Les Blancs, and scams

I'm on interminable hold with Visa, with that horrible music playing; I was stupidly scammed twice in April, buying stuff to help Anna with the boys - a bouncy castle and a table pingpong set, both, it turns out thanks to my friend Google, scams. My kids tell me Visa sometimes refunds those purchases, so it's worth a try, though they make it as painful as possible to wait. Of course they do.

What's weird is that a tiny package arrived from China today with a cheesy bracelet inside, worth, it says on the package, $5. Maybe there's some law that even if you pay for a bouncy castle, if they send a $5 bracelet, they can't be charged as scammers. Who knows? The description of contents is "hand catenary sofa cloud made with magnets." Aha. That helps!

I thought that I should write something about turning 70, so I started to compile a list of all the ways I've been lucky in life, and then of all the ways I'm not so great. More in the first list than the second, happily, but it's an interesting exercise. I told Monique about it yesterday, and she said, for the second column, "You're too nice, you don't set limits, and it's too easy to take advantage of you."

Yes. True. Viz: sofa cloud made with magnets. But there are plenty of worse flaws on the list than gullible. On the plus side: first of all, being white, female, healthy, smart, half-Jewish half-British in heritage and Canadian in citizenship, with a sense of humour. Can't beat that for lucky genes.

The heat wave continues - we're all stuck inside, it's just too damn hot. 35 degrees yesterday, around that today, to continue into next week. Much much watering to do. Poor garden. But first thing in the morning, before the inferno, it's paradise out there; I do my morning inspection, floating through my personal park. Talk about lucky! Picked rhubarb yesterday and made rhubarb-mango compote for my friend Rosemary's visit, but she cancelled - too damn hot, particularly for someone with a heart condition. So I'll have to struggle to eat it all by myself. Lots of beans and lettuce still, too. Cooked some beans with cherry tomatoes and garlic. Lucky.

Tonight's treat: Anna has shared her Disney+ password with me, so I'm going to watch Hamilton again, this time with Lin-Manuel. The show here was so good, I can't imagine the original being much better, but I'll see. Last night, Les Blancs from the fabulous National Theatre in London - an extraordinarily prescient, timely play by Lorraine Hansberry, finished after her death by her ex-husband - a powerful exploration of the legacy of colonialism in Africa. A bit melodramatic, but a true drama in the best sense of the word.

Joyful news: my friend Margaret in Vancouver is now a grandmother. Son William and wife Christina just had a daughter, Faye Catherine. Margaret and I were pregnant together, with Anna and William. The world moves on to the next generation, and the next.

And then, there's this. Yes.