in which things begin to slow down but not before a mad rush in which we are forced out of the duke and have to find solace at the grapevine

it is 1pm on a warm day i am sitting where the pouch cove morning group was only hours before watching a low lying cloud on the horizon over the ocean.

getting up i ring tj to see how the volvo is coming along
- it is getting worse he says – but i just got in a saab but there may be a leak in the gas line. call back at noon. ring angela to see if i can get a ride in. she’ll ring back in an hour. i head out for a walk to make some snaps with ubirajara – i want to photograph the spot that still show remnants of the plastic flowers that were taped to the railing above where adam, a.j. and jesse died.

headed down to the coast guard building to see what else i could find and found myself heading back into a formalist mode. buildings lines signs etc. it was made even more easy due to the normal lens that i was using for the flower remnant image.

returning to the school i find out that angela rang saying that she was on her way. not wanting to hang around the school i thought that i would walk down gruchy’s to the pipe housoe and have her pick me up there.

dannie recognised me, yelling – did you see your pictures up on the wall. went over and chatted with her and since i only have one snap of henry when he helped pull me out of the snow bank in 2001 – i said that i was going to take his snap. he posed a bit much but made two thinking that i would see him again before i left. he pretty much goes to bruce’s at the same time everyday and i know where he lives.

angela pulls into the carpark nearing running me over i hop in and off we go back to st. john’s behind a lorry that is belching smoke worse there is no room to pass.

i’m heading in to finish hanging the show – am hoping that jason’s stuff has arrived. angela stopps at her place to pick up a friend who is in from britain but used to live on the rock. i am invited for coffee and we end up at the bagel café – this is not good for my budget.

at the bagel i cannot resist not having a samosa breakfast angela has the same. sarah hs a lattè and races off to have her cards read. so angie and i sit out on the sidewalk – my preferred spot and have a chat, spread gossip before heading across the street to wordplay.

climb the stairs and see that undrea has put up the sign for the show and jason’s name is left out. didn’t really have to ask but did any. no it hadn’t arrived.

i copy to cd the snaps that david made the night before. i e-mail people for info that they hadn’t sent. and lo and behold jim rings from downstairs saying that jason’s paintings have arrived.

there are only five they are hung in a flash. i then e-mail the gallery in toronto sayingi that some are damaged and send her a snap of the installation.

she e-mails back saying that well the way that they are usually hung is in salon style i had them in a straight line – with certain ones grouped. since i had no instructions i made my own grouping and i was too late to change it now.

the saab is ready i can head out to tj’s so i take the bus that winds through st.john’s to get there. the five minute direct route becomes a 30 minute meander but no worries i have a car, i am a bit more independent and can start to explore – am thinking bell island to-morrow.

took the saab – no radio watch the heat guage ease up to full spead don’t gun it – on a ceremonial first trip to pouch along routee 20 to the school to see if anyone wants to come in and to pick up more film then back to the opening. think about getting coffee but don’t want to be late. park in my usual spot in gower street.

the opening is a sedate affair – being unknown in st. john’s there weren’t a lot of people at the opening those that were there were interested and the ones looking for tourist art left immediately.

the circle became jim angela, sarah, undrea, paul kennedy, and susan a bostonian who lives in st philips on a pond (read lake). she prefers ponds to the ocean as you can do all sorts of things in a pond whereas you can only look at the ocean.

then comes the first encounter of newfoundland surrealism of the evening. as we are all going to head to the duke ruth and peter show up, it seems that ruth is from the same city as gabrielle in switzerland and is translating one of her books into english, ruth and gabrielle have never met but have only worked via e-mail. paul was staying at gabrielle’s and i was soon to be his roomie as his wife was heading back to toronto – cannot wait to get out of that monks cell of the school with the doors always shut, people only scurrying out to get something from the kitchen and then heading back. outside of jim and angie i was the only there who had met gabrielle and that was in chicago. peter is smitten by paul kennedy and keeps bombarding him with questions about the c.b.c.

-the wind has just shifted it is now coming off the ocean dropping the temparature a good 3c. what was sultry is now cool, the mist is getting closer

after another hour of anecdotes half head to the duke half to eat. run a tab and sit in the front of the bar not in baird’s corner. while talking look about the bar and see the evening regulars a different crowd a bit younger but the regulars are in their seats. roz is at the slots.

heading in a kid yells out jim jim and ands him a flyer, i yell out kid kid stand there as i want to make his snap. peter and jim tell him to charge me a loonie and then say that he is going to end up on a milk bottle. the kid wants a loonie and turns his back i say that is fine also but in the end i say too late you blew it as we go in.

as we begin to relax – two pints in – a group of green t-shirted with the flags of switzerland and newfoundland with maps of the bars downtown on the back invade the bar, to the extent that we cannot get to the bar. we leave to find more peaceful place. we’ll pay the tab when we can actually get close to the bar.

down the steps to water street and the grapevine. couldn’t be anything more different than the duke. bar covered in spaklely lights, women in low cut tops behind the bar, the crowd half people on the prowl half regulars who are there to be seen. a dj spinning cds and dancing with himself.

luckily they have smithwicks.

not ten minutes later the green t-shirt crowd enters again by now i have had enough pints in me to ask who the hell they are. it is a wedding party where the groom os from the rock and the bride is swiss they are making all the bars.

second bit of newfoundland surrealism. the bride is not only swiss like ruth but like ruth is from the same city. again they are moving on but not soon enough. paul says he has to go back and write that we are corrupting him - but he never starts until midnight. he doesn’y sit where i do finding the view too distracting – he say just going to the kitchen he starts to stare and forgets why he went.

he has turned the back bedroom with no view what so ever into his office.

ruth and peter have to go also leaving only jim and me to soldier on. think about grafenbergs but the george street festival is on and it is impossible to get up the steps. walk the long way around where jim runs into some other people. this time it is little toronto. two asians steve and ann who introduces herself as i’m so sorry , a woman my complexion, karen, and her boyfriend. don. we head back to the duke pay the first tab and start a new one. about my seventh pint of smithwicks that evening i forget why we left the duke – unless it has something to do with donald the realtor who i take it has something to do with grafenbergs – but we end up there where i have to switch to guinness.

hate grafenbergs last year it seemed like a sleezy airport orhotel bar where toupeed men would wait for facelifted women. this has changed it now has black light and a band doing bad covers of fleetwood mac where men in their twenties try to look cool for women who want to be band groupies.

one guinness and we left. walked slowly back to the saab to sober up. drove jim home and headed to the airport for a coffee at tim’s to post the blog at 4am and answer e-mail thinking that there is something wrong here.