Life In The Big City

November 18: Frequent readers – I took a chance and made that plural – will know that I put my motorcycle into storage two weeks ago and since that day, the weather has been stellar.

You’re welcome.

img_26941The Weather Network is forecasting 18C as the high for today, so warm that I might even think of a gin and tonic in the courtyard – for medicinal purposes only. You can never be too careful with malaria. Unfortunately, there has been a gang of potheads doing tuck pointing work back there for the last week. That consists of grinding the mortar out with a power grinder and then repacking the mortar by hand, all while listening to thrash metal music on a portable boom box. There is a tiny amount of dust, inconsequential really, but the “back yard” is off limits.

img_26981Happily, I have a balcony looking into the street. It’s not spacious but there’s enough room to be comfortable and put my feet up. However, at 9:30 this morning a concrete pumping truck turned up at the construction site across the street, and there’s now a small conga line of concrete trucks waiting to unload. For added excitement, the landscape crew has been working with leaf blowers to round up the last of the leaves. Unless I wish to resort to earplugs, the balcony doesn’t seem to be much of an option either.

So I will have to resort to a third choice: I will force myself to walk over to Bayview Avenue, find a nice café on the sunny side of the street, and enjoy a coffee and a wee treat while watching the Friday afternoon traffic make its way home. It’s a hardship, but that’s life in the big city.