...on account of it was a drizzly grey mid-teens outside and the rotted Santa Claus parade had taken over the neighbourhood. I did wander down to look before it started because the bands line up on Christie St and practise while they wait. (Nice, once the silver flutes stopped playing The Twelve Days of Christmas.) Yes, the thing is tacky and commercial, but the kids like it. The rotted part comes anywhere north of the parade, with slavering drivers trying to get in to park (impossible after 8 am) or out to go home (impossible until 3 because the streets are unmoving: too narrow with traffic calmers to let cars pass each other even ordinarily, let alone when both sides are clogged with illegally parked vehicles.) And of course being Torontonians they lean on their horns, as if that will make gridlock vanish, and the actual residents of this area hem-hem long to heave a brick at them damned furrners.
But wandering down Christie St on the west side let me have a look at the Ukrainian Cultural Centre slightly north of the subway. Which now has the perplexing sign JIL on it-- perplexing because JIL was our family holding company. However, there's also a large red pixel board over the door flashing the message Jesus Is Lord. I am aghast. What happened to the Ukrainians? When did the Charismatics arrive? I mean, as Mrs Islamic Studies said disapprovingly about a similar group arriving in vans on our street, 'We don't want *that* kind of people here!'
Also: I somehow had the idea that Melissa Scott's Lost Things was a space opera. It's not at all, so I sat on the sofa swathed in quilts and blankets and hats and fingerless gloves (it may be mild outside but my house is *cold*) and read that while the beets baked. And very nice too.
