. I picked three flowers that were part of a more complex arrangement. One was a purple flower with small clustered blossoms, another was a yellow circular bloom and the third was a red ginger flower. She informed me that the arrangement I was looking at was for a funeral but added that it was brighter than funeral bouquets usually are. She said that she might not be able to match the flowers with a shop in Montreal but she would try to follow the colour scheme that I’d picked. The woman behind the counter got one of her employees looking for the nearest florist to my daughter’s address and she found one whose minimum fee was a lot lower than what she’d quoted before. I paid her, gave my number and went home. They’d wanted Astrid’s number, so when I got home I looked it up and then called them back. They told me that the florist they’d found couldn’t place my order and the other one they found had a higher minimum. I told them I’d ride up to give them more money but when I was on my way out the door they called back to tell me that they’d found a shop that charged the same lower fee as the other and so I didn’t have to give them any more after all.

            In the late afternoon I took a bike ride. On Bloor just before Spadina a large man was sitting on the sidewalk with a large dog. His back was against a brick wall and he had longish, wavy hair that was almost the same colour pink as his sunburned face.

            At Bedford a man crossed in front of me with his arms out as if to embrace someone on the other side of the street but there was no one there.

            Some of those green Bike Share velos really clip along. They must be fairly well maintained.

            There were a lot of people riding east all the way to Main this time. Usually I’m pretty much alone after Greek Town.

            This was my first ride since September in which I went to a new street, picking up in my explorations from where I left off last year. I went up Victoria Park to Dawes Road, turned right and then went down Pitt Avenue to St Bedes and then back onto Victoria Park.

            Victoria Park dips into a ravine and on the hill climbing out of it I had to stop at three red lights in a row.

            At Dewhurst I stopped at Starbuckc to use the washroom. Maybe it was the wind direction but the smell of charcoal smoke from Square Boy Burgers was obnoxious.

            I went west on Bloor to Ossington, then down to Queen and home.

            I went back out while I was still dressed to buy a can of Creemore.

            A guy named Paul that rides a yellow motor scooter sits on it smoking or panhandling outside the donut shop beneath me when he’s not inside. A very butch and usually drunk and loud woman stands outside talking or fighting with other drunk people. I don’t know how it started but I heard the woman shouting, “You fuck right off!” a couple of times. I looked outside and she was saying it to Paul, then she swung her left arm and smacked him hard on the side of the head. He continued to look away and did not respond. She walked away and yelled twice with some amusement, “You want another hit?” Paul just lit a cigarette and stared westward up Queen Street.

            I made pasta and heated up a jar of organic tomato sauce with basil. The sauce was bitter and tart at the same time so it needed a lot of doctoring. I tried Worstershire sauce, paprika, cayenne, Mrs Dash and jalapeno sauce but nothing worked. Finally I melted a piece of old cheddar cheese into it and it became tolerable.

            I watched the penultimate teleplay of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour series. This one was pretty predictable too. Jerry is in the hospital with severe gunshot wounds after an armed robbery in which a cop is killed. Two witnesses say that Jerry is one of the crooks and that another got away. The police can’t get anything out of Jerry about his partner. They would like to move him to a prison hospital but the doctor says it’s out of the question for a few days until Jerry’s condition stabilizes. The detectives insist that he be handcuffed to his bed and that the nurses don’t change. The nurse that is taking care of Jerry is Ellen Hatch. She is approaching middle age and is not as pretty as the other nurses, one of whom is played by a pre-Mod Squad Peggy Lipton. Jerry begins to charm Ellen, extolling her “natural beauty”. After a few days he tells her that he loves her and when she returns the sentiment he tells her that if he goes to prison it will be either for life or to wait for the gas chamber so if they want to be together she’ll have to help him escape. She does so and they go to the hotel room of his accomplice where it turns out that his attractive girlfriend of also waiting. Now that he’s gotten what he wants Jerry tells Ellen to get lost and he knows that she won’t go to the police because it will make her an accessory. She leaves but downstairs all the cops are waiting. As I figured, she was working for the police all along. When the head detective thanks her she tells him that this is the seventh time someone has tried to play her and that it is a pleasure to get back at them.

            Ellen was played by Canadian actress Colleen Dewhurst, who was known as the “Queen of Off Broadway” and was married twice to George C Scott.