The Full Time Prison of Part Time Work

            On Saturday morning during song practice I watched the squirrel traffic along the power lines. Some squirrels cross to the south side of Queen to look for food and others traverse to the north. This morning one black squirrel went to the south side but after he made the jump from the wire to the pole he was attacked by a brown squirrel. The chase took the form of a spiral up and down the pole. If they’d been covered in wet paint, one red and one white they could have created a barbershop pole. The black one finally escaped to the wire and came back to the north side.

I continued to hunt down and cut and paste into a document different versions of the chords for “J’suis Snob” by Boris Vian. I found four versions and three of them are basically the same with slight variations such as a G chord instead of a G7 and so on. Next I’ll sit down with my guitar and see which, if any of them, work.

            I finished memorizing “Encore Lui” (Him Again) by Serge Gainsbourg. The speaker in the song is describing her walk home along various streets of Paris. She establishes in the beginning that a man is following her and at the end of each verse he is still behind. In the last verse she has rushed into her apartment and slipped into bed. She turns and he is there. There are three possibilities. One is that she is the victim of a predator. Another is that she is being followed by thoughts about a certain man. The one I went with was that this man was with her all along and they are lovers. Since this song was not popular I could not find the chords on line. I started working them out and I’ll probably finish them on Sunday morning.

            The food bank line-up was at the long end of the month because the social services cheques hadn’t been issued yet. Graham was standing at the end of the line and explained that he was a little further ahead but was holding Veronica's place while she went down the street to get pizza from the church people. He said he'd never seen someone with a rollator move so fast as she did when she heard about the pizza. She came back with two.

            Graham said that he’d probably be coming to the food bank for two more weeks because he wouldn’t get paid until after that at his new job.

            He said that on the way to his first day of work he found a dime. On the next day he found another dime and on the next one more. He didn’t find any thing on the fourth day but on the fifth he found two dimes and a nickel.

            It turns out that Veronica has done similar work in the past to what Graham is doing now, which is working with spread sheets in Excel. Veronica said she had used them to coordinate contract workers for an agency.

Graham told a story about having worked in a warehouse on contract through an agency. The company planned to take him on as an employee after the contract expired but just before the expiration the agency switched him to a different company. They didn’t want to lose their cut of his paycheque by letting him move on to a more secure position.

That reminded me of when I was working as a dishwasher in the cafeteria of Canadian Marconi in Montreal back in the mid-70s. After three months I would have been eligible to join the union but just before that they suddenly came to me and informed me that it was my last day. I went to the office to pick up my final paycheque, then I went back to the kitchen, grabbed a big stack of plates, smashed them on the floor and left.

The system seems to be designed to keep the poor working class in a full time prison of part time minimum wage work making it impossible to take time off to look for a better job or living space.

In Parkdale, every few blocks there is a barrel sized planter with flowers growing. I noticed that there was now one near where we were standing just west of the crosswalk leading to Sorauren and Queen. There’s a taller centrepiece with vertical orange-red flowers surrounded by various colours of blossoms that hang over the edge. The beauty of the display was impeded by an orange and black construction sign that was leaning against it.

At one point Veronica looked up at the sky and started talking about being a Christian and that everything in the universe is hers but she just doesn’t want it. I said, "Pardon me?" but she said she was just talking to herself. Then she said, "A lot of people think that Christians are weak minded but that’s not really true.” I wasn’t going to shatter her faith. What would be the point? If someone lives by belief and you take that belief away from them they just attach themselves to another belief. Faith is impenetrable to logic. I only argue with religious people if they try to convert me.

Marlena gave out the numbers and I got 31. I was wondering where the old man was and hoping he wouldn’t get shafted this week but then I saw him with number 12. Half an hour later he came out with his shopping bag so heavy that he dragged it along the sidewalk behind him as he headed east.

Downstairs the big guy behind the desk informed me that my Swiss Gear backpack is the same kind as his. Time will tell if it will last as long as my old Heys backpack of which I’d had three over the period of a ten-year warranty. Heys didn’t like me much when I came back for a second replacement.

The most visible item on the first set of shelves was a 397-gram bag of kettle potato chips. One bag will last me a long time but they’re nice to have around.

Larissa reached for a 175-gram bag of Oreo coconut cream, fudge dipped thin bites. She told me, “They tell me that they are very good" so I let her put it in my bag. She also gave me two hockey pucks of Laura Natural soap. Their website address was carved into each bar but I think they just use a Facebook page now. Based on the colours of the pucks and the names they have to match those colours it looks like I got their calendar petals and their summer sweet pea.

There were lots of canned beans and there was a kind I’d never tried, so I grabbed a can of cannellini beans. According to a food site they have a fluffy texture and a slightly nutty flavour.

There was a choice between a carton of cranberry cocktail and a little six-pack of 100 ml bottles of Frizz blond soda from Italy. The little bottles of pop were attractive and so I took them, but it was a mistake. I didn't read on the label that the drink is a non-alcoholic aperitif. Since it’s an aperitif and meant to be served before a meal it’s bitter in order to stimulate the appetite. This particular brand seems to be an unsuccessful fizzy alcohol-free attempt at simulating the flavour of vermouth.

Valdene the food bank manager was taking Angie’s usual place at the refrigerated section. She handed me a tower made from a 750-gram container of yogourt, a 500-gram container of 1% cottage cheese and two 125-gram quarters of garlic butter. I handed her back the yogourt and she asked if it was yogourt in general or if I wanted a particular kind. I told her I was partial to Greek yogourt and she turned to the fridge behind her and gave me six small containers of Oikos mixed berry Greek yogourt. The food bank is moving up in the world if you start to be able to choose from more than one kind of yogourt. I didn’t take any eggs, generic frozen ground chicken or hot dogs. Valdene tried to sell me on some meatless meatballs, while at the same time assuring me that she wasn’t trying to sell me on them. She said she's not into that kind of thing but they are delicious. I passed on them because I didn’t want to pass gas all weekend.

Sylvia mocked disappointment when she asked if I was going to pass on her potatoes. I explained that I still have some that she gave me before. I took four tomatoes, one of which was almost too soft. She gave me a very healthy looking big bunch of radishes and from the “take what you want” section near the door I grabbed a bunch of broccoli.

Although the haul was meat-poor and fruit-poor as usual, it wasn’t a bad haul as far as dairy and vegetables are concerned. The big bag of kettle chips was a good score as well.

I took my food home to put away and then went down to No Frills. I bought two bags of cherries. The black sable grapes are back after a two-month absence and so I got two bags of those as well. I grabbed a pack of six pork chops for $5.80. I only took one container of yogourt. Everything else I picked up were non-food items: mouthwash, garbage bags and a lint roller.

I have noticed myself making mistakes in money transactions lately. Sometimes I give too little and sometimes too much. This time the bill was $55. 45. I had counted it out right before handing the money to the cashier but then I gave her two $20s, a $5 and three toonies but forgot to give her the other $5 until she pointed out that I was short.

I rode west on King. The air was fragrant coming off the lake. I turned right when King met Queen and went east without staying for the wedding. There was no line-up this time when I passed the food bank again.

I had three corn crackers with cheese for lunch and a sliver of apple pie.

I worked on my journal.

I did some exercises in the afternoon and then continued writing about my morning.

I heated a burger for dinner and had it on a toasted bagel with tomato, cucumber, ketchup, mustard, relish and hot sauce. I ate it with a glass of Creemore while watching

the first two official episodes of The Veil. It was hosted by Boris Karloff and he played a major supporting character in each story.

            The first story, set in the Victorian era, begins with druggist Hart Bosworth putting things away as he prepares to close his apothecary shop for the night. A woman walks in, pulls a derringer and kills him. Meanwhile on a ship bound from England to Paris, Hart’s brother George has a vision of his brother’s murder. At the next port he takes a ship back to England. George first goes to his fiancée Julie, who we recognize as hart’s murderer. She tells him someone he knows has already been arrested for the crime, but although George didn’t see the killer’s face he did see the hands and back and knows Albert Ketch is not the murderer. Julie urges him not to tell the police about his vision because they will think he is insane. He goes to the drug store where the police are still investigating. Karloff plays the bumbling police sergeant in charge of the investigation and Patrick MacNee, the future John Steed of The Avengers TV series, plays the somewhat smarter constable. George tells them that he knows that Albert didn’t commit the murder but that he can’t say how he knows. Later when George talks again with Julie he tells her that he is going to sell the shop and they can leave and get married. She protests that she doesn’t want to leave because now that they have the shop they can establish themselves. In an unlikely matter of fact statement she says she didn’t go through the trouble of killing his brother just to pack up and start over again. George goes for the police.

            Julie was played by Jennifer Raine.

            The second story was set in the 1950s. John Prescott is driving home to Boston when he stops to help a woman named Lila whose sports car has broken down. He finds she’s only out of gas and drives her to town. They stop for a drink but the bartender is looking at her suspiciously and when he goes to the phone to call someone named Morgan Debs she wants to leave. She says for him to drop her at a service station and to meet her that night at Lookout Point. She meets him there but a car pulls up. She says it’s Morgan Debs. John goes to confront Debs but after talking with him for a while he turns and sees Lila is gone. Debs urges him to forget about it but he can’t. He goes back to the bar and forces the bartender to tell him Lila’s last name. It’s Kirby and he finds Lila’s home. Lila’s mother invites him in and tells him to wait in the study. Lila doesn’t come but Morgan Debs does. Debs turns out to be Lila’s uncle and he reveals to John that Lila has been dead for three years. Debs had met her to talk about her father’s estate but she was upset and drove away carelessly. Her car went over Lookout Point and crashed.

            Lila was played by Eve Brent, who played Jane in the movie “Tarzan’s Fight for Life” and in one of the Tarzan TV series.

            Morgan Debs was played by Boris Karloff.