|
|
I woke up this morning with a craving for, among other things, fish and chips.
I had the day off work and thought it would be fun to take a stroll for some battered brunch down to GO Fish on False Creek near Granville Island. Go Fish’s venue is a tiny little blue hut right at the Fisherman’s Wharf and there is always a massive line up outside of it. The last time I ate here, which was last summer with my Aunt Carla and Uncle Peter, we got nasty attitude from the girl who was calling out the orders and I had not been back since. While the service left a poor taste in my mouth, the haddock did not, so I decided it was time to give them another chance.
It was almost noon and my stomach was roaring. I called up my friend Yolanda. A sleepy voice on the other line answered. “Hello?”
“Are you up yet?”
“Ughhh…”
“Yolanda, it’s almost noon! What time did you go to bed?”, I asked, getting hungrier by the second.
“I think it was four…”.
Yolanda is a night owl. I am not. “OK, listen, you wanna go to Go FIsh? We could split a double order of the haddock. Or cod even, maybe. I’m easy. Oh, and could you bring Belinda? I haven’t seen her in a while.”
Belinda is Yolanda’s puppet. When we hang with Belinda, fun adventures ensue. I hadn’t really seen her since Christmas Eve. Belinda showed up with a bottle of Captain Morgan’s Spiced rum and the last thing I remember before things got really blurry for me, was Belinda passing out on the kitchen floor in a puddle of her own vomit. It wasn’t pretty. But aside from that, it was a pretty fun night.
I changed into a suitable frock and slathered on the SPF 30. I got a terrible burn at the Kits pool several weeks ago, that my legs were still peeling from. Not classy. I knew that I probably should have put on a my sensible Stetson panama hat, the sun was already blazing, but I opted for a cute, sisal, pink, mini beret instead. I haven’t been out of the house much in the past month, and I wanted to feel summery and girly and not the disheveled hermit that I have become as of late. I grabbed my shades and made my way to False Creek leaving a trail smelling of coconut and anticipation in my wake.
By the time Yolanda and Belinda met me at Go Fish, the line up was already snaking around the corner. We decided on each getting our own order of cod. The notion of sharing just made my hungry belly far too angry. An hour and three more sunscreen applications later we finally got to the order window. I could feel my stomach starting to eat itself, I was so hungry. The woman who was taking orders looked familiar. I wondered if she was the same lady as last summer. I approached with caution and the biggest smile I could muster, without looking too insincere.
“Hello! I would like to order one piece of cod, chips and extra coleslaw please, and may I also have a San Pellegrino? The orange flavor one. Thank you.” I beamed at her.
She wrote everything down on her order pad and I handed her my money. She barely glanced at me. There must have been about 5 people in that hot little grease-filled hut. They gingerly danced around each other, preparing orders and wiping their brows. How they all didn’t suffer from massive 3rd degree grease burns is beyond me. The floor looked slippery and dangerous and I knew that it wasn’t the sort of work environment that my clumsiness would take for more than five minutes before I found myself face down in the broiler. EEE!
It took at least another 20 mins for us to get our food which was delivered to us sans attitude. I loaded up my chips with malt vinegar, grabbed a wedge of lemon and we made our way over to a patch on the Sea Wall where we made our little camp.
“Did you bring her?”
Yolanda produced a very tired looking Belinda out of her bag. I was delighted to see her. Belinda doesn’t really say much and her expression never really changes. She is in a perpetual state of happiness, though Yolanda seems to think she looks more like she is silently screaming. In any case, seeing Belinda always puts a smile on my face. I happily tucked into my food. First up: the coleslaw. Fail!!! Why did I order an extra helping of this horse shit? It tasted like a can of crushed ass. What the…? This was NOT the same coleslaw that I had last summer. I was so disappointed. I set it aside and hoped that the cod would redeem the vileness that had infiltrated my taste buds. It was mediocre. A little too much batter and not enough fish for my liking. The chips, albeit a bit cold, were nice and tastey, though. On the whole, the meal was welcome, because I was soooo hungry, but not a memorable one, in terms of taste. No matter, fish and chips are not a craving I rarely get more than once a year and that may be because when I lived in Scotland, I ate it almost every day. Now THERE were some good fish and chips…yum.
 Under the Bridge The three of us went for a walk around Granville Island to work off our greasy meals. Aside from molesting some heirloom tomatoes in the Public Market, Belinda was quite well-behaved. This is the first time we hung out with her where she didn’t get banned from any of the venues we visited for disorderly conduct of any sort. I think she must have been suffering a hangover, as she seemed rather quiet, but it was nice to spend some time with her. And Yolanda.
Despite the multiple applications of SPF 30, I did end up getting a slight tan line and I can feel that I have developed at least 23 new freckle on my face and 7 on my back. Not a terrible price to pay for a delightful afternoon in the sun getting greased up on Granville Island.
-
-
-
-
-
Belinda touching the tomatoes she fully did not intend to buy.
-
-
I live 7 blocks from Kitsilano Beach.
I love it.
I never ever get tired of strolling down to the beach, looking out at English Bay and counting the number of freighters that are moored out there, waiting their turn to pick up their grain, canola oil, wood, sulphur or any other of the cargos that make up the $53 Billion in goods that trade out of Canada’s busiest port every year. That’s ALOT of canola oil.
Tonight I counted 10 freighters. About average for a Friday night. There were lots of other smaller sailboats scattered about, all in town for the Celebration of Light. It’s fun watching the sail boats arrive throughout the day, all jockeying for the perfect view of the barge that they set the fireworks off of. There are marine buoys that mark off a perimeter which is set to keep particulate that is still alight from falling onto boats that are too close and subsequently sending them down in flames. English Bay sees an influx of 1000 boats every night of the show and the beach and park become packed as everyone from Surrey and Burnaby come pouring into my little quiet neighborhood to catch this giant pyrotechnic event.
That is why I went to the beach tonight instead. I hate crowds, especially drunken ones, and I avoid them when I can. Last Wednesday I listened to the fireworks from my bed and was asleep before they finished. I was safe and snug inside my cozy little atelier, with a fresh breeze flowing through my bedroom and the sound of my white noise machine reducing the explosions of the show to dull and distant thuds. Bliss.
Tonight I toted my bocce set down to the sublimely less than packed beach where I met my friends Jill, Beverly and Robert and we had a very civilized picnic and game of bocce. It was lovely. There were a number of other parties out on the Grassy Knoll with us and I sensed a lovely spirit in the air – one of knowing that we all share this amazing city and one of being grateful for it. The air was filled with laughter, music and the gorgeous smell of bbq and ocean air. It was magic. Jill produced a bottle of wine which her and I drank out of real glass flutes (The Saucy Milliner does not do red plastic cups) and a beautiful cheese which I really must remember to ask her what it was. It was delicious and perfect.
Jill is a very talented musician and a fellow Hat Revivalist and she really evokes the similar spirit of The Saucy Milliner’s style and aesthetic in her own craft. I adore her. Tonight I gave her a delectable petit chapeaux that I had finished earlier in the evening. I didn’t know, until I had sewn the last feather onto this delightful little number that it would be for her, but as the last striped badger hackle was fastened into place, I realized that she had to have it. I am so thrilled that she loves it and I can’t wait to make more for her. I do believe I have found my millinery muse. It’s so much easier to design a hat when one is inspired by the potential wearer and she really quite embodies a certain romance, joie de vivre and era gone by that inspires me on a day to day basis and that I try to channel in my work.
As for the bocce game – well…I really am not a strong player. In fact, I am terrible. Jill and I lost to Beverly and Robert and I can’t be mad at them for winning because they are two of the kindest souls I think I shall ever meet and God made them super good looking, and it’s hard to be upset with pretty faces like that. Also: they are both Hat Revivalists as well, which make them indefinitely impervious to any sort of spite from me for creaming me at my own game. Hee hee.
Tomorrow night is the next round of Fireworks, I believe it is Spain.
Maybe I will challenge my crowd-phobia and wade down through the throngs and try to claim a little piece of beach real-estate before the main event.
Or maybe I’ll just listen to it from my comfy bed.
Today was The Saucy Milliner’s birthday. Oddly enough, it was mine, too.
I have spent much of the past two weeks in bed for reasons which a lady never gets into in a public forum such as this and The Saucy Milliner does endeavor to be a lady at least 80% of the time (anything more and she would have to call herself ‘The Mundane Milliner) but suffice it to say, she is even more desperate than ever to find a working Flux Capacitor (see bio). My employer very graciously gave me this day off some time ago, in support of my potential efforts at celebrating this special day, though I woke up this morning feeling like doing the exact polar opposite of that. I woke up with my heart, my head and every muscle and hair on my body commanding me to just lie still another day in bed and watch the light change in my room as the sun moved across the sky.
So I willfully obeyed.
For exactly 13 mins, anyway.
That is when something unusual happened.
From my bed, which faces my beautiful leaded bay window, I watched as a giant falcon landed in my Tim Burton tree which grows directly outside of it. I call it my Tim Burton Tree because it looks all gnarly and Beetlejuicey in the winter when it is barren, save for the odd stubborn leaf which refuses to fall from it in autumn and clings on or dear life, much in the same way a Kitsilano Cylon clutches her overpriced designer coffee whilst walking her rat-dog up 4th in her Lululemon (though it’s debatable she’s ever done a single yoga session). I digress. I love my Tim Burton Tree – you see, I do not have curtains and it fills up my window with green, leafy goodness, permitting me to prance around in my skivvies sans giving the neighbors a free show and this morning I was sharing my tree with a giant falcon.
It was incredible.
I slowly slid out of my bed. I did not want to make any sudden movements for fear that the falcon would fly away. I walked over to the window and upon a closer look, could see that the falcon had something in it’s talons. My stomach took a sudden lurch when I realized it was a dead pigeon. Gross. The falcon wedged the pigeon in between some branches and didn’t waste any time tucking into it’s breakfast. Feathers started flying everywhere. It was quite the sight. I couldn’t look away. Soon, the falcon was through the feathery layers and started in on the bloody, fleshy bits. I grabbed my camera and thought to myself, ” I hope you take what you don’t eat with you! Oh, and please also take that black squirrel that hangs about and looks like it has the mange.”. The last thing I wanted was a rotting pigeon, corpsifying up my beloved tree and attracting flies. We don’t really use screens here in Vancouver (true story), and that would mean having to keep my shutters closed, which was out of the question – I love my cross breeze as much as I love my tree! So clean up after yourself, falcon!
All was well. After an hour of munching and hanging out, the falcon vanished along with any leftovers there may have been, leaving only a smattering of feathers on the ground below, which the breeze swept away soon enough.
All of this action outside of my window, as gruesome as it was, raised my spirits. I decided to take a walk to the beach and treat myself to one of the designer coffees that the Kits Cylons favor. It was, after all, only 7:45 am in the morning, perhaps it was just what I needed to help shake the funk that had been holding me captive for the previous two weeks. I grabbed my debit card and slipped on my old, worn out Keens and grubby sweatshirt. I tucked the rats nest that my hair had become, for lack of motivation to wash it, into my ’24 Day 6′ cap*** and plodded out the front door towards Higher Grounds coffee shop up on Broadway for some fancy coffee brewed by someone not me. I am the current Mayor of Higher Grounds on a social geo tagging game called Foursquare. I like to ‘Check In’ every few days in an effort at maintaining that mayorship. I don’t know why. It’s my latest social media gaming compulsion, I guess and for a reason I can’t explain, this title is important to me. 
7:53 am – I check in to the coffee shop, grab my extra large coffee and made my way to the beach.
As the caffeine quickly permeated my bloodstream and the sun started climbing a bit higher in the sky, what was a seemingly impossible thought only a short hour previous, occurred to me – that perhaps, just perhaps, I might find myself in a mood to celebrate my birthday after all. My plodding became more of a proper walk and by the time I reached the beach and found a bench to sit upon, I felt the first vague sense of pleasure that I had in what seemed like forever. Truth be told, it’s hard to not feel pleasure when on sits on a bench at Kits beach early in the morning. Looking out at Stanley Park whilst listening to the waves gently roll in and smelling the ocean air mixed with the faint smell of chlorine from the Kits Pool is really quite lovely and one of the reasons I live in this city and in particular this neighborhood. In that moment, on the bench, I felt blessed.
Then my iPhone rang.
The Raiders of the Lost Ark theme broke the serenity of the moment and rather startled me, in fact, as I forgot that my phone was in my kangaroo pouch. That phone call made my morning. A friend from the States was calling me with my first of the three happy birthday calls I would get today. I was so happy! I have taken my facebook profile down for some time ago and I really didn’t expect anyone to realize it was my birthday except for my sister and my mom and maybe one other person, so hearing from this friend was a surprise and true delight. A fellow Browncoat, you see… After the call I knew I needed to harness this surge of positive energy. I decided that a small celebration with my other friends was something I was ready to contemplate.
I have just come home from said Celebration with the aforementioned friends. It was a most delightful evening at our old haunt, The Gerrard (a Mayorship which I covet) and I am so happy I decided to let them share today with me, in the end. There were presents and hats and CAKE from the lovely Nisreen, who works in the bar and always remembers my name. She’s adorable. The Saucy Milliner wore a fabulous vintage Irish Linen die-cut lace frock with a gorgeous vintage slip (thank you, Beverlee), Chie Mihara heels (a birthday present from Auntie C last summer) and of course one of her own stunning cocktail creations. And myself? Well, I wore a smile and rosy cheeks.  Of course, the latter may be due to the Manhattans – the first alcohol to pass my lips in several months. MMMmmmManhattans.
And so here I find myself another year older. Certainly not another year wiser, for I am still the same Silly Girl who thinks far too much with her heart than her head for her own good…only with a few more noticeable lines around my eyes. My dearest friends and pals – thank you for reminding me of the abundance of love that I have in my life. I am surrounded by blessings of all sorts and I shall endeavor to remind myself of that daily. I love you all.
K
***Re: Wearing a BB Cap. The Saucy Milliner does not endorse wearing BB Caps. Ever. Unless it is an extreme emergency, such as the vile and wretched state of my hair this morning.
I got off work at 7pm tonight. I knew that if I power walked home when I got off the bus, didn’t spend tooo much time spoon feeding Crazy (it’s her latest thing, she won’t eat unless I feed her) and if I powerwalked/jogged to the beach, that there was a small to medium chance I would catch the last few rays of my first beach sunset of the season. I knew that if, despite being totally bagged, I could somehow manage to resist the lure of the comfort of my sofa and the melodic trance I knew would be pouring out of my speakers courtesy CBC Radio 2, that I would make it down to the beach in time to witness what would mark (for me) the official start of the summer season and that my beloved Beach Club gatherings would be only a short few weeks away. Well, for hardcore members, at any rate. 
I skipped home, opened the door, picked up Crazy and gave her a hug, grabbed some cheese and crackers, threw on my sweats and sneakers and promptly skipped back out again. I cut through the Safeway parking lot in an attempt to shave off 20 seconds, but was foiled by a french man stopping to tell me that I had pretty hair and ask did I always style it that way or was there a special occasion? I felt like saying ‘Get out of my way, you are blocking my route!’, but this girl does not get those sorts of compliments everyday, and on a day when I felt like my lid could get work as Helena Bonham Carter’s stunt hair, I could not help but blush a little and reply “Why, thank you! No, no special occasion except the beach, au revoir!”. And away I trotted, double time.
As I walked gingerly down Balsam, I suddenly caught the smell of the salt water in the air and I knew I was only moments away from this….
|
|
