I’m in Toronto. Its fabulous. Hot, sunny, clean, lovely and… obviously, big. It’s Canada, ergo, it’s big. But it seems much bigger than it really is because when you walk (as we did this morning) 20-odd ‘blocks’, you go through 20-odd intersections, and therefore you wait for the little white walking man 20-odd times. And you have to wait! No-one dares cross on the red man. It’s fucking fatal! Even though every nerve in my London born-and-bred body is not urging but DEMANDING that ‘there’s nothing coming, just GO!!’, you resist. Because you have to. So the journey takes 10 minutes longer than it should if you were running between cars, round buses, under big trucks, like you do at home.

We walked ‘downtown’ for a walking tour of ‘old Toronto’. Which my mate Dave, who moved here 45 years ago from Montreal, laughed at. There is no ‘old town’ he said. Yet there is! Dave!!! There are buildings here that go back as far as 1962. Which are older than all the newer ones. So there. And it’s interesting, as all walking tours are, even if they have to make shit up. Who would ever know? And there’s industrialists, and beaver pelt dealers who made good and alcohol producers who almost went out of business during Canada’s own ‘prohibition’ but were saved by Al Capone, who came to buy their booze to sell in the USA. Which, even if he tried now, and paid the tax on it, would be subject to tariffs. Obviously he never paid taxes, which was how they ‘got him’ in the end. So blame the Canadians. Why not?

Anyway, we walked to the ‘old town’, did a 3 hour walking tour and then walked the 3k back to the hotel. If I was ‘that sort of person’, who we all hate, always counting fucking steps as if it makes you somehow morally superior if you can’t afford to take Ubers, I would tell that we walked 23,000 steps today. But I simply wouldn’t be so gloatful as to even mention it. #fuckinghero.

We’re having the best time here. We arrived from Newfoundland, leaving all the retarded ones behind for the slimmed down beauty of the Toronto chic. We went to our pals for a ‘little dinner’ for about 50 people who’d all flown into town. But 48 of them weren’t as delayed as we were. Last night there was a party for about 100 people, which was fabulous. Tonight is the wedding. There goes the diet. But who cares? Calories don’t count in Canada. And speaking to a few ‘locals’, as I have been, I may have to change my mind about Canadians. They’re really not as bad as you’d imagine.

Happy Wedding Day

A xxxx