Like a drunk in a midnight choir

We like Toronto , we like Canadians .We started the day with a dip in the pool. This required us to ascend from the penultimate floor in the elevator, a darkly mirrored steel box that reminded us of the famous skit of voice recognition and two Scots in an elevator ( cf YouTube).The elevator ascended , we calmed down and checked out the waters of Babylon. Blair went into Pasha mode, I surveyed the pool.Next Ian submitted to overdue fealty to GSK while I went to the Apple store to try to sort out why my iPhone X couldn’t sync with WiFi. As Hugo said to me about IKEA, who would have known that hell was colored blue and yellow? But Apple have conceived a twilight zone where the mad go and people go mad.It started well enough. I was registered and delayed for an expected hour and met a charming Croatian. We discussed the phone but also the similarities and distinctions of our small countries. Ireland has a great economy but is lousy at football …..

Croatia is presently a nice place to visit but is no country for young men. He stripped the iPhone as a prelude to rebirth from the cloud and handed me over to an apparently disinterested and distracted Calbrian as my Apps slowly reappeared. Except not all of them, including this platform. Opposite me a clearly disturbed man who had come there only to eat his bagged lunch screamed into a cell phone in Vietnamese.

Probably too many users on the network, the Calbrian helpfully explained.

Blair was now on the backside of ecstasy having finished his reports and demanded my presence at the Richmond Grill. Plenty of health food but a dysfunctional internet and a further stalled download.

A postprandial snooze and back to Apple. I established that the Calabrian descendent also had an Irish granny so, based in our common heritage, we joined forces to seal the deal.

Deleting everything was followed by a slow but comprehensive recovery from the cloud. Give me that old time religion. Faith in Apple to some degree restored. Well maybe. As I burned time akin to an outpatient appointment in dealing with something that shouldn’t occur with a $1000 phone , the first restored message descending on the screen was of Apple crossing the $trillion threshold, testing my sense of irony. We like Toronto because of its weather, the diversity and elegance of the people on the street, the restaurants and bars filled with chatting , the vigor of youth betraying some style. It’s a place that’s relaxedbut also temperedsomething for everyone.We took a pause. For me I needed recovery time from iPhone hell and turned to replace my ancient scratched and scraped sports glasses. Service from Wellsley was restorative – informed, funny and efficient.Wellesley is my kinda guy.

The boys had a preprandial post purchasing apperetivo at Pseuds corner,

well, pretty close, where we discussed ponderous issues like Goldenballs and Jemimah Khan – still keeping an eye. Nice Italian ambience and a barman called Titziano! That paints the picture.Slipping into the penultimate clean T , I joined Blair in the final stroll for dinner: it’s not only Uber that has problems with directions.

Modus, the selection of our charming concierge, Toni, suited Blair’s relaxed sartorial option, selected for this evening. We quickly chose a red headed woman from the Abruzzo. A simply wonderful Cat, as was the food

even if there was a touch of the Omaha in the ambience.Plenty of home truths exchanged as the two old friends contemplated the eternal verities, the excitement of work and the need for time to stand and stare.

Those thoughts in mind we headed home, humming secular songs on the empty highway. Joan and James, like Janis and Leonard.Is this all that matters or do we need emotional rescue?Adjourning to the bar we anticipated a quiet conclusion to our evening but we hadn’t counted on Susannah, one of the guests, whose grandad was the hit man for Haillie Selassie. This fitted nicely with the ambience that had some trappings of Fellini’s Roma (all those obelisks ). Susannah was exotically beautiful, loudly outspoken and a touch erratic.Transfixed, were Anisha and Keith, both, now like us, bit parts in Susannah’s performance art

During a soliloquy from S, Anisha and Blair, discovered in a side conversation, that they were both Kenyan touched migrants from Lincolnshire. I swear it happened just like this.

Although it was a bit of a midnight special we sat through the final act, full of angels and demons. Looked like freedom but it felt like death, it’s something in between I guess. It’s closing time.

Adieu Leonard, adieu Canada: we’re heading home.