Cho-Cho

            Who’d have thought that September 7^th would be the hottest day of the summer so far? I went to the food bank, and as I arrived, it looked like I was behind Julia and Margaret, but as I was walking to the back of the line after locking my bike, a young couple showed up. Julia told them that they were behind me, but someone further up the line told her that they had been there earlier, but had gone for a walk. Gee! Why doesn’t everybody just establish their place in line and then go home? The way the line becomes organized is just a matter of knowing who you are after, and as long as they know who they’re after, everything is fine. Julia told the little West Indian woman of East Indian descent, with the red hair that she was after me but that I was not in line because she was smoking.

            I got my number at about 10:15 and went home.

            When I came back at 12:30, it was announced that there would be a delay of at least half an hour because the truck was coming. To clear a path, one of the food bank workers, whom I’ve never heard tell anybody to do anything, told everyone to go around the corner, south of the driveway and line up according to their numbers. I asked, “Why according to our numbers?” because the order didn’t make any sense at all. He answered that I could go and lie down on the grass if I wanted, proving that the order meant nothing and that it was just about control. I said, “Well, you’re not starting till at least 13:00, so I might as well go home.” He told me that how long it would take depended on what was on the truck, but added, “But it’s for the good of the community!” and then asked, “Don’t you think so?” though I don’t think he really wanted my opinion. It seemed like an odd thing to say in this context. I went home. Twenty minutes at my place with the fan blowing on me, while drinking a tall glass of water was a lot more comfortable than standing around in the heat outside the food bank would have been.

            As I returned and walked up the driveway, a woman associated with the food bank called to me, “Watch out buddy! The truck is backing up.” I saw that the only truck that might be about to move was a food bank van, but it wasn’t moving and in order for it to back up in such a manner that I would have to get out of its way, it would first have to pull ahead and go out onto the street, which it didn’t look like it was in a hurry to do. I gave her a look that asked, “What the hell are you talking about.” She glared back at me, though the whole exchange was a mystery to me.

            Bruce was my shopping helper again. I took a can of olive oil spray, which is pretty good stuff. The other choice was a taco kit.

            Below that was Ryvita snack bread, gourmet popcorn and rice cakes. I took the whole-wheat crackers.

            I took some individually packaged orange-cranberry cookies and a small bag of brown rice.

            There wasn’t a lot in the way of canned beans, but I got some chickpeas.

            There was no canned fish at all.

            I scored a couple of cans of coconut water, which never tastes as good as I expect, but after chilling it in the fridge, it did help to cool me down.

            I took a box of Shreddies.

            In the cold section, Hazel offered a choice between packs of multi-flavoured Activia yogourt and pear flavoured Greek yogourt. I was thinking that pear-flavoured yogourt would be boring, so I took the other.

            She gave me three small cartons of 2% milk. There was one of those sausage shaped containers of ground chicken and a variety of salads from Longos. I took the tabouli and the creamy coleslaw.

            From the bread section I grabbed a bag of large, spicy tortillas and another of whole-wheat bagels.

            The vegetable lady had a bag of small potatoes for me, a small yam, three cobs of corn, an onion, a bag of variously coloured cherry tomatoes from the public garden, two long peppers. Before she put the peppers in my bag, she stopped to admire them and exclaimed, “Just look at my beauties!” The last peppers I got from there turned out to be extremely hot, which was okay by me, but I could have used some warning. Even after several washings after chopping the peppers up for a soup, my hands were still burning at bedtime. She gave me a bag of what she called spinach, but it looked like it was full of past their prime dandelion greens.

            She gave me two apples and one orange. One of the apples was almost entirely rotten, while the other was only one third bad. The food bank has it’s own garden, while it should have its own orchard. I wonder if there’s good fruit in the food banks in the fruit belt down around St Catherines.

            She handed me a chayote and asked if I knew that it was a “cho-cho”. I confirmed that I did, but that it’s also the name for something else. She said, “You know more than me then!” I didn’t tell her that “cho-cho” is a slang term for “vagina”.

            There was a 40% chance of rain predicted for around the time of my bike ride. As I was getting ready I went out on the back deck to look at the clouds. I saw a plane fly through one of them, but it wasn’t dripping when it came out the other side.

As I rode east along Bloor, I felt a couple of drops at around Ossington, but then nothing. Past Yonge Street it started a little bit again. At Church there were big puddles and a light rain was falling. I continued until Sherbourne and decided to turn around. I rode back to Yonge and then south, where the street was absolutely dry. On Queen, between John and Peter I got caught in a three minute downpour. The bitter smell of toasted ozone assaulted my nostrils. It was hot most of the way home, but the damage was done and my ass was wet.

            I have managed to gradually re-download most of the Alfred Hitchcock films that I’d accidentally deleted a few months ago while transferring them to my external hard drive. While searching for torrents I found a couple of his movies that I’d previously tried to download but which didn’t move because they weren’t being seeded. I tried them again and this time I successfully downloaded “The Wrong Man” and “Number 17”. I watched “The Wrong Man” on Wednesday night as the rain finally burst open. It starred Henry Fonda and was the true story of a guy who got arrested for a series of armed robberies and who several witnesses identified as being the man the cops wanted. He was innocent though. His wife went insane during the trial. The real guy finally got caught, but Fonda’s character’s wife wasn’t cured for another couple of years. The cinematography was good and a fairly boring story was made to be pretty suspenseful, but I wouldn’t say it was even in the ballpark for great Hitchcock films.