I Wanna Be With You Everywhere

Spring had almost sprung. We were so, so close. I walked to my favourite cafe the other day and I saw my first green shoots poking out of the ground. Finally, it’s here! The air was warm. The sun was out. I had to wear sunscreen. It was like a Scottish summer’s day.

And then it snowed yesterday.

All this stopping and starting seems pretty similar to what’s going on in my life at the moment. There’s so many things on the brink of happening, and sometimes really exciting stuff comes along (see: MY GIG IN MAY FOR CMW), and then other times, I’m sitting at home by myself on a weekend night.

Being alone on this particular Saturday night wasn’t so bad — I had to actually get an early night’s sleep because my Mum and her friend Katherine were coming to visit Toronto! We had arranged to meet the next morning at the Four Seasons Hotel for breakfast. Plans of sleep soon deteriorated when Mr. Swipey called me at quarter to midnight and I ended up sitting on my dusty staircase talking to him. Eventually I asked him what time it was, through a yawn.

“It’s, uh, almost two in the morning.”

“WHAT?”

I hastily babbled goodbyes and then got into my pyjamas. The next morning I woke up, (vaguely) bright-eyed and (somewhat) bushy-tailed, and got the TTC to the Four Seasons. Or so I thought. I stared at Google Maps on my phone and walked around the same block for about half an hour. Where is this damn hotel, I thought. It was like the bloody Room of Requirement. The map says it’s RIGHT HERE. I was walking around private residences and designer shops, all the while getting more and more agitated because I was so tired after my two-hour conversation at midnight the night before, and I knew that somewhere in this damn city was my mother and she was waiting for me in a nice hotel with a nice breakfast ready to be eaten by yours truly. It felt like I was living some sort of real-life version of that terrible Windows '95 maze screensaver. After asking helpless Starbucks clerks and taxi drivers, I finally got directions to the hotel from a concierge at one of the private residence buildings. Turns out I’d been walking around the old location of the hotel. I clocked the demolished building I'd been circling. Figures.

In the hotel lobby, I saw my Mum and we said hello to each other, smiling and hugging. It was weird, because it felt so normal, but she was here, in Toronto, in Canada. We went up to the restaurant and I greeted Katherine, and we ate fresh fruit and toast with foamy coffees, catching up. Both of them said that from what they'd seen so far, Toronto seemed like my kind of place.

this is how one takes a selfie with the CN Tower from close range

In the evening, I was delighted to find out that we were going up to CN Tower to dine. I knew that the restaurant wasn’t going to be that great, but, finally, I was going up the iconic building that I had been dreaming about for well over a year. We stepped into the elevator, and I instinctively grasped my Mum’s hand as I saw us shooting up several storeys in a matter of seconds. At the top, it took me a minute to realise that the restaurant was actually moving. We took our table and watched the west end of the city trail away from us as dusk settled over the sprawl of Toronto. Dinner was kept simple with wine and steak, and as we sat, surveying the slow-moving city, Katherine and Mum told me how proud they were of what I was doing. I kind of just wanted to say, “really? ‘Cause it doesn’t feel like I’m doing very much at the moment!” It felt like all this stuff was just happening to me — the job, the apartment, the gig, the friends — but deep down I knew it was because I was being active. I wasn’t sitting in my bedroom all alone. Well, not every night, at least.

The sun set over the city and the lights came on, the big skyscrapers of the Financial District twinkling as we ordered the cheque. After dinner we headed back to the hotel for a couple of cocktails and some light and fluffy little madeleines (which have now become my favourite thing in the world and I oft think about them as I sigh and prop my head up with my hands, looking out of windows). At night I got to sleep in a bed of my own at the Four Seasons.

The next morning I woke up, and it took my a while to figure out where I was. This is not my box room in Parkdale! I was waking in a fluffy, clean bed in the Four Seasons hotel, and I was going to have toasted bread and jam and a frothy latte for breakfast. We spent a good part of the day driving around all of the most expensive houses in Toronto, which is one of my favourite pastimes in a city. I used to go for walks in Edinburgh to the posh houses all the time (hey, J.K. Rowling!), choosing which one I would live in one day, and imagining the kind of life I’d have by then. These houses would have squashed the Edinburgh ones, they were so large and magnificent, with big driveways and gardens and fancy, shiny cars.

It was lovely spending time with my Mum here, but we could only spend two days together before she had to head back to the UK. I had to spend the next day at work pretending that I hadn’t just had the nicest weekend, because if I spent too long dwelling on it, I knew that I would get sad. I had to pretend that I was just carrying on my streak of work hard, play hard: my days at the office, the swimming pool, the cafe and time with my friends.

It will be tough to not think about family this weekend, as Easter rolls around. Each year, my Dad’s extended family have all met in a hotel in St. Andrews, and we spend the weekend walking on beaches and laughing over dinner, dressing up nicely and catching up with each other. This will be the first year I’m missing it. My own Easter Sunday will probably pass by like any other day (ok, but there’s gonna be more chocolate involved, definitely), but I know that there’s nowhere else I’d rather spend ordinary days than in Toronto.

The end of April is looming, May is coming and I know it’s going to be hugely busy, what with Canadian Music Week, my friend Ian visiting, and the fact that I’m going to be moving flats (yep, you heard me right, I’m gonna find somewhere with an actual WINDOW for summertime!). I say, bring it on!

As a final note, lets all enjoy this song by Fleetwood Mac, which I have been singing to myself for the past few days non-stop. To my friends and family across the world - from those of you in the Europe, Australia, Asia or even just up the road in Toronto - I wanna be with you, everywhere!