Sporting Saturday!

After breakfast I decided to get the blog up to date with the last couple of days events and then be brave and follow the England forays into various games of sport they turn out teams for. It should be interesting but I do have a sense of foreboding about it. We shall see.

Thanks to the BBC’s wonderful internet service I could follow the cricket, football and rugby from one site. Also, due to the time difference between here & Europe I could start this shortly before noon. TMS (Test Match Special) should be listened to by anyone who wants gentle and wonderful entertainment. For anyone who has not listened to it, I urge you to do so if only once. It is basically a bunch of guys (ex-players) so enthusiastic about cricket that it is infectious. After having heard England secure the One Day International series against India with an emphatic seven wicket victory – I was beginning to hope the rest of the teams would follow suit.

Fortunately the football team obliged – as they should have done – against Israel.
The rugby team did not continue this feeling of hopeful euphoria however. Although they defeated the USA – as they should’ve – the victory was not emphatic and they shipped a try in the process. I don’t think the Kiwis, Aussies or Springboks will be losing any minutes sleep at any prospect they have of facing England. I feel it is just a question of which one of the Sothern Hemisphere sides we hand the Webb Ellis trophy on to.

Moving on. Now to my penultimate day in Toronto.
I packed everything I would not be needing into my rucksack ready for the move to my hotel tomorrow. Last minute things would be forced in tomorrow morning in time for the 11:00 check out from the hostel which had become my temporary home for the last ten days.
I had a last wander around the downtown area and visited the Eaton Centre in order to telephone Mother in relative quiet. There was a street busker outside with an electric guitar playing a string of Rush songs – very well – so I hung around for a while listening to him play. I wandered back to the hostel to dump my small backpack - well empty it out and stash it in my “mobile home”. I met Henk in the dorm – a guy from Brussels who has a working visa and was staying the night in order to set himself up for his job search on Monday.

After that I just fancied a quiet and restful night and turned down a few offers of visiting pubs etc. (It was Saturday night after all.) I got myself a pizza and settled down in the kitchen area with my book in order to enjoy. This went according to plan until the American Dog Circus turned up! If one dressed a walrus in a short skirt and applied copious quantities of make up to it, certain animal rights movements would object – perhaps I should become an animal rights movement. [As a point of fairness, the walrus had had its whiskers removed.] These two performing sea creatures – walrus & seal – made more bloody noise than a battalion of soldiers in Afghanistan involved in a fire fight and under friendly fire! The walrus in particular was exceedingly loud and shrill and came out with such explosive outbursts it made me jump. I retired to the cafe area – which was closed – for some relative peace. Fortunately after painting their flippers, or whatever they were doing to try and make themselves look less like sea mammals, they departed and the silence was almost deafening. I did consider generating a series of decreasing intensity explosions just to re-adjust to normality, but, not wanting to cause any damage to the place, I gave that a miss.
I read a bit more of my book, finished my pizza, and turned in for the night.

Having slept soundly, breakfasted and checked out, I am now sitting in the hostel reception area taking advantage of the wireless network to get this posted before walking to Gerrard Street West & checking into my hotel. Tomorrow I have a tour to Niagara Falls and then another night in the hotel before taking the train from Union Station on the next leg of my journey. This is the long part where we spend two days & nights on the train as we traverse the prairie lands of Manitoba. “Wheat fields as far as the eye can see man” was how Daryl the rock artist described it. I don’t doubt that but it will be interesting to see for myself – at least for a while.
I don’t know how much Internet access I will have during my train trip, but I will keep my journal as I go and post it as soon as possible.
As they would say locally – “check right back now”.