Sunday jubilee

Yesterday's pleasures: an hour-long morning bike ride on the DV trail with the DVP closed, enjoying an outpouring of birdsong in a green world of red-wing blackbirds and woodpeckers, the air smelling of wet earth and flowering trees. Then across town to visit the babe, where I lay on the sofa for 2 hours crooning Beatle songs - "She loves you, yeah yeah yeah," - as he lay sleeping on my belly. Never too early to inculcate an appreciation of the best music.

His mother is thinking about what hockey team he'll support: if he's not a Leafs fan, she can live with that, as long as he doesn't support the Ottawa Senators. That she could not bear. Whereas Glamma is wondering what instrument he'll play. And where she'll take him first. New York? Paris? London? I'm thinking Vancouver, because there are so many dear friends on the west coast who'll want to meet him.

And then, after a dinner of salmon and quinoa with old friend Jessica, who played classical music - Aretha Franklin and Bob Dylan - as we ate, I came home and booked my ticket for the Leonard Cohen concert in December. Missed the last time he was here, the concert of the year; don't want to miss him again, rumbly national treasure that he is.

My British mother is happily ensconced in the recovery wing of an assisted living facility, spending her days watching the Royals. I didn't realize that we were in London visiting her parents during the Coronation in June 1952, but she told me about it today - that my father went off with Percy, her father, to watch the celebration and parade, while Mum stayed at home with her mother Marion and her baby, me, nearly two. Missed it! But won't miss Leonard.

My son called after the shooting at the Eaton's Centre, to be sure I was okay. "The chances of me being in the Food Court at the Eaton's Centre," I said, "are zero to nil." Still, shocking. My daughter and I will find some way to link this latest gang-related horror to Mike Harris.

Weather still lousy, dark and wet, but no complaints. Leonard Cohen and the Queen and Eli and I are dancing to the end of love.