monday night: back in oshawa. i'd had a great time in toronto and it was kind of depressing to find myself here again. i think i had resigned myself to it previously but that glimpse of another kind of life in toronto, and the yawning void between that, and this, was hard to ignore. i stayed up far too late writing to friends online, trying to find people to reach out to, to lessen my feelings of loneliness.
on tuesday we visited toronto zoo. it's vast, at 710 acres. they care for approximately 5000 animals here, of which 460 are separate species. we must have been there for four hours... a lot of walking! the zoo at toronto is modelled on the famous san diego zoo, to which i have never been - although it has a place in my heart thanks to the 6ths' song of the same name. yes, there sure were a lot of animals... animals are grrreat. there was a cool feature in one of the snake houses, with a camera that showed you how the world appears to a rattlesnake: a camera is trained on you and the image on screen, as my companion correctly pointed out, looks a lot like a bauhaus album cover.
one of my favourite animals at the zoo was the tree wallaby. i don't think i had ever come across one of those before. they were really cute with sleepy little eyes and big pink noses. it is a strange thing to see so many unusual animals in one day, and for that not to be a totally mind blowing experience. because you expect to see all these different animals - you're at the zoo, right? but - bears, tigers, gorillas, elephants? all in one day? that's crazy... it could never happen in other circumstances and if it did you would go nuts.
no great plans were made for wednesday, the last day of my visit - we were going to go into oshawa again, i was going to pick up that feelies record, maybe get gelato at last, and check back in at worlds collide. things didn't quite work out this way... i ended up going back into toronto by myself, to visit the royal ontario museum, which at $20 is rather expensive but it was my last day and i wanted to do something i'd enjoy and remember. i would have spent a lot more than that if i'd gone record shopping again anyway.
there were some entertaining displays on british history, it was interesting to see something so familiar to me viewed through foreign eyes. one interactive element sought to explain why we love tea so much. that was funny. the canadians i met were all amused to learn that i drank a lot of tea, for real - they thought maybe it was one of those obsolete cultural stereotypes, but no. the displays of british interiors they'd set up were peculiar, because they were comprised of the right elements, but in the wrong order somehow... objects that were juxtaposed here, that you would never have seen in the same room. also they made a big deal of british men getting together to drink punch. now, i know my historical education was kind of patchy (i studied the tudors and stuarts three times because of moving schools) but i've never seen any references to punch, anywhere. perhaps this requires further investigation...
the egyptian rooms were very good and while i was there i got to listen in on a few talks being given to primary school-age children, which is always both enlightening and very sweet, hearing what the kids think about all this stuff. the museum also houses strong collections of african, south east asian and chinese artefacts. the canadian and first peoples rooms were interesting and a highlight for me as these are two cultures whose histories i know little about and contained exhibits i'd be unlikely to see here in the uk. in a back room they were showing some beautiful old documentary footage of an inuit family going out to hunt seals, it was very moving, and reminded me of how strange our modern existence is.
after that i got some lunch at the kensington natural bakery vegetarian café, and went to look for something to give my endlessly kind and generous hosts to thank them for looking after me over the last week. by the time i was done it was getting late: time to head back to oshawa. the family i was staying with had planned for us to go out for dinner on my last night and that was really enjoyable, although a little sad for me as i knew this was pretty much the end of my adventure. my 9am flight the next morning meant another early start. i started to pack and realised the small flightcase i'd brought was not going to accomodate all the cds and comics i'd acquired during my stay so i had to borrow another bag for my clothes. i got my carry on luggage ready with my walkman, tapes, spare batteries, things to read, things to draw with - drawing seems to be a more effective way of filling time than reading, maybe because it's more active... of course, you can get absorbed in a book, but i find it easier to block out other distractions if i'm concentrating on a drawing.
as usual feeling lonely in the evening i wasted too much time on the internet and hadn't even finished packing at 2am when i decided it was time to try and get some sleep. up three hours later to drive to the airport - i was feeling quite anxious about it this time, with none of the excitement of the first flight to buoy me up. but with the help of my hosts i found the check in, and i had plenty of time so i bought everyone a coffee and a donut for breakfast with my left-over currency. it came to just over $5 for three people, while in the uk three coffees and three pastries would be at least £8, or $16. how do they do it?
so, this time i didn't take any of the valium tablets, as i wasn't sure that the others hadn't made the whole thing seem longer and weirder than necessary. although it meant missing out on whale-spotting. i didn't feel that worried as we took off anyway, planes are taking off all over the world all the time and hardly ever crash. and at that particular moment i was feeling rather fatalistic and just thought "if i die, i die"; but then i looked at some of the lovely babies on board and decided that was a sick attitude: plane crashes are bad, end of story.
as we came into london, and it was dark, and raining, i really felt miserable. i really did not want to be back here, in heathrow, or to have to return my parent's house, or the reality of a life that never seems to get off the ground.
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