On Saturday morning I almost finished memorizing “Les filles n'ont aucun dégoût” and worked out a better English version of the chorus: “But there is no disgust at all / when women love Neanderthals / They like to wallow where it’s foul / Women have little repug / although I swear and I’m a thug / they still want me to kiss and hug”. But I think I could just as easily make it gender neutral and say “people” instead of “women”.
Since I’m turning 65 next year I’ve
applied for my “Old Age” pension and I was surprised that they even call it
that anymore. “”Senior pension” would be better, but looking up the origins of
the word “old” I saw that we’ve really drifted from the original meaning of
“ripe” or “grown-up”. “Ripe” is all right but it might give the young the
impression that we are edible. I think “grown-up” is the best one and so that
means that I have one year of childhood left.
When I got to the food bank line-up
at my usual time it was already past the steps of the apartment building at
1501 Queen Street West.
I opened up my dual language book of
French stories and started reading he second one by Baudelaire. The Baudelaire
pieces are more prose poems than stories but there is something story-like
about them. The first piece, “The Old Acrobat” describes a joyous street
festival in Paris where many entertainers set up booths for people passing to
enter to see a quick performance and offer some alms in exchange. In one of the
booths is an old acrobat, too ancient to still perform his craft but trying to
make a living anyway. The narrator is about to offer him some money when he is
swept away by the disinterested crowd.
The prose poem I read in the line-up
was called “The Little Poor Boy’s Toy” and it paints a picture of two little
boys. One is rich and behind an iron fence on the grounds of his stately home.
Beside him and untouched is a very expensive and beautifully crafted toy but
what is holding his attention is the little poor boy in the bushes on the other
side of the fence. He is showing the rich boy the toy that his parents made for
him. Both boys have found something commonly entertaining in this toy and they
are both laughing as they play with the homemade wire box containing a live
rat.
Behind me was the young guy of half
English and half East Indian heritage. I finally asked him his name so I
wouldn’t have to write “the young guy of half English and half East Indian
heritage” anymore. He told me his name is Dave and I also learned that at
thirty-five he’s about ten years older than I’d thought.
Dave said that since it was Saturday
he wanted to take his bike to Bike Pirates to get something adjusted. He
expressed the wish that there was a similar “do it yourself” as Bike Pirates
but for guitars. That would be a good thing. I looked it up and there are quite
a few different kinds if DIY places in Toronto. There are places for learning
to sew and do leather work; there are places to learn how to cobble shoes, to
make hats, handbags and jewellery; there are places to learn to work in
ceramics; there are places to learn carpentry; there are places to learn
upholstery; there are places to learn to knit, do macramé and fabric dyeing;
there are places to learn to make beverages; bartending classes; obviously
there would be cooking and painting classes; there are soap making workshops;
wine making classes; glass and metal workshops; a taxidermy workshop called
“friends forever”; letter pressing classes; zine making classes; terrarium
workshops; mitten making workshops; chocolate making workshops; homemade
bitters and syrups workshops; there’s a well-known DIY machine shop around
Ossington and Bloor; but there is no DIY type shop for guitars, I guess because
guitar repair is much more specialized than bike repair. There are thousands of
people that know how to fix bikes in Toronto and so it’s not hard to find ten
of them to volunteer to help people. Plus bicycle parts are a lot more
plentiful and therefore cheaper than guitar parts. There are guitar repair
courses offered by a few shops but at $1000 for five days it’s a little steep
for people that line up at the food bank. There’s a school of lutherie in
Leslieville that gives lessons in guitar repair and in acoustic and electric guitar
building. One can build an acoustic from scratch for $4000 in a four-week
course.
I think Dave might already know the
basics of fixing his electric guitars but wants a place like Bike Pirates where
one can pop in, get second hand parts and little help from volunteers. It’s
very different from paying for courses.
I told Dave I have a Kramer electric
and he suggested that it might be worth a lot of money. He said that he’s
always looking for electric guitars to use for spare parts in case I want to
get rid of any. I do have three extra electric guitars that I could show him
but I don’t know if by “get rid of” he meant, “give away”. I’d sell a couple of
them for a small fee.
He told me I should always loosen my
strings after I’m finished playing so the tension won't pull the neck out of
kilter. I looked this up and every expert on line says that is absolutely
wrong. In fact frequently loosening and retightening the strings would do more
damage to the neck than leaving them in tune. The only guitars that could be
damaged by keeping them tight are classical guitars because they don’t have
truss rods in their necks.
Dave told me he plays slide blues
guitar, but he also plays bass. He said he’s been listening to a lot of
Creedence Clearwater Revival lately. I commented that Creedence seems like
pretty old music for someone his age to be listening to since it’s exactly from
my era. He said he listens to Creedence because of the bass.
A very loud young French Canadian
man with his shirt off exposing pierced nipples on a slim but well-tones chest
was riding by on a skateboard scooter trailed by his off-leash Jack Russell
terrier when he stopped to talk to someone on the steps of 1501 Queen. He
started talking in a thick accent about how he’s designing underwear that will
keep his testicles in place so they don’t fall downtown on one side or the
other. He said he was going to buy cigarettes so he stepped back on his
scooter, gave some commands to his dog in French and they continued west.
Marlena gave out the numbers and I
got 26. The line didn’t start moving until around 11:00.
Downstairs there were piles of boxes
of large pizzas by the door. David said he would probably eat his on the way
home. I told him that it would take me four days to go through one of those. He
explained that food is his only drug. I said that when I was younger I could
eat three helpings at every meal and burn it all up, but not anymore.
At the desk when I showed Hunter my card he said, “This chair is very
comfortable”. I said, “Congratulations!” and he looked at me funny.
On the first set of shelves there
were still some spices left over from the windfall of last month. They still
had big bags of masala and of paprika. As almost always they had taco kits,
although they almost never have all the proper ingredients for filling a taco.
They had cookies, mirangue candies, granola cups and little single servings of
tartar sauce. I didn’t take any of those.
From the top shelf I took two small cans of "green Mexican
sauce", although it sounds kind of disgusting the way they worded it. I
don’t think anyone should eat the sauces that I've made anytime I was green.
They indicate in smaller letters that it's salsa. It's ironic that any company
up here that makes that condiment would simply call it “green salsa” without
having to explain that it’s sauce. But this green salsa is imported from
Nopalucan, Mexico and I guess the company, San Marcos assumes that we wouldn't
understand "salsa".
There were a variety of canned beans as usual. I picked a tin of
chickpeas and two small cans of “baked” beans. I got six peach-mango drinking
boxes.
I almost missed the tuna, since there were only a few tins on a lower
shelf.
At Angie’s section she'd just yelled at the woman in front of me for
being too pushy and asking for extras. “You always give me a hard time!” she
told her.
I passed on the milk and yogourt. I also didn’t take any eggs, since I
had seven at home, didn't plan on eating any that week and since there’s almost
always at least three eggs given out at every food bank visit there was no
point taking home any more until I’m almost out. Angie gave me a bag containing
two fresh chicken breasts. As an afterthought she handed me two bags of frozen
mystery pastry pocket hors d'oeuvres and said, "For tonight, when you're
snacking”. Since I knew I’d be having pizza that night the snacks would go in
the freezer for another time.
From the bread section, perhaps because I had pizza on my mind, and
since I already had sauce and cheese at home, I took a medium sized pizza
crust.
In front of me at Sylvia’s station there was a traffic jam of three
people getting vegetables. Sylvia was trying to give the big Jamaican woman
some potatoes but she protested that they would make her bag dirty. Sylvia
insisted that she should have some and the woman scowled as she kept putting
them in. I grew up on a potato farm and the only time I’d ever seen potatoes
that dirty was while they were still in the ground. Usually the harvesting
process shakes off a lot of the dirt. I still have enough from what Sylvia gave
me a couple of weeks ago to last halfway through the summer. It takes me two
minutes to brush the dirt off one of those potatoes every time I make dinner.
I didn’t take any potatoes. Sylvia gave me one onion, an orange pepper,
and a net bag containing three ataulfo mangoes. There were various toppings of
large pizzas available. Sylvia opened one box up and showed me pepperoni and
mushroom and I told her that was fine. I’m not that picky and would have taken
any topping. If it hadn’t seemed sufficient I would have added some things to
bump it up at home.
Near the door there was a box of big chunky carrots but I skipped those
and just took three limes.
The big score this time was the fresh chicken breasts, since there is
rarely fresh meat at the food bank, but the pizzas were a nice treat for a
change as well.
As I left the food bank I saw that Graham was first in line and waiting
to go in, with about ten people behind him.
I went home to put my food away and then headed down to No Frills where
I bought a half-pint of raspberries, three bags of grapes, a frozen Canadian
Berries pie, mouthwash, shampoo, conditioner, Greek yogourt, and a bag of Miss
Vickies chips. The chips were larger than the regular size and didn’t show up
on the scanner and so the gorgeous express cashier needed to call for a price
check, which took a couple of minutes. The bill was $52.41 and I handed her
three $20s, a toonie and a loonie, thinking she'd give me back $0.60 and a $10,
but she stood there looking puzzled and I think my brain was thrown off balance
by her beauty and I suddenly forgot the logic of the transaction and just took
back the $3 to accept the $7.60 that she gave me.
Since
I didn’t plan on going out again once I got home I decided to ride a little
further west on King. I rode up Wilson Park Road, which is a lovely little
street with a lot of old and differently shaped medium sized houses. When I
turned on Queen and passed the food bank there were still fifteen people lined
up outside.
No comments:
Post a Comment