Splashurday

            On Saturday morning I almost finished memorizing Serge Gainsbourg’s 1972 song “Les Bleus” as sung by Zizi Jeanmaire, from the point of view of someone on the receiving end of a violently abusive relationship. This one has taken me several days to learn because though the eight verses are in iambic tetrameter, the end of every line rhymes with “oo” and so it’s less mnemonic than it would be if the rhymes alternated.

            I worked on a story I’ve been writing for a couple of years called “Infidelity and the Fiddler”.

            At 9:30 I got ready to go to the food bank for the first time in exactly three months. I hadn't gone since January 21 because I was busy with my Romantic Literature and my Poetry Master classes. I wrote an essay on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for one course and several poems for the other, so I couldn’t spare the time to stand in line.

            It was raining when I rode over to 1499 Queen Street West to take my place in line and it only stopped for about two minutes for the entire hour and a half I was standing there. I had brought an umbrella but I didn’t bother with it because it wasn’t an extremely heavy rain, except when passing cars recycled it from curbside puddles and splashed it sideways into the line. Even though I was standing the full width of the sidewalk away from the street, one wave soaked me on the left side from the knee down.

            Because of the rain I couldn’t read the book I’d brought with me.

            The food bank did not open until twenty minutes later than it is supposed to and even when it did the line moved very slowly. I found the wait particularly difficult due to the weather and because my standing in line muscles have lost their development. I don’t know if those muscles are in my legs or my brain but for whatever reason this was not a very tolerable ninety minutes of my life.

            It was after 11:00 by the time I was downstairs.

            The food bank has a much newer reception desk. The big guy that took my membership card was rocking out and humming along to a heavy metal band whose tune I did not recognize. He looked up and said to me, “This is the best break up song!” I asked him what song it was and I think he said, “You Walked Away” by The Ground Up.

            There were only two volunteers at the shelves and the first set of shelves was pretty close to bare.

            I took a jar of organic pumpkin seed butter that was nine months past its “best before” date, a squeezable jar of sweet pickle relish that was a year over its expiry time, two small bags of coffee, a can of chick peas, a can of curried cauliflower and lentil soup and a can of tuna.

            Angie commented that she hadn’t seen me in a while and I told her I’d been busy with my Romantic Literature course. She asked, “Is that what you like to read?” I nodded but later I wondered if she’d been thinking of modern romance novels rather than literature from the Romantic period, which lasted from around 1785 to 1832.

            I told Angie that I didn’t need any eggs or milk this time around and that I’d just take some meat. She gave me a choice between a turkey and a ham. Although the turkeys were not as large as the one I got at Christmas time, I can only handle turkey a couple of times a year and I’m still turkeyed out from the end of December. I associate Easter more with ham and so I got a little Black Forest ham.

            I didn’t find any of the bread they were offering very attractive, as it was all just plain white loaves.

            The only vegetables I took from Sylvia were three and a half carrots and a bag of small potatoes. She wished me a Happy Easter and I returned the gesture.

            All in all I would say that this particular food bank haul was not worth the hour and a half wait in the rain.

            I rode home, put my food bank items away and then rode back out in the rain to No Frills. I grabbed three bags of grapes and then went to the meat section. In the meat section there were three strip loin steaks on sale but there was no best before date. I asked a young woman stocking another part of the meat section and she looked puzzled until she finally said, “Well, they just came in today”. It sounded like she was guessing but I took the steaks anyway. I also got three chicken legs that were dated for next week. I bought a frozen apple pie, three bags of skim milk and two containers of strawberry Greek yogourt.

            When I got home I went back out to the liquor store and bought a small case of Creemore lager. Creemore comes from Creemore Springs, north of Toronto. I doubted if the name had anything to do with the Cree tribe, since they’re originally from the north. It turns out the name is derived from the Irish “croi moi” which means “big heart”.

            I had a piece of toast with sliced tomato for lunch and another piece with chocolate date spread for dessert.

            I got caught up on my journal.

            I worked on a poem set during a summer six years ago when I was living on mostly rice and not feeling very healthy.

            I weighed 89.4 kilos in the evening, so my weight seems to be slowly climbing back up as my fast Lenten diet is about to end. It’s still not back into the slightly overweight range though and I think I weighed a lot more last year at this time.

            I had the rest of the can of beans I’d opened on Wednesday with two pieces of toast and a beer for dinner while watching The Rifleman. This story begins with a man named Britton who is representing a town called Centre City, which is in competition with North Fork to have a railroad spur run off the main line to one of the two towns. The negotiations with the railroad by the representatives of the two towns will take place in a few months. Britton hires a conman named Dave Stafford to go to North Fork and gain the people’s trust enough that he will be the one chosen to represent North Fork and then to blow the deal in favour of Centre City.

            Dave does indeed ingratiate himself with everyone in North Fork, including Lucas. To Dave’s disappointment the town counsel decides after all on Lucas being North Fork’s representative. Shortly after that however it is learned that a notorious train robber named Wade Joyner has died and left Lucas $500. Lucas never knew the man but the town counsel decides that if Lucas is associated with a criminal then it might hurt their chances of winning the spur. They choose Dave to represent the town instead. Lucas tells Dave the story of a stormy night when he helped a stranger out who swore he would repay him someday. He says that must have been Wade Joyner. Later when Lucas’s inheritance arrives it comes with a letter that refers to that stormy night. The thing is that Lucas had made up that story as a trap for Dave and so the letter proves that Dave has been conning them all. Dave gives himself up without a fight because he is a talker and not a fighter.