John Dunsworth RIP

A quick word - tomorrow I'm off to Washington D.C. till the end of the week, leaving quantities of instructions for Elodie, my tenant. Winter is coming, so part of today was washing pots and moving plants inside. And yet it's supposed to be warm all next week - 25 maybe, in Washington, if not more. Confusing.

John Dunsworth has died at age 71. Oh that makes me feel old. He played drunk Mr. Lahey on Trailer Park Boys and was a stalwart, apparently, of the Nova Scotia film scene. I knew him way way back; we lived on the same street in Halifax; his father was a child psychiatrist, and, briefly, when I was 9, MY psychiatrist. I did not like him one bit. He had many children - 11 or 12, and I think John was the oldest. One of our family friends knew the Dunsworths well, and when in high school at 15 I was complaining about not having a date for a dance, she called and asked John if he would go with me. He did. He was charming - he was 19, FOUR YEARS OLDER, impressing everyone. Thank you again, John. I wrote to him a few years ago before a trip to Nova Scotia, reminding him of it and thanking him, wanting to meet, but he didn't remember who I was. Obviously our date was not seared onto his memory as onto mine. When my kids were teens and big fans of Trailer Park Boys, knowing that I had once dated Mr. Lahey was my great claim to fame.

Last night, four good shows were on between 8 and 10. Weeks can pass with nothing worth watching and then everything good comes on at once. The Durrells, so entertaining, but at the same time as Suzuki's Canadian seasons show, magnificent footage of Canada's animals through the year - stunning. And then The Life-Sized City, a fabulous Canadian doc about how cities are changing and adapting, at the same time as another fabulous Canadian doc, very beautiful, Sickboy, about a young man with cystic fibrosis who has started a podcast about illness and is now seen and heard around the world. And somewhere in there was Poldark. Thank god for the channel changer.

So - Washington, home of the looney tunes. Staying with Cousin Barbara, seeing lots of family and speaking about the Jewish Shakespeare. Stay tuned.