peaceful Sunday

A stunning Sunday, warm and sunny. I went for a bike ride on the Don Valley Trail, a marvel of wilderness in the heart of the city, where the copper and pumpkin and scarlet of the leaves was dazzling. Spent some time shutting down the garden - covering the garden chairs with a tarp, putting away the clay pots, bringing in the ceramic Japanese lady who sits all summer under the ivy. She'll keep warm inside, now, until the end of April. And so, I hope, will we all.

It said in the paper a few days ago that a thousand people in Montreal paid good money to go and hear George Bush speak. They ran a gamut of protesters burning Bush in effigy, and when the former president appeared, they gave him a standing ovation.

Who the hell are those people? How can there be even ten people obtuse and blind enough to give the time of day to a man who wrought such destruction not just on his own people but on the entire planet? Surely the only good thing about George Bush is that he was so incredibly awful that Americans entertained the radical idea of a black man as President, a man as unlike his predecessor as it is possible to be. We have George to thank for that. Thanks, George, for being the worst president ever and opening the way for Obama. Otherwise, I wish you would stay in Texas so we never have to think about you ever again. Oh - and take those thousand people back with you, please?

I had my usual schizo evening with the television, watching first the marvellous British series "The Choir," about a conductor who changes the lives of people and communities by getting them to sing together. Just after the show began tonight, my mother called from Ottawa to make sure I was watching. By the end, when the disparate group had their grand finale and their entire town came out to see them, I was in tears, and I knew my mother in Ottawa was too.

Then, on one channel, "Endgame," a superb British docudrama about the tense months leading to the end of apartheid - I'd never thought about how it was actually done with little bloodshed, the months of complex negotiations, the complex personalities involved, and through and above it all, the calm wisdom and shining grace of Nelson Mandela.

And at the same time something completely different, a documentary about Monty Python, interviews with all the guys and clips from the show. What delight still, after all these years - the upper class twits, the silly walks, the parrot, the cheese shop, the utter balmyness of it all. My favourite skit no one mentioned - a game of soccer between - do I remember correctly? - the Bournemouth gynecologists and the Neasdon Long John Silver impersonators. The doctors were in long white coats with stethoscopes, kicking the ball madly about because the pirates, with their peg legs, were all stuck in the field, immobile. I mean, who would think of that? And the one with the charladies visiting Jean-Paul Sartre.

Friend Bruce wrote today that he thinks I'm a bit down because my trip is really and truly over, back to the grind and winter coming in. It's true that for about a month there, after my return, everyone was telling me how young and rested I looked, but no one has said that for quite some time. I guess young and rested is over, haggard and ancient is back. Ah well. I'll just sink into the sofa until April, and turn on the telly.