28 March 2020 (Day 9) - We expected our first grocery
delivery today, from Real Canadian Superstores. It didn’t come, or hasn’t as of
4:30. It was supposed to arrive between 10 and noon this morning.
There is a website where you can supposedly follow
progress of your order. And the delivery company’s system spits out periodic
email updates, telling you what’s going on. Karen has been receiving emails all
day that keep changing the time of delivery. The last she heard it was going to
be between 2:45 and 3:15. No emails since then.
The website tells you really useful things like who is
picking your order. Fred was doing ours for awhile, then somebody else took
over, then it appeared that two of them were doing it. That went on for over an
hour. How long does it take to pick a relatively few items from grocery
shelves.
The last thing at the website was an alert saying the
toilet paper we’d selected was out of stock and being removed from the order.
Karen’s feeling was that we could have limped along until Thursday – the end of
our 14-day self-isolation – with the food supplies we had. Not happily, but we could have manages. She agreed to place
the order at my urging only because we were running critically low on toilet
paper. Now it appears we won’t get any. We have two rolls left.
Keeping returning travellers in strict self-isolation
is not going to work if we can’t get
supplies delivered to our doors. I think it’s clear the grocery store’s systems
and their delivery partner’s systems are overwhelmed by unplanned-for volumes. Who
knows how much of the information we’ve been getting is accurate or up to date?
*
I had an absolutely brilliant dream last night. It’s
been years since I was able to remember a dream in the morning. I woke from
this one at about 6 and lay for the next 45 minutes going over it in
detail, puzzling. It’s like a whole, slightly surreal short story.
Well, not that short...
Scene
1. Karen and I – or some woman
and I – are on our way to visit her parents. I’m meeting them for the first
time. They live in a high-rise apartment in a city. We arrive at the building
and go in. There’s a cramped lobby with a single elevator. I’m vaguely aware
the elevator controls on the wall are a little unusual, but the woman I’m with knows the place well and operates
them. The parents live on the first floor – the first floor above ground level,
as in Europe.
We go up in the tiny elevator and are greeted at the
door of their apartment by her parents. They seem formal and nervous and not
very warm. They remain shadowy figures for the rest of the dream. We go through
into the living room. The apartment is very small, but quite nicely appointed,
almost opulent, and “modern,” in a 1930s sort of way.
As we pass the kitchen – really just an alcove off the
passageway – I notice some kind of cooking device, sitting on a low table. It’s
a bit like a microwave in size and in the fact it has a glass door on the
front. Inside, I can see a large roast, or ready-to-roast piece of meat,
smothered in some kind of sauce. So we’re here for dinner.
Somehow, I’m the last to enter the living room which is
sunken a few steps and small, claustrophobic. The others are already seated in
chairs ranged at one end of the room. The only remaining chairs are at the
other end and seem too far separated for comfortable conversation. So I pull
one, a red leather tub chair, towards the others. But then it seems
like I’m sitting before an examining committee or something.
Scene change. It
was decided – possibly it was the plan all along – that we would go for a walk
in the countryside before dinner, which is where we are now. No idea how we got
here. We’re in a fairly wild, rocky area that the woman and I know and have
walked in before, though apparently not recently. Her parents don’t know the
area at all, and just follow along, saying nothing.
It seems there are several possible routes we could
go, and we’re a little unsure at first how to get on the one we want. In the
end, we think we’ve found it. I say to the woman, “Why can’t Mike find his way out
here like we can?” We laugh at the hapless Mike. (This would be my hockey buddy
Mike Haas, with whom I’ve never been on a country walk, and who is not in the
least hapless. Hey, Mike! You’re in my
dreams!)
We come to a place where we’re not so sure of our way.
There’s a wide, tunnel-like pathway off to the right, lined with thick vines.
We’re a little doubtful whether it’s wise to go this way because we think we
remember it comes to a dead end where the tunnel gets impossibly low and narrow
and rocky. We take it anyway – and end up exactly where we feared.
We’re about to turn back when I say, “Maybe they’ve
fixed it up since we were last here.” I go a little way into the narrow part,
and it turns out I'm right. The tunnel – it really is a tunnel now, not a shaded pathway –
is wider than we remembered and it’s now roughly lined with unpainted drywall,
and dimly lit. So we go forward. It does get progressively narrower, but it’s passable.
Finally, we come to a door.
We go through the doorway and up a few steps into a
strange little room – half bathroom, half kitchen, tile lined. There are shiny
old-fashioned sinks, cubicle doors, mirrors, but also a small refrigerator. I
open the fridge and see broken bottles inside, some still filled with liquid.
One larger bottle with the neck broken off has a fizzy amber fluid in it. I say,
jokingly, “Anyone want a drink?” and hold the bottle out. The woman I’m with rushes
over to get some. I snatch the bottle away and say, “No, no. We have no idea
what might be in it.” The others agree and I put the bottle back.
Then we notice the room has opened up to one side –
though still cramped – and there’s a little shop there, selling a variety of
things, including books. We’re bewildered by this. What is this place? Why is it here? I notice a shop attendant, a
dour-faced young man, hovering. “What’s this place for?” I ask him. He looks at
me as if it's a stupid question. “Well,
you can buy things here,” he says, patiently. “Like fruit.” He gestures further
back into the shop and, for the first time, I notice a pile of fresh fruit,
possibly papaya.
Scene
change. We’ve left the little shop and apparently passed back
through the tunnels. We’re in wild, Canadian-shield-like country again. The
parents have gone on ahead, leaving the woman and I alone. We’re enjoying the
walk and the time alone together. It’s nearing sunset and we’re standing,
cuddling and admiring a wide view with a long, low, rocky ridge in the distance.
Then we’re startled by the sound of a train.
It sounds as loud as if we were standing right by the
tracks. We can very clearly hear the metallic clanking of the wheels on the
track and jingling sounds as the train trundles by. But we can’t see it. We
look all around, bewildered, trying to figure out where the sound is coming
from. “The tracks must be on the other side of that ridge,” I say finally. But
that doesn’t explain how it sounds so loud and so close.
Scene
change. I’m back in the city. The woman has gone on ahead. I’m
to follow and meet her at the parents’ apartment for dinner. It’s alright, I
know the way. I come to the apartment building and go in.
I press the call button on the elevator. I realize too
late that I was supposed to select the floor I wanted first by turning the dial
above the call button. I realize my mistake when I glance down as I’m entering
the elevator and notice the floor selector set to five. No problem, I figure, I
can select the correct floor once I get on. But the elevator is quickly past
the first floor. I fumble with the floor selector and end up picking an even
higher floor.
I get off somewhere near the top, into a cramped lobby
with a passageway leading off it. Why have I gotten off? Don’t know. I figure I’ll
just wait and call the elevator again and go down to the first floor. I use the
dial to select floor one and press the call button – or I think I do. But
apparently I haven’t, because I’m stuck in this lobby, waiting, for what seems
like ages, growing more and more frustrated.
At one point, a drunk staggers out into the lobby and
mutters unintelligibly. A little later, an official-looking guy comes out and
opens a panel in the wall to reveal a hidden office. He’s evidently the
security director for the building. The drunk appears again, but no longer appears
drunk, and the two confer. I glean from their conversation that the drunk is
not really drunk but an undercover agent for the security guy. (Well, don’t most apartment
buildings have undercover agents?)
More time passes. The opening to the passageway fills
with people, seemingly a party that has spilled into the lobby, or come to
an end and is breaking up. Finally, another guy comes out into the lobby and
looks at me, as if to ask why I’m standing there without having called the
elevator. He spins the floor-selector dial to his own floor, and presses the
call button. This time the elevator comes.
We get on. I can’t figure out how to select the floor
I want without switching away from the floor he wants. For some reason, I end
up following him off the elevator at his floor – and into his flat. (Hey, it’s
a dream! It doesn’t have to make sense.)
I’m incredibly tired now and frustrated and worried
about blowing off the dinner party. I look at my watch and see it’s 3 – I’m
assuming a.m. How did it get so late!? We’re in the guy’s tiny bedroom. There’s
a low Scandinavian-style platform bed. He’s getting ready for bed.
Scene
change. I wake in a panic to discover I’m in the guy’s bed. I’ve been sleeping beside him and have no idea
how this came about or what time it is. I scramble out and begin putting on my
clothes, which are littered around the floor. The guy is awake now too, propped on one
elbow, looking at me quizzically, but not saying anything. It doesn’t seem like
anything has gone on between us. We just slept in the same bed together apparently.
“I’m in so much trouble,” I say. He doesn’t respond.
I’m almost finished dressing and ready to get out of
there when I look down and notice I’ve accidentally put on one of the other guy’s
bright yellow socks. I angrily start to take it off, but it’s really tight, so
I’m hopping around on one foot, trying to yank this yellow sock off – when the
dream ends and I wake up for real.
Any Jungians out there want to take a crack at this
one?
*
Desert
Island: Time for some jazz. This is my default mellow jazz
selection, a live album, featuring the great tenor sax man Stan Getz and pianist
Kenny Barron as soloists. It was recorded at the Cafe Montmartre in Copenhagen
on July 6, 1987 and between March 3 and 6, 1991.
I first heard Stan Getz, on record, 50 years ago. I
was working at Western University’s Weldon Library. I got to know an older guy –
well, he was in his 30s. He was one of the professional librarians, guy named
George Robinson. George was a big music fan. I told him about my recent move
away from pop and folk to classical and he suggested I try jazz next. And he just
happened to have a couple of jazz LPs he was tired of and would sell cheap. I agreed to
buy them. They were in pristine condition. One of them was by Stan Getz. I can’t
remember now which album it was, but it hooked me on jazz, and Getz.
Dirty
Hippy: Parsley, Sage,
Rosemary and Thyme was S&G’s third studio album, released in 1966. I bought
it probably in 1967, and played it incessantly on the little portable record
player I had in my bedroom. I was a recent “folk” music convert.
*
The
Cryptic Corner
Kudos to my clever sister, Pat, for solving the last
two cryptic clues. (She has already received her fulsome praise.)
The last was, “The habits of actors (8).” It’s a kind
of riddle that plays on an alternate definition of “habits,” usually given as “a
long piece of clothing worn by a monk or nun.” But this sense of the word can
be extended metaphorically to include the customary or defining clothing of any
specialized group of people.
The answer? COSTUMES.
I warned you that cryptic puzzle setters were
tricksters.
I probably haven’t said enough about cue words and
phrases in clues. Not all setters give them in all clues, but there are some
types of clues in which they are almost always given – really must be given, or
you couldn’t solve them.
The hide-in-plain-sight clues I talked about are one
example. Another is clues where you find the answer by reversing the order of
the letters in one of the clue words. Cue words such as “up” – for when the
answer runs down in the puzzle – or “back” when it goes across should appear,
or some variation or fairly easy-to-spot alternative.
Here’s an example: “Kitty’s back to stay (4).”
This one is a bit gnarly. You’re supposed to think “kitty”
refers to a cat. It doesn’t; it refers to the pot in a card game, which is also
sometimes called a kitty. The non-cryptic clue is “stay.” The other gnarly thing
is that the correct answer is in British English, a usage we don't share. It’s an unfortunate fact for
Canadian puzzlers that most published setters speak British or Australian English.
It also relies on the fact that you can’t include
punctuation in an answer. The rule is that the answer must be the same part of
speech, same number or tense, as the the clue, or at least have that appearance.
In this clue, if you substitute “pot” for “kitty,” you get “pot’s.” Drop the
apostrophe, and you get the answer, STOP, spelled backwards. English people
are as apt to say “stop at home” as “stay at home.”
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