DWT

So in Post #1 I mentioned doing a Virtual Scotch Tasting. This is something my sister organized and I'm absolutely sure that it was sourced from some sort of Fancy Food Place in the Beaches that probably no longer exists (or at least if it does, no longer offers such tastings as I can't for the life of me find the slightest hint of such a thing). For someone who doesn't live in the city and isn't typically into Fancy things my sister is unusually highly looped into such things as her bosses live in the Beaches and are very much interested in Fancy Things that then get spun as Fancy Things are good things to do for birthdays. When the scotch was sent I remember being maximally amused that it was mailed to Pickering (and did not break!) when I could have probably walked straight down my road to the place in normal circumstances and picked it up in person. I could have walked straight down the road as I sometimes joke that I live in the Upper, Upper Beaches, which is a fun-poke at the real estate agents who gave some of that name to the hunk of land north of the Beaches but south of me (well, sort of, technically south and a touch west as there is an amazingly firm historic boundary here called VicPark that None Shall Cross for the sake of spanned neighbourhoods from the lake all the way up to Steeles).

(Now on to the Auchentoshan three wood, by the way -- def. more my thing than the Ardbeg).

The virtual scotch tasting was a 2021 birthday. My 2020 birthday was dinner at the Lahore Tikka House with a gift of an envelope full of Irish notes as we'd planned to take my Mum there to visit her cousin. In the intervening time there was Covid, and escalating dementia to make such a trip meaningless, and the Tikka House being closed for an age due to a fire. So none of that was great.

I was back in Little India (much better neighbourhood name than the Upper Beaches, even if it is otherwise framed as the 'Gerrard India Bazaar') at the arse end of August and was super pleased to discover the Tikka House had finally reopened and was back to its former glory but also surprised to find Udupi Palace had moved from its rather distinctive location to a more mundane one across the street.

If you keep walking east from Little India eventually you walk right into Kingston Road and if you keep walking along that you'll then find yourself outside the bookshop I found myself outside of when I scored my now curse'd O'Rourke book (much better scores were Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and, hell, even the Nick Hornbys). I acquired this heap a few years ago on my way back by bike from something or other. I was going along bike-lane-less, streetcar-track-filled, Kingston Road as I was trying to find the least insane way both east and north back home not quite having had it fully cemented in yet that the hills just get Worse and Worse the further east you go (these days I try to already be as north as I want by Sherbourne if going by bike).

Anyway, just wanted to note this bit of meandering as it stuck out to me how sort *local* everything was for me tonight (from my store walk to where the scotch came from to That Damn Book) and just wanted to underscore as it somehow makes things seem so much more home-y even in this here fourth largest city in North America).