This Is My Jam

Living in TO, every so often you get a reminder of the fact that you are in a Big City. Toronto is known as "New York Lite" sometimes, and the number of people, the commuters, the homeless, the eccentrics… they all emphasise that. There was a wee moment on the subway the other day that I had savoured in particular - a tall woman got in the carriage, wearing a long blue trench-coat that almost reached her feet. She had her hair braided thickly and wrapped around her head so that it looked like a beehive, with pearls and small jewels pinned in it at the front. Perched on the end of her nose were a pair of thin-rimmed, tinted glasses, which made her remind me of Whoopi Goldberg. She had her headphones in and was absolutely jamming out to whatever was playing on her iPod. She was lip-synching along, shrugging and nodding her head, and was twisting her hand round, her immaculate pea-green manicured nails splaying out and collecting in a rhythmic snap on every second beat. I wanted to get up and dance with her, music or no music.

The thing I loved about Subway Dancing Lady was that she was totally fine being in her own world. She was amazingly cool and just did not care about what anyone else was thinking or doing. Meanwhile, I was sitting by myself on the subway having only just been worrying the night before about being on my own in the city.

I had gone to the storytelling event that I had been invited to by the Fresh Air alumna I'd bumped into at a flat viewing earlier in the week. The premise was that there were five storytellers who would get up in front of us and tell us a tale about something that was real and had happened to them. The room was packed with people, and I was semi-hopeful that I was going to make some friends that night. Right, let's just do this thing where we smile and speak to everyone, I pep-talked myself. I went to the bar and as I waited for a drink this guy asked me a question about the price of the "tall cans". 
"Oh, is that what they're called?" I said, then fitting in my killer conversation starter line, "I wouldn't know, I'M FROM SCOTLAND, YOU SEE" (this had been, and still is, my plan of attack with all new conversations with Canadians - I try to fit it in everywhere).

Anyway so this guy is then all like "ooh Scotland whaddaya know that's pretty cool oh tell me all aboot it eh" (I may have exaggerated that) and I babble away and flip my hair or whatever. Then after a couple of minutes, he excuses himself, "I'm gonna go meet my friends," which I didn't realise actually meant "I"m now going to go sit down and stare at my phone screen for about ten minutes," but to each their own. So I went and did the same.

The lights eventually went down and I was excused from my solitude as the show began. These stories were hilarious, let me tell you. The best one was from this guy who told us how he successfully managed to sneak into the Saturday Night Live afterparty. Twice. There was an excruciatingly long interval in the middle of the show, which I dreaded because once again I found nobody to talk to. Just as I was queuing for the toilets, "Tall Cans" said hi, as he was standing behind me in the queue. We started chatting again. And then I had to go pee. And I lost "Tall Cans" again.

At the end of the night, I'd had a couple of hard lemonades (which are damn good) and stepped out on to the street, having a minor freak-out over where I was actually supposed to be going. Where's the subway? Wait… did I get the subway here? Did I get the… oh, I'll just follow these people. They're going to the… the bus stop!? Did I get a bus here? Oh… oh wait yea, yea I did. What side of the street am I meant to be on? Who am I? I made it over to Matt and Sarah's in one piece, but on the way I felt like a little deflated balloon - I had wanted to go out and make friends tonight, but I didn't. Insert little sad emoji faces here.

The next day I managed to forget my friendlessness as I got dropped off at Royal York, quite a bit off to the West of town to meet Mr. Swipey again. We were in a neighbourhood called The Kingsway, which is pretty relaxed and mostly residential, with these beautiful big detached houses with front lawns and large trees lining their streets. Swipey and I went to a Thai restaurant and talked about books and slang and the Queen over calamari and Pad Woon Sen. After a long lunch we walked through the bright and sunny district to the local library, where he picked up several books and we talked about opera and Roland Barthes (yes, I'm picking out the two most intellectual things we mentioned to make us sound like a pair of bohemians who go to Parisian salons). Ok, I've made at least one friend in this city,  I thought, as I said goodbye to him, carrying the book he lent me which contained an interesting series of fictional interviews between authors and their dead heroes.

I caught the subway and then the train back to Barrie, and on the way sighed and thought about just how tired I felt. I had seen a flat the day before and had said "yes'" to it, but now I was unsure. I felt weird and stressed out. When I got back in the door I wanted to just go straight to bed but Audrey and Walt (Robert's parents) were dressed up and waiting for me, we were going to go out to a pub in Barrie for dinner that evening to celebrate the flat I was going to (or perhaps not going to) move in to. Can I be bothered with this? I asked myself.

Fast forward a couple of hours: I'm yelling "BINGO!!! BINGO!" with Audrey and Walt as Audrey shoves a piece of ink-blotted paper into my hands and I run up to the front of the bar with Walt, accidentally knocking my coat off my chair and Walt's chair over. We had just won Rock 'n' Roll Bingo, which is a combination of actual bingo and a jukebox. Billy Ray Cyrus' Achy Breaky Heart was playing and it completed our sheets, so now I was being awarded with a red baseball cap which had a patch sewn on that spelled out the phrase, "I AM CANADIAN."

Earlier that night, Audrey had told the DJ that I was from Scotland, which he announced to everyone in the room when the competition began (everyone cheered, I turned round in my seat and ended up doing a weird cupped-hand wave, a bit like the Queen). The merchandise which was being given away was from Canadian, which is a brand of beer here, and the DJ was practically throwing it at me. I got an iPhone case (which also declares that I am, indeed, CANADIAN) and at the end of the night he brought round this flashing plastic medallion on the end of a necklace, with the words, "I AM CANADIAN" on them, just in case anyone could find room for error. "By the power of Canada," he said, as he performed the mini-coronation.

Yet these tacky talismans didn't protect me from the events of the following day. I had organised another flat viewing in town because I was now totally unsure of the one I had initially agreed to live in. I took the usual two-hour bus into town, killed time by browsing the vintage shops in Kensington Market (bought this amazing ENORMOUS jumper which makes me look like the children's TV character Makkapakka, except, like a hot hipster version of Makkapakka), and stopped for a latte in this sweet little Swedish cafe. I checked my e-mails to find out that the flat I was going to see had just been leased out… I had come all the way into town - two hours on a bus - for nothing. I wanted to just dissolve right then and there. Sighing, I messaged a couple of friends asking for kind words to spur me on. I was having a moment of misery, sitting in this gorgeous cafe, and outside the window, right in front of me I could see the rooftops of the Kensington houses, and beyond that, the CN Tower was changing colours in the twilight. This wasn't supposed to happen! I wasn't supposed to be miserable in Toronto! But here I was, so I moved off to the train station, where I was going to meet Robert to get the half past seven bus.

I stared at the screen in Union station, and tried to figure out what bus we were taking. Robert was going to be here at seven-ish, he had said… and panic flooded me as I realised that we must be taking the ten past seven bus instead of half past. I looked at the clock. It was eight minutes past seven. I started to run but I couldn't figure out the signs in the station - where was the bus stop again? My breath dragged painfully as I raced out on to the street, down past the train platforms to the other side of the road, eventually reaching the bus station but it was too late, the bus was gone. I walked into the station office. The screen told me that there was, in fact, a bus to Barrie leaving at half seven. I had run all over the place for nothing. Robert was still about to meet me here. I was panting from running, and had to hiccup back tears because I really, really didn't want to cry in the middle of the bus terminal, surrounded by strangers.

So I got the bus back with Robert. And over the transfer at Newmarket, I realised I had lost my gloves. At this point, I foolishly said, "well, at least my day can't get any worse than this!" When we finally got into Barrie at 9:30pm, I was parched, nauseous from hunger and had a blinding headache. That's when I realised I had lost my wallet.

What ensued was a long drive around Barrie tracing the bus route, as I held my temples in my hands, trying not to think about how much I needed food. It was a long, long night but eventually we got back home, dinner was put in the oven, the dog came up and licked my face, and everyone said, "You'll have a better day tomorrow."

There's a song that I'm keeping with me at the moment. It's funny how when you sometimes discover something, it feels like you've been gifted it. I've heard this song before, but it jumped out at me one night at Matt and Sarah's, so I asked the name of the song and then quickly squirrelled the details away to bring up later when I wanted to hear it again. Several days ago I was sitting in the kitchen and it came on the radio. This song is never on the radio, I mused, as the initial rhythms began to jingle through the stereo. It must be playing just for me. The first two lyrics jumped out, because I felt that sense of journey and optimism, and I knew that it was something I'd have to retain if I was ever going to really make it in Toronto:

 Now I've been happy lately, thinking about the good things to come

And I believe it could be, something good has begun

In the kitchen, I was listening to my jam. I snapped my fingers and shuffled my feet, not knowing I was echoing a shadow from the future, the Subway Dancing Lady.