Guest Blog: Toronto/St. Patrick

Kia ora from Auckland!  (You never stop learning: kia ora is, it turns out, NOT just the name of a fruit drink with a catchy jingle, it's actually a Maori greeting.)


I am planning to update from here, but yesterday Lady Traveller's Big Brother (nothing sinister, actually my big brother) sent me the following guest post about the St Patrick's Parade in Toronto.  Hurrah!  


***
March in Toronto and it's getting warmer (although the doomsayers here exaggerate a lot about the weather). LTBB and LTBBW decided to go for a walk this afternoon [Sunday] and we bumped into the Toronto 2011 St Patrick's day parade! It was a relatively big event in a very multiicultural city with some interesting mixing going on. 


True to all St Patrick's day parades there were dodgy floats pulled by dodgier tractors (note the legs of the man sitting on the toilet):

Lots of irish dancers, cold majorettes and a large, yellow, irish school bus:

There was a bloke on a lawnmower handing out chocolate:


The usual groups of people walking down wearing green t-shirts with catchy phrase (Irish for a day) or with shamrocks:


There were marching bands - the Clare/Galway chinese marching band:



Proud Cork people:


St Patrick:


A "grand marshal" (Brendan O'Carroll):


and my personal favourite, the Ontario Delorian society with real, live Delorians made in Belfast (one was kitted out like the Back to the Future car):


Can't wait for next year, maybe we'll join in?

Picture Dictionary: Clic-Clac (Oh My Aching Back!)

(Image via http://media.comprendrechoisir.com)

Clic-clac [klik-klak]
Noun (French)

Sofa-bed.

Thanks to the lovely Mrs W, I recently rewatched To Catch a Thief and determined that, like Grace Kelly, (though without her wardrobe), I should like to summer in France this year.

Luckily this fits in nicely with the plans of several of my nearest and dearest (to include one new French bébé in July) and is the reason my sister just sent me an email about the house she has rented for us.  The email was in French and I understood everything except the word 'clic-clac'.  So I looked it up.  How French.  How onomatopoeic.  How hilarious.  Hilarious?  Pourquoi?

LTLS and I share a love of the Andrews Sisters and Lílí's favourite song is 'South America, Take It Away' ...  in which Bing Crosby and the girls bemoan the fact that 'there's a strange click clack in the back of my sacroiliac.'  

How funny if the clic-clacs should give us pains in our sacroiliacs.  Well, not funny, exactly, in the sense of being fun; but droll, nonetheless.

Here's Some Shopping I Did Earlier

If Tuesday was Pancake Tuesday then it follows that yesterday must have been Ash Wednesday and, lo, we are now well and truly in Lent.


For a couple of years now I have given up shopping for non-essentials for Lent.  Bad sentence.  What I mean is, I take the opportunity Lent provides to think about what I really do and don't need.  New shoes, however lovely, are not usually absolutely necessary.  Shampoo, on the other hand, usually is.  It's not so much about depriving myself for the sake of deprivation as making the most of what I have and remembering to think twice or even three times before I buy something new.


But that doesn't mean I won't be posting about objects of affection in the meantime.  Au contraire.  In fact, I'm going to use this opportunity to reflect on some of the excellent purchases I've made over the last few months and enjoy them all over again.


All of which is a very lengthy way of introducing this my new water bottle:

Why do I love it?


1. It has swallows on it.  (You may have noticed they're a bit of a theme with me.)
2. It saves me from buying bottled water, feeling guilty about it, refusing to buy bottled water and then getting stuck somewhere with no water and also trapped in a cycle of guilt and indecision.
3. Did I mention it had swallows on it?


Water bottle from Earthlust.

Pancake Daaaaaaay!

I was on my way somewhere else, when I remembered that today was a VERY IMPORTANT FEAST - or at least an excuse to eat pancakes.  Luckily there was help close at hand.

I had a late lunch/early dinner at Breizoz on the corner of Getrude and Brunswick Streets, where I've eaten some of the best crepes outside Brittany.

Being a purist I had a galette jambon fromage, followed by a crepe beurre sucre.  

Yummy.  Anyone out there have pancake-related adventures to share?

Birthday To Yoshi!

Aside from today's regular programming (see Official Hint below) I wanted to say happy birthday to the sister-formerly-known-as-Róisín, rechristened Yoshi by The Adorable Nephew.

Ró, it turns out you share your birthday with Chaz, the-child-formerly-known-as-Chastity of Sonny and Cher.  Which seemed like as good a reason as any to play this song for you.  (How cute is Cher with her stripes and her fringe?)

... put your little hand in mine, there ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb.

MAH!

The Blessings of Good Thick Socks

Presently I came to a place where it went out, but appeared again on the other side of a clump of underbush fairly distinctly.  I made a short cut for it and the next news was I was in a heap, on a lot of spikes, some fifteen feet or so below ground level, at the bottom of a bag-shaped game pit.  It is at these times you realise the blessing of a good thick skirt.  Had I paid heed to the advice of many people in England, who ought to have known better, and did not do it themselves, and adopted masculine garments, I should have been spiked to the bone, and done for.  Whereas, save for a good many bruises, here I was with the fulness of my skirt tucked under me, sitting on nine ebony spikes some twelve inches long, in comparative comfort, howling lustily to be hauled out. 

The Blessings of a Good Thick Skirt have been mentioned before on these pages; Mary Kingsley recommended them for intrepid Lady Travellers exploring Darkest Africa.  I myself would like to recommend a pair of good thick socks, specifically when flying long-haul.

Planes can be cold; they make your feel swell; the toilets are often not as pristine as they might be.  So I get into my seat and put on my thick socks: warm, cozy, comforting.  For preference, I use the socks the airline provides (most still do on long flights) to pull over my  own socks like slippers to create a barrier between me and any nasties on the floor of the plane.  

To read more from Mary Kingsley's Travels in West Africa see Project Gutenberg.  

Once Upon a Time...

... I lived in EAST Melbourne.  And then I moved to SOUTH Melbourne.  But (since yesterday) now I live in NORTH Melbourne.  My new (non red riding) hood is North Fitzroy and it's very hip 'n' happening.  Lots of promising-looking cafés to try out and blog about, interesting shops and pretty, leafy streets.  Fun times ahead!  THE END