Peggy Connelly

            On Thursday morning there was still no wifi. It looks like there’s a good chance that my free ride is over from the café across the street, at least until the virus is over and they open up for the public again.

            Everyone should have free wifi. I doubt if it’s any more expensive to provide than radio signals and those are free. Money can be made from advertising just like in other media.

            I memorized verse four and most of verse five of “Si ca peut te consoler" (If it’s any Consolation) by Serge Gainsbourg. I would have had verse five but I sang "me" instead of "je" before the time was up.

            I got caught up on my journal, although I still couldn’t post anything.

            In the late morning I was getting ready to go up to the A & W on Dundas or College to see if I could get their password and take advantage of their very strong wifi signal when there was a knock on the building door downstairs. It was a delivery guy with a hand truck full of stuff for my neighbour Nickie. I told him I hadn’t seen Nickie since Christmas and asked when she’d ordered the items. When he said that she’d bought the stuff two days ago I figured that Nickie must be coming back soon. He unloaded the heavy boxes of “iron-ware" against the wall under the mailboxes at the bottom of the stairs. I went upstairs to knock on the door of Nickie's friend, but there was no answer.

            I headed out and ran into my neighbour Benji downstairs. I asked him where the A & W was and he told me that it’s at College and Ossington, but added that until recently there was one at Queen and Macdonell. I’d forgotten about that A & W and it made much more sense that I would be seeing that network on my computer rather than a place as far away as College and Ossington. He said the A & W that was a block west of Lansdowne is all boarded up now. Even though that A & W was closed I figured they must still have their wifi on. It’s really too bad there is no database listing all the commercial spaces in the neighbourhood and their wifi passwords. It could be called Password Pirates.

            I decided that I would go down to the respite centre near Lamport Stadium in Lower Parkdale to use their wifi. Graham, who I know from the food bank line-up, told me that he’s used that place for wifi on many occasions. I started going back upstairs to get my laptop and saw that Nickie’s friend was there carrying her heavy boxes upstairs to put in front of her door. He doesn’t look like a lifting kind of guy. I also could overhear that he was talking to Nickie on the phone. Benji had mentioned that if Nickie was coming in from Jamaica or from anywhere else outside the country she would have to be in a quarantine centre for four days. On my way back out with my laptop I saw that Nickie’s friend had inconsiderately piled up all of Nickie’s stuff against the right side of her door and therefore against the stairs leading up to Cesar’s apartment on the third floor. I figured Cesar was going to come down the stairs with his cane and possibly break his neck tripping over the boxes. I piled them all up in the corner, to the left side of Nicki’s door and away from the stairs. Those boxes really are heavy!

            Before heading down to Lamport I rode over to Queen and Macdonell to look at the boarded up A & W. Man would it ever be nice to have access to all that wifi the empty place is sending out. Obviously it’s not empty if there’s a wifi signal though. I assume there’s a modem in there.

            I went down to the respite centre and asked the security guard about the wifi. He went in to ask at the desk and came back with the answer, “No”. I asked if I could talk to someone and he went back inside. A woman came out and explained that because of the coronavirus their wifi is now only available to people with beds there. She offered me food to go but I wasn’t interested.

            It’s ironic that homeless people these days are more connected than people like me. I’m shut out of the internet from all sides. I left and considered my options. I could go back downtown to U of T and use my laptop on the campus network until the battery ran out. But it was cold and even sometimes snowing and I really didn’t feel I could handle sitting outside for an hour just to catch up on my blogging, especially since there was a risk of having to pee again and having no place to go. I would have to wait for a warmer day to go downtown again.

            Before going home I swung by Freshco. There were only about five people ahead of me. Inside I bought three bags of the firmest soft grapes I could find. I got a pack of strawberries, two cans of peaches, a jar of honey, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, some Bavarian sandwich bread, some shaving gel and three double packs of Irish Spring soap. Three double packs cost $4.50 while one six-pack costs $5.00. Isn’t buying in bulk supposed to be cheaper?

            I had a slice of ham with mustard and some yogourt with honey for lunch.

            I finished putting all my porn photos in categorical folders.

            I took a siesta for two hours and was still groggy when I got up. I was feeling depressed and going through internet withdrawal, since I hadn’t been online at home since Monday morning.

            I did my afternoon exercises for the first time in over a week while listening to an episode of Amos and Andy. This story was from March 1951 and although television had been mentioned before it was the first time it had figured prominently into a story.

            The story begins with Kingfish and Sapphire having dinner as Kingfish complains about the food. Sapphire has made beef soup out of the same bone for five days and tomato soup from one tomato for three days. There’s a knock on the door and Kingfish peeks through the curtains to see a process server that has been trying for weeks to hand him a summons about not paying his grocery bill. Kingfish tells Sapphire to tell him that he’s gone to Europe. The process server says, “You told me two weeks ago that he’d died!” She says, “Isn’t penicillin wonderful?” and slams the door. She tells George that this was the last time she was going to lie for him and that if he doesn’t get a job she’s going to do something desperate. Then she goes out to her women’s club meeting. George goes to the lodge hall where he runs into Andy. They decide to watch the television at the lodge and find a show that is being broadcast from a restaurant. As the camera scans the guests, Kingfish sees Sapphire sitting with a handsome man.

            It becomes neighbourhood gossip that Sapphire is cheating on Kingfish with another man but only Amos knows the truth and he’s been sworn to secrecy. The handsome man is in fact Sapphire’s cousin. He’s opening up a business in Harlem and Sapphire is trying to get him to give Kingfish a job.

            Kingfish goes to talk with the owner of the restaurant and finds out that the man that was with Sapphire is an out of towner named Harry Smith and that he’s staying at the Palace Hotel. Kingfish and Andy go to his room and pretend to be Hollywood producers. They tell Smith that they saw him on TV and want to put him in the movies. Smith says he’ll head right out to Hollywood but after Kingfish and Andy leave he calls Sapphire to tell her that her husband was just there. Later Kingfish and Andy are passing a store and see Sapphire and Smith on TV again. Kingfish decides to write Sapphire a letter telling her that he’s joined the French Foreign Legion sand then he hides out at Andy’s place. Sapphire comes looking for Kingfish at Andy’s and sees his feet sticking out from under the bed. She tells him the whole story and Kingfish is so relieved that he takes Sapphire out to dinner to the same restaurant from which they broadcast the TV show. The camera has just shot Kingfish and Sapphire together live and Kingfish says, “Television is a wonderful thing!” A man approaches their table and says, “I’d given up on finding you but television is a wonderful thing!” and then he hands Kingfish the summons.

            I finished another draft of my poetry manuscript, “My Blood in a Bug”. I've basically put all of the text into verse form but most of it hasn’t really become poetry yet.

            I backed up all of my files and now I’m bored. I don’t have the brain power this late in the evening to work on any poetry and it’s too early to make dinner. I hope that tomorrow is warm enough so I can go downtown and go online.

            I weighed myself before dinner and I’m at 89.9 kilos. I’m not technically overweight yet but right on the edge.

            I had a potato, some canned gravy and the last of my steaks for dinner while watching the last episode of Hancock’s Half Hour that has downloaded so far. This story starts off with Tony Hancock as a photographer making a portrait of Sidney with an ancient camera that has passed down from his grandfather. Tony uses too much magnesium and next we see the fire alarm go off and the fire department heading out. Then we see Tony and Sidney walk into a camera shop with his camera all in pieces. He is told they stopped making the parts for that camera in 1900. At first Tony is reluctant but they sell him on some modern equipment, of which Tony buys 800 pounds worth on credit. I would imagine that 800 pounds in the late 1950s would be at least 2000 pounds now and so maybe $4000 over here. Sidney tries to stop Tony from going into debt but he’s too excited.

            They go into a restaurant and Tony begins to cause a lot of anger by getting into everyone’s face with his new camera until he is finally thrown out.

            Tony develops all of his photos but the results are full of double and triple exposures and it is clear that Tony knows very little about photography. There is not one picture that he can sell and his first payment on the equipment will be due soon.

            Sidney gets the idea that they could make some news and sell the pictures to a newspaper. He gets Tony to go out on a ledge in a skyscraper while Sidney photographs him. But Tony has forgotten to put film in the camera and several other people are there with cameras. On top of that, before Tony can get back inside someone shuts and locks the window. Once again the fire department has to come and rescue him.

            Sidney next reads in the paper that there is a thousand pound prize being offered for the best underwater photograph. He dresses Tony up in goggles and flippers and they head out. The result is left up to the viewer’s imagination, as all we see when the show ends are the rescue boats heading out to sea.

            I had yogourt with honey and strawberries for dessert with coffee and watched an episode of the 50s skit comedy game show “Take A Good Look” hosted by Ernie Kovacs. There are three celebrity panellists, one of which is Ernie’s wife, Edie Adams. Another is Cesar Romero and the third is Hans Conried. The premise of the game is that each guest has an event or accomplishment for the panelists to guess. There are three comedy clues featuring Ernie and sometimes others, often only remotely related to the topic. After each clue there is a round of questions from each panellist as they try to narrow the topic down. The guest starts off with $50 and that increases by $50 after each round in which the panellists remain stumped. If they can’t guess the event at the end of the game the prize money is doubled to $300 for the guest.

            The first guest, a young man is brought out. The first clue features Ernie as an opera singing gondola driver in Venice as a couple gets on. Ernie begins to row but he ends up balancing in the water on his oar as the gondola goes away.

            Romero guesses that the young man is in the navy.

            The second clue has Ernie firing a fake shotgun into the air above his desk and a live duck descends in a parachute.

            Edie guesses that the event involved the young man descending into the water. 

            Hand actually guesses the event, as he had read about it in the news. The young man had fallen from a destroyer and had been forced to swim in the ocean at night for two hours until a sailor on a passing ship heard him singing the Tennessee waltz and rescued him.

            Ernie Kovacs was famous for his love of cigars. The sponsor for almost every one of the different shows he did on television was the cigar maker, Dutch Masters. He smokes throughout the whole show with a big ashtray on his desk.

The second guest is an elderly woman. The first clue shows Ernie as a used magic carpet salesman. A young woman in a sexy harem outfit comes to buy one. She takes it for a test drive and we hear it crashing.

Edie has been joking that on the last show while she was in New York Ernie kissed the attractive young woman named Peggy who was featured in the clue. Hans comments that she is in all of the clues. Edie points out that she lives up the street from them and she is Mrs Dick Martin. At that point the bell rings and Edie has used up all of her time chatting.

Peggy Connelly, the actress in most of the skits with Ernie Kovacs was indeed married to Dick Martin at the time. They divorced in the early 60s. She was also a singer and had recorded with the New Christy Minstrels in the States. In the 1970s she moved to Europe where she had a single act for twenty years until she formed the trio The Jazzberries with Sarah Tullamore and Wendy Taylor.
            In the second clue, Ernie waters a little flower at his desk but an enormous flower grows out of his lapel.

Cesar Romero guesses that the event took place in the early 1900s.

The third clue shows Ernie slowly turning his head and miming the watching of a parade as parade music is played.

Edie guesses that it had to do with parades but the time is up.

The woman, Mrs Haley Woods McConnell was the first queen of Pasadena’s Tournament of Roses in 1905.

Until the very end Edie keeps asking what the magic carpet had to do with the answer.

             By bedtime I'd deleted 523 photos from my harddrive. At least boredom has some uses but it’s amazing how little space got freed up.