Food Bank Adventures: Homeless but not Phoneless

            On Saturday morning it was so warm during yoga, without even a hint of a breeze, that it was as if every window was closed even though they were all open.

I worked out the chords to the second line of “Ah! Si j'avais un franc cinquante” (Oh If I Had A Dollar Fifty) by Boris Vian.

            I finished positioning the chords for "Raccrochez c'est une horreur!” (Stop Calling! You’re a Horror!” by Serge Gainsbourg and I ran through the song in French and English. I uploaded it to my Christian's Translations blog and began the editing process that is always needed when the text is transcribed online.

            At 9:35 I went to the food bank and found the line-up to be pretty short. I took my place on the pastel orange heart and took out my book. I got through a half a page of “The Return of the Prodigal Son" but that part is just a boring dialogue between the prodigal son and his older brother about the need to renounce the only thing one really possesses.

            Beth arrived and took the spot behind me. The first thing she brought up was the big oaf who’d been bothering us but mostly her last week. I suggested that maybe he has some kind of condition that puts his behaviour beyond his control. I added that he might also be homeless. She said he couldn’t come to the food bank if he was homeless but I wasn't sure that was true. I looked this up later and saw that the Daily Bread client enrolment form online requires only either a phone number or an email address, both of which a homeless person could have. There doesn't seem to have been a census of homeless people with cell phones in Toronto but in some cities in the United States at least 50% of homeless people have smart phones. Here in Canada the province of British Columbia acquired 3,500 smart phones this year and are in the process of distributing them to homeless people as part of a program to fight the spread of Covid-19 amongst the disadvantaged by giving them a means of accessing information.

            Beth thinks there should be more ready made meals for homeless people available at the food bank.

            She again predicted that there would be explosions in Canada soon and said that she knows this because she has prophetic visions. She said that she once gave six numbers to her ex-husband to use for a lottery ticket and five of them were the winning numbers. Unfortunately her husband had the machine pick the numbers instead and so they didn’t win. I asked if that was why she dumped him. She said she divorced him because he was abusive and that once he even tried to strangle her. She said her son wants his father dead even though he was just a baby when they split.

            Beth asked how I was doing and I told her that I’m preparing to start school again. I need to upload financial information for my grant application but I found out that I couldn't access my Canada Revenue Agency account because I need a new security code. I was able to do it last year but they sent me a new security code at the end of May, saying I’d requested it, I was surprised because I didn’t recall asking for one. I thought it was a mistake and didn’t bother with it since I thought I already could get into my account. I think that it must have been something in my Canada Pension Plan application that caused the reset.

            Beth said she wouldn’t want her information to be online because it would be too easy to hack. I argued that it’s hard enough for me to get into my own account so I couldn’t see how a hacker could do it. She said that hackers are robbing ATM machines and that they can make a certain machine give out money at a certain time while a confederate just arrives then to take it as it rolls out of the machine. She said she saw it on Unsolved Mysteries.

            I looked this up and apparently it’s done with malware like Winpot that thieves can download for as little as $500. It's even designed with the imagery of a video slot machine so the user can have fun pretending to play for a jackpot that wins every time. But as far as I can tell it only works on certain common models of older machines and not on new ones. It hasn't really caught on in places like Canada and the United States where there is tighter security around ATMs and also it’s fairly easy to block the malware if the ATM company is ready for it. There are hacker gangs in Europe that have been quite successful at robbing these machines. It seems that the most vulnerable machines are those little Nautilus brand ATMs that we see in stores. They use an old version of Windows that is no longer supported by Microsoft. If people have used their credit cards to withdraw money the hackers can extract the numbers and use the people’s accounts to take out money. But again the flaw has been fixed in most of the machines. If you work for a company that makes ATMs and you show your bosses a new way to hack the machines you will probably get a bonus or even a promotion.

            I said that tech companies hire former hackers to help improve their security and that law enforcement has benefited throughout history from the innovative minds of former criminals. I've never heard of a cop inventing anything and that makes sense because if they had creative talent they wouldn't have joined the police in the first place. Art itself is by nature criminal and so it is logical that the best criminals would be artists.

            The food came around 10:15. Not as early as the last few weeks but still ahead of the official time.

            The only item I kept that would normally be on the shelves downstairs was a 190 ml container of citrus fruit salad. I took the litre of 2% milk and the small bag of balls that were made of something spiced, breaded, deep fried and then frozen. It’s hard to tell what something like that is made of until it is thawed out but later I heated one in the oven and found that it was fish. I got the usual two small containers of fruit bottom yogourt. I don’t normally take the bread that’s offered but this time it was a big bag of eight triangular rosemary focaccia buns. I think I dated a girl named Rosemary Focaccia once but then again I might be making that up. I noticed later that most of the buns had a little dot of mould here and there but they were easy to cut out. The only other thing I grabbed from the crate was a bag containing a bunch of spinach, two orange peppers, two potatoes, a parsnip, two apples and two oranges.

            The only thing Beth wanted from her bag of vegetables and fruits was a lemon and so she gave me two orange peppers, three oranges and two apples. She declared that she finds lemons sweet and asked if I had any but I didn’t. I gave her my spaghetti, my can of pasta sauce and my Lucky Charms. When I offered her my six eggs she gratefully took them but was curious why I didn’t want them. I explained that I tend to only eat three eggs a week and so if the food bank gives me six I wind up accumulating eggs and after a few weeks had a dozen. I said I had three eggs left now and so next time I would probably take the eggs. She didn’t want my head of cabbage or my pack of tofu but the elderly East Asian woman was glad to receive them and I gave her Beth’s cabbage as well. She usually takes most anything but didn’t want the cans of green beans that Beth and I were trying to unload on her. For the first time I had something in my crate when I took it to leave in front of the food bank. I saw in the other crates that nobody else wanted their green beans either.

            I took my food home to put away and then headed out to the supermarket. The cherries at No Frills were very expensive and cheap red grapes were too soft and so I bought five bags of the moderately expensive black sable grapes. I grabbed a pack of chicken drumsticks, I finally remembered to buy dental floss, I got olive oil, a container of Greek yogourt, orange juice and at the last minute I recalled that I was out of potatoes so I picked up a 4.5 kilo bag.

            For lunch I sliced in half and toasted one of the focaccia buns for a cheddar, tomato and lettuce sandwich.

            I spent the rest of the afternoon writing my Food Bank Adventure, but wasn’t finished by the time I had to cook dinner.

            I had a fried egg and a warmed up naan while watching two episodes of The Adventures of William Tell.

            In the first story William, the Bear and Anton are in Italy picking up weapons that have been hidden for them in a shack. After crossing the border into Switzerland they stop at an inn for food and drink. While they are there Austrian soldiers arrive escorting a beautiful young woman handled by a stern matron. Observing from the kitchen Tell and his men see that the woman is being held against her will. Anton climbs up to her window and she says she is the Contessa Maddelena and that she has been kidnapped. Anton says they will try to help her. That night who should arrive at the inn but Landburgher Gessler. He is the one that ordered her abducted because he plans to marry her and he has brought a priest with him for that purpose. When she meets him and learns what he plans Maddelena calls him a fat pig and runs to her room. When Gessler says to bring her back the soldiers find that she is gone. Tell, his men and Maddelena return to Italy and the cabin where they found the weapons before. In the hiding place the consignment of arms has been replenished. Gessler and his soldiers surround the cabin and are surprised to find that they have crossbows. The Bear is seriously wounded and when Anton ventures out to get him water he is shot in the shoulder. Tell breaks the legs off a table and uses it for a shield to go out and retrieve Anton. Meanwhile Maddelena shows that she is no slouch with a crossbow. Maddelena tries to save everyone by giving herself up but Tell grabs her and carries her back in. They make it but not without an arrow grazing his arm. The soldiers storm the cabin and everyone is captured. Gessler orders Tell and his men hung but before his order can be executed the Italian authorities arrive. Gessler and his men are arrested. The contessa explains to the colonel that Gessler kidnapped him and William Tell and his men Rescued her. Gessler is charged with having no papers, carrying arms and abducting an Italian citizen. He is thrown in the cells. The colonel says that he and the other Italians admire Tell’s fight for freedom and tells him that he might find the border unguarded for the next hour if he wants to return to Switzerland.

            Maddelena was played by Serbia born Nadja Regin in her first television role. She later appeared in The Saint and Danger Man. In films she was one of the first Bond girls, both in "From Russia With Love" and “Goldfinger”. She said her favourite film role was in the British comedy “Don’t Panic Chaps". In the story British and German soldiers during WWII are stranded together on an island. They have learned to live peacefully together until Nadja arrives and causes them to fight again, this time over her. In the 1970s she and her sister started their own publishing company and she used it to put out her own books: "The Victims and the Fools"; “The Puppet Planet” and "Recollections". She was fluent in five languages. She was one of the organizers of the London demonstrations against the NATO bombing of Serbia. 

            In the second story an Austrian diplomat named Count Heinemann is in Altdorf to arrange for the release of one hundred Swiss boys that had been abducted and forced into slave labour. Meanwhile a homeless orphan boy named Carl has just killed a pigeon with his sling when Gessler is passing through the forest. Gessler takes the bird for his supper and so Carl knocks his hat off with his sling. Gessler sends his soldiers after the boy. William Tell kills a soldier and rescues Carl and takes him to the baker Aunt Maria's who lets Carl hide in her loft, after she gives him a bath. Gessler issues a proclamation that the one hundred boys will not be returned until Carl is in custody because Gessler sees him as an accessory to the murder of a soldier. When Carl hears of this he sneaks away and turns himself in to Gessler. Gessler demands to know who killed the soldier but Carl refuses to tell him. When Carl learns that Gessler still won’t return the boys he spits in Gessler's face. Tell shoots an arrow into Gessler's chamber with a message that he will give himself up if Carl and the captured boys are released. Gessler keeps his end of the bargain and Tell surrenders. Tell is sentenced to beheading in the square. Carl organizes a meeting with the released boys and they plot to save Tell. They kidnap Count Heinemann and just as tell is about to lose his head Carl shoots a stone tied with a message from Heinemann saying that he will be killed if Tell is not released. Gessler would love to lose Heinemann but he has too many powerful friends and so Tell is released. Carl comes to stay with tell and his family.

            Carl was played by Frazer Hines, who in his role as Jamie McCrimmon was the longest serving Doctor Who companion. He was on the British soap opera “Emmerdale Farm" from 1972 until 1994.