Andy & Gillie's Big Adventure!: Audio bliss

We are coming to the end of our sojourn in Toronto. And what a sojourn it’s been!

Since the last post, the weather has been almost unremittingly hot, hot, hot and sunny, sunny, sunny. Collingwood, Georgian Bay, was a lovely town that we didn’t give enough time to, but moved on to an equally pretty town called Bayfield – obviously named after the England second row (and Young Hagrid) of the ‘90s. There was a strong cold wind the day we got there and we walked down to the beach of Lake Huron, which looks like the sea, with big waves and nothing on the horizon. We only stayed for the sunset, then nipped back for fire.

The following day, the sunshine started and has hardly stopped since. Awesome fire that night, but couldn’t stay for a third night as it was fully booked, so we drove a short distance to Goderich, sat in Walmart all afternoon watching the rain and reading, before walking into their lovely little town and visiting the theatre to see ‘The Compleat Works of Shakespeare’ in 1¾ hours. Very entertaining and very well-performed by a cast of three. We got talking to the director afterwards and it turns out we had a number of Edinburgh Fringe shows in common! What’re the chances eh? Anyway, the upshot is that we are now friends on Facebook and might be catching up when he comes back to the UK either next year or 2017.

At about this time, England were receiving a serious drubbing in the second test at Lord’s. The future looked bleak…

It was starting to get seriously hot the next day when we moved on and stayed with Hannah’s Aunt Marie and Uncle Stuart in their house in Burlington. It was so kind of them to put us up – after all, we had never met! And Stuart had a look at Molly Too on Sunday and put our minds at rest about the extent of the work needed to make her completely lovely again. Thank you so much again Marie and Stuart – hope the renovations are finished soon and you can get back to normality!

Another act of faith was occurring the next day as we arrived at Eva and Jeff’s house in Toronto’s Midtown suburb of Leaside (or near there anyway). They have a charming family – two boys: Matty and JP (?) and eight-year-old Kayla. They made us feel very welcome and Charlie the dog is great – very friendly and great to walk. The following day we met Eva’s parents before the family set off for two weeks in Italy. So we were on our own in a very spacious and hi-tech house, where everything can be controlled by iPads!!!!

After a couple of attempts, we managed to lose Netflix and had to send a desperate email to Italy, but were very nervous about doing too much to right the situation. It mysteriously righted itself a couple of days later, so we have been enjoying some interesting viewing. Gillie will bring you up to speed, I’m sure.

We celebrated the anniversary of our retirement by going to a very nice Italian restaurant just a short walk away and were very kindly treated to a lovely meal the next night by Jorgen and Helle, Eva’s parents, in another great restaurant almost next door to the first!

Toronto has been hosting the PanAm Games for the last three weeks and the city has been mildly ‘gripped’ by the apparently unprecedented sight of Canadians winning lots of medals. There has been a bit of a London Olympics vibe about the city, which has made it lively and cosmopolitan. It’s a really good city, with lots going on and quite manageable. Walks along the lakefront (Lake Ontario) and a free Jazz festival (over three weekends) have been most enjoyable (although the cost of beer at the festival was a bit of a piss-take). We also took the open-top bus tour around the city to help us get everything in perspective.

Can’t leave the blog without mentioning a trip that everyone who comes here must make – Niagara Falls. Although it’s very touristy and commercialized, the size and scale are absolutely stunning. After all, the best bits are natural and it’s not difficult to close the man-made stuff out of your mind. A great and essential day.

Over the past fortnight, we have experienced a number of frustrations trying to get Molly in for a service and oil change. Nowhere around here seems to be set up for anything bigger than a mini!!! Anyway, after three failed attempts, we took Molly to Autodoctor in Scarborough (!) and we’re waiting to hear now what the damage is and when we can collect her…

On Wednesday we went to the BMO Field to watch a rugby triple-header in the Pacific Nations Cup (shrugs shoulders in apparent indifference). It was tortuously hot for the spectators, so it must have been murder for the players. On the very slim possibility that anyone gives a shit, Tonga stuffed USA, Fiji just managed to hold off a spirited comeback from Gallant Little Japan, who, by the way, held the Fiji pack quite comfortably in the scrums, and Canada heartbreakingly, but clumsily, lost in the final seconds to Samoa. Nothing much there to worry about for the autumn [the Rugby World Cup is being held in England - Gillie!] Think Gillie was a bit bored!

At the same time, England were setting themselves up well for the third test at Edgbaston and we had found out that we could now listen to Test Match Special and as we write, Gillie is listening to The Archers Omnibus!!! Audio bliss indeed - and we have Jeff to thank for doing something clever with a website which apparently will allow us to listen/watch BBC radio & tv wherever we can get wifi.

This morning brought the inevitable disintegration of the Aussie attack and England take a 2-1 lead to Trent Bridge. How good (if unexpected) is that?! Bit worried about loss of Anderson though.

We set off on Tuesday for Montreal and have a target to be in Cape Cod on 4^th September. Apart from that, our time’s our own. More later. Stay well.

PS. We’ve had such a great time in Toronto, thanks, in part, to the location of our house sit, which has made access to the city so easy. It really has felt like a holiday, with such glorious weather and a lovely atmosphere everywhere.

We emerged from the metro on our first forage around the town, to be confronted with the Harbour Castle Hotel, which is where I used to stay in my ‘flying’ days, 30+ years ago!! I have bored Andy silly, by going down memory lane at every opportunity! It is such a good place and I’m so pleased to be back and explore it further. (I didn’t however, need quite so much time exploring the ‘delights’ of three rugby games in a row, in 33C heat. To be fair, the Canada game was exciting, as we were supporting Samoa, much to the consternation of our neighbours!!)

Dad da da da da da daa, dad da da da daa daa… anyone recognize this?? Yessssss the theme tune to the Archers!! What more could a girl want than to be sitting under a tree, with a lovely breeze ruffling the leaves and listening to the good ol’ BBC!!! Strangely enough, I could still follow the ‘plot’ even though I haven’t heard an episode for over 10 months!! [plot??? – ed.]

As I’ve said before the tv is rubbish, so it’s lovely to have the BBC and Netflix for Kevin Spacey’s ‘House Of Cards’, which is our ‘Breaking Bad’ replacement. It’s set in Washington DC so we are looking forward to visiting all the sights there, probably by the end of September. We will be sad to leave next Tuesday, especially to say goodbye to Charlie the dog, who is just gorgeous. (Also George the fish, who is a bit of a prima donna as far as his eating routine is concerned… he’ll take one tiny grain of food and then you have to wait half an hour while he chews it before he’ll accept the next one!! (He has five grains!!) So I use the time in between, to make a cup of tea, read the paper etc, etc. As Emily says – Very high maintenance!!

I’d better stop now or my PS will be longer than the blog. Love to all G xxx