Look where some of my Vietnamese relatives took me to eat on Father’s Day.
Fathers Day Cultural Outing
It Does What ?
This is how you finally recognize you are older than dirt.
To my surprise it is 22C or 23C every day in Vancouver and of course my shorts are in drawer in Saint Denis so off I went to the sixth floor of the upmarket Hudson Bay Company store and the Ted Baker of London counter. I picked out a pair of shorts and when the young man went off to get a pair my size I noticed that the Ted Baker counter was decorated with a few carefully selected items.
I asked the young woman at the counter to bring one down so I could take a picture.
“What are they she asked ?”
They are 35mm slides I told her.
“And do you look at them through the magnifying glass ?” she asked
No I replied you put a roll of film in a camera like one of these on display on the other side of the counter. You could take 18 or 36 pictures, then you dropped the film canister off at a store and they sent it off and had your pictures printed. A week later you returned for your photos and if you liked some of them enough you paid to have them turned into 35mm slides. When you had enough slides you bought a projector, loaded the slides in a drawer in the projector, invited friends over, turned out the lights and projected the slides on the wall.
“Really !!”
Her colleague returned with the shorts and I went into the changing room, the walls were fairly thin so I heard her repeat, with an air of incredulity what I had just explained.
I came out and started laughing which really confused her. I assured her I wasn’t in anyway laughing at her but I found it hilarious that at 76 years of age I had finally met someone so young they had had no clue what my generations hi-tech had been.
Then her colleague a very nice young man stepped in and explained that a few weeks earlier he had been working at the watch counter on the ground floor and a young customer had asked to look at an analogue watch. Looked at it but couldn’t grasp how it worked and when he explained it to him asked why anyone would want one when there are smart watches.
So there you go Older Than Dirt.
Senior Outings in Kitsilano
Yesterday Tuesday at noon I attended the weekly Kitsilano House Seniors Drop-In, $5 for a light lunch for 25 old ladies and 3 old men scattered at tables around a hall with a nice guy to keep things organized and moving along. At the end I won his “recognize the songs” contest and my prize was a Ziploc bag full of miniature candy bars. I wasn’t going to eat the things so I circulated around the tables offering them to my new friends but was clearly going to have some left so I started offering “take one for your favorite grandchild”. At the last table an elegant well appointed lady replied “ I wouldn’t give that shit to any child let alone one of my grandchildren.” I laughed all the way home.
Today Wednesday 13:00 to 15:00 I went to the weekly Seniors Peer Support – Seniors Friendship Group meeting in the Kitsilano Seniors Resource Centre. This time about 14 older ladies and two men who all knew one another very well sitting around in a circle talking about things like how their weekend went and what Robert Mueller had said in his recent interview. Passing around a small microphone so a lady who is quite deaf could hear the conversation on her hearing aids.
A lady arrived late and announced she had good news, she had been accepted for treatment at the Change Pain centre for her abysmal back pain. She had tried all kinds of treatments and interventions, she has a metal rod in her back and last week her doctor had told her to go to Weeds on Burrard Street and get some edible cannabis to see if it would help her to sleep. She had tried it for a few days but so far no help sleeping so she was now going to double the dosage.
The lady in a wheelchair to my immediate left adjusted the hearing aid hanging around her neck and offered an alternative approach. She grew her own marijuana, hung it around the house to dry, she emphasized not heating it to hurry the drying, then powdered it in a pestle and mixed a spoon full with an equal amount of maple syrup. She claimed it was excellent for most things.
The gentleman to my right said he had an even better recipe for stress but it required a modest amount of hashish which was illegal, quite expensive and difficult to obtain however if anyone wanted the recipe he would give it to them. The first lady asked how well it worked to which he replied “marijuana has no effect on me but I notice that after smoking it everyone else becomes much nicer.”
Then it was my turn with the microphone and not to be outdone I said I also once had a very painful operation, namely I was circumcised. It was due to a misunderstanding, my being very young at the time and thinking they had said circumscribed but I was sure that it hurt a lot and I had cried very loudly. This was much appreciated so I think for next week I am now part of the circle.
Walking home I noticed this young man working on his summer vacation plans.
Too Old To Be An Acrobat, Too Young To Die
My apologies for the extended delay but we flew from Vancouver, BC to Silver Spring MD and after two days on here via Dulles and Frankfurt. This is the first time it has taken me literally weeks to recover.
Then to prove I am not getting any smarter I presumed the hot weather warnings for old people were for old people and not striplings like ourselves I went out an tried to tidy the garden a bit in the current heatwave. Resulting in 3 days in bed feeling terrible and with no appetite.
On Sunday evening Aurelia’s son arrived from outside Barcelona with his 8 year old daughter and 7 month old dog Rufus, as previously agreed, I had forgotten, left them with us for two weeks. With all the garden available around the house Rufus prefers above everything else digging up the tomato plants.
On looking back I don’t know how I became so addicted to podcasts. Living abroad, in my case where is abroad, for so many years I subscribed to the Manchester Guardian airmail edition, it was printed on lightweight airmail paper, and next to the then International Herald Tribune, now the International NYT, and my favourite writer at the time Art Buchwald.
Once ensconced in rural France I subscribed to a variety of periodicals, switching from one political perspective to another and between the UK and the US. I remember variously The Atlantic, The New Statesman, The Financial Times, The NYT, The Spectator, The Economist, The New Yorker, Harpers and recently back to the Guardian digital edition. But then I seldom watch TV.
But today I have been heavily editing down my list of podcasts, I am trying to get it down to 5. This brought about by another dear friend dying on Monday bringing home yet again the salutary warning that time is limited. So no explanation required on that front.
Apropos of nothing,
We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don’t know. W.H Auden
Stay well, stay healthy and please keep in touch, I always enjoy hearing from you.