Day 20 & 21

Things are pretty slack around here when not entertaining.
We get up pretty late, 8.00 ish, have breakfast, sit around talking then decide what to do the rest of the day, until the next round of entertaining.
Friday was shopping day and Mike, our host, had some things to do at work.
He has taken most of the week off to look after us and drive us around.
He drops us off at the Devonshire Mall, pronounced Devonshire, not “devonsheer”, where we patrol around looking for stuff. It’s like most malls, just the store names are different. Sears, the Hudson Bay Company, like David Jones and Harris Scarf and then all the smaller shops that mostly sell clothes. There is the mandatory food hall, where there are mostly bad things to eat. Plates of fries plastered with cheese and gravy, burgers, deep fried chicken and lots of creamy sweet things. There is a place called Cinnabon that just makes cinnamon scrolls coated in a sweet icing, and they sell lots and lots.
In this sea of gluttony, right opposite Cinnabon, is a place called Simply Salads, and there we find a very nice Caesar Salad, though they spell it Ceasar! It’s nice and crunchy and really hits the spot.
More wandering around. Previously we found a place called Old Navy that had some rather nice clothes. Being old navy myself I thought it worth another visit. It’s now rather cheap. Fleece vests for only $8.00, variety of colours, no pockets though. They are rather thin, and made in Cambodia. I buy nothing.
I’m also looking for something for Kai, my grandson, and spy something that I think he will like, so I buy it, just in case nothing better leaps out at me.
We call Mike to pick us up, and whilst waiting get a coffee. Coffee is big in Canada, everyone walks around with take away coffees, often in their own travel mug, that they get filled at the drive in coffee place.
I can’t believe how bad it is. It’s all delivered out of a pump thermos, they have flavours, and it’s usually luke warm if you’re lucky.
Mike has a coffee machine that uses pods, filled with ground coffee. That you insert into the machine and it pumps hot water through the pod. They think it’s the ants pants, yet the coffee is weak, watery and lacks flavour. They had some stronger pods the said but thought them too strong.
In Dublin the woman in charge of breakfast apologised because the coffee was too strong. Shit, apologise if it’s too weak, at least if it’s too strong you can water it down. Weak and there’s no hope of resurrection.
They don’t seem to have discovered real espresso machines here. Pity really.
(What a rant that was!!)
On our way home we stop in at the wine store and get a box (cask) of wine. A small one, only 14 litres. It’s surprisingly good. It’s blended from Canadian and imported wine and is described as a dry red wine.
Some old friends of Sue’s are coming over after supper (tea), so there will be more tears and laughter.
Guess what? There was, with much wine consumed. So much in fact that one of the guests, Jeanette, slept over on the couch.
We put a dent in the box, that’s for sure.
Day 21
It’s a late start to the day.
Jeanette woke at 6 and lay there waiting until someone got up, mainly Mike, as he had taken her keys last night.
She finally got away about 9.30AM looking remarkably good.
For our sins we had bacon and eggs for a rather late breakfast, with fried potato and toast and
Tonight is a get together at Franco’s, a pizza and pasta restaurant. It’s Sue’s birthday next week and this is the party night. We have to pick up the cake that has been ordered from a place called Costco’s, a cooperative buying store.
The place is packed, after all it is Saturday afternoon, and it’s grazing in every aisle. Small snacks of strawberry smoothy, some healthy biscuits, some dim sims and rice pudding. So after such a late breakfast the grazing subs for lunch.
The cake is monumental, it needs to be to feed about 30 people, many being children.
The store sells everything from Large screen TV’s to clothes to phone plans, fuel, groceries, fruit, well just about everything.
What is notable is the prodigious quantities that you can buy. You don’t buy one bread roll, or even 6, you buy a bag of 24. The eggs are in 24’s or 36’s, the washing liquid for the clothes in 10 litre containers.
Packs of chips in 1 kg bags!
There are people with their trolleys packed to the gunnels .
I us confess we do buy a packet of small cinnamon rolls-32 in the pack. They are nice though and don’t have that bloody icing.
Tonight we have the birthday party with 30 or so. It will be trying as I can’t remember many of their names.
I will suffer through under the haze of a beer or a red I suspect.