canada one

hello world... would you like to know about my trip to canada? do you have a choice?

well. my flight was at 8:30 am from heathrow terminal 3. i was so nervous and excited i didn't sleep at all the previous night - and i had to leave the house at 3:30am anyway to be there for check in. i was so happy. aside from being slightly deranged through sleep deprivation i really felt good. going through security i had to take my shoes off and put them in the plastic tray to be xrayed and it felt funny walking around the airport in my socks. i tried to choose a bottle of whisky to give to my hosts but it was beyond me at 6am. i was delirious and happy and the three hours before departure passed pleasantly.

my excitement was tipping over into jitteriness when i strapped myself into my seat so i took a valium to stop my heart exploding when we finally went soaring up into the clouds. it was good, fuzzy and warm and i felt totally relaxed as i watched the ground fall away beneath me, fields and houses abstracting into the peculiar patchwork of the british isles. i love to see the clouds from above and i love to see the coast line too. i had a window seat... ice crystals formed on the glass outside as we gained altitude. but then there was nothing much to see for a long long time. it was dazzlingly bright and below was indecipherably blue... i took another valium as i'd noticed the first had nearly sent me to sleep and i hoped another would allow me to rest for a few hours... i slept intermittently and listened to my walkman. i am tempted to list the tracks of each tape but i won't... not yet at least. at one point i thought i could see whales swimming in the atlantic. i think this might be down to the brain addling properties of diazepam. i laughed at myself when i thought how far above the earth we were and how big the whales would have to be for me to see them at this distance.

this was my first long haul flight and i had underestimated the dullness of being sat on one's backside for 8 hours straight, even when drugged into oblivion. i was loathe to take any more of the tablets. and eventually, at 10:50am canada time, i touched down in toronto's lester b. pearson airport. i went to collect my bag and cut my finger open trying to help some else pull their bag from the carousel. it didn't hurt at first but then i noticed my finger felt wet... i was confused... then i saw the blood, always shocking, how bright red it is. there's a small scar on my right ring finger now.

i was collected by my hosts for the week, and slept in the back of their car most of the way back to their home in oshawa. i think i finally felt i could relax - i'd made it, i'd arrived. the next two days i saw two different small shopping centres on the outskirts of oshawa, possibly not the most uplifting itinerary. i was still feeling pretty disoriented - not jet-lagged, exactly; more coming down off of the high i was on when i arrived, coming down with a pretty big bump.

the third day we went into oshawa proper - and after the previous two days this was actually pretty exciting. we went to the comic shop, worlds collide, run by a friendly, nerdy guy called tim, and the record shop, star records, run by an unfriendly and probably also nerdy guy whose name i didn't have the pleasure of finding out. i had a tasty and cheap tomato soup with crackers at isabella's chocolate café... the gelato there looked out of this world but i never got the chance to try it, the weather was bad the day we were there. in fact the weather was pretty bad up until friday and i'm sure we would have gotten out and about more if it hadn't been so cold and windy.

on friday we went into toronto... wheeee! i went up the cn tower which was pretty high up (553m), it was fun standing on the glass floor and looking straight down below. the next destination was sonic boom 512 bloor st. west, a pretty awesome shop selling mainly second hand cds, and certainly the first record shop i've ever seen with a tullycraft section. i also got to see inside honest ed's 581 bloor st. west, a crazy store that features in scott pilgrim, a toronto-based comic i read while i was staying in oshawa, where it's described as a place likely to induce existential crises.... i kind of see what he's getting at. the sheer variety and unrelatedness of the articles for sale is quite mind boggling... really quite surreal.

and this is the end of amy in canada: part one. you'll be relieved to know that the most exciting parts are yet to come!