"Why, exactly, do you have a fresh pair of little-girl pyjamas in the trunk of your car?"
It's a fair question, really. I have no children. My nieces and nephews are all adults, and my one grand-niece to date will not grow large enough for the sleepwear in my trunk for a few years. My one-time youthful sidekick, Singularity Girl has become a Singularity Woman with two children, sure, but they are boys and, even in this era, they would wear less gendered-leaning pyjamas.
"Oh, those. I was supposed to give them to some witches in Dorchester."
"Uh, what now?"
"They're nice witches."
"Who want children's pyjamas?"
"Yes. But I got the date wrong for this year."
"And that's a bad thing?"
"I wanted to watch the witches dance."
Clearly, the story required a less ambiguous explanation.
A group of women who live in nearby Dorchester have developed an unusual Halloween tradition. One of the women was born near Halloween. She also has fond memories of receiving new pyjamas on her birthday when she was a little girl. Kids often get forgotten when it comes to donations to shelters and food banks. So now, every October, they meet in the town park dressed as witches and dance. The cost of seeing them perform is a charitable donation-- with brand-new kids' pyjamas being the preferred coin.
I shall either have to donate them directly somewhere or hang onto them until next year.
# # #
Other than purchasing kid's pyjamas to give to some bopping beldams, I've done one or two interesting things, but too little writing while I anticipate starting the revision of the novel draft.
I created some images using Dall-E, but that's a tale for another time.
My wife prepares for the forthcoming singing season. December seeks sopranos.
We attended an arty sort of party where the host got drunk and disappeared. For the record, I was driving, so I only consumed a single beer. My wife was recovering from a stomach ailment; she drank lemonade.
Dramatic disappearances! We saw Grand Ghosts by Jesse Gervais, a play that was to appear one-hundred years after the disappearance of Canadian millionaire and theatre impresario Ambrose Small. The pandemic delayed it 'til now. One of Canada's enduring mysteries, Small's disappearance received international coverage at the time, with the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Fort weighing in. The play premiered in the very theatre Small's ghost reputedly haunts, but it took an often light-hearted look at the tale, with scenes performed using various theatrical forms from 1919-- silent movies, vaudeville, pantomime, melodrama, and the like. The cast was uniformly excellent, and we both really enjoyed the show. I'm currently reading a book about the case.
We also saw, in a smaller space, Zorana Sadiq's one-woman show, MixTape. I knew little about it and so expected that it would be the light-hearted offering, life seen or heard through the lens of music. It certainly had its laughs, but Sadiq's life and her strained relationship with her family-- she is now estranged from her mother-- made for often-challenging viewing. I will say that it is a tour de force, in that Sadiq holds the stage for the duration of the 90 minutes. She must finish the night exhausted.
Also exhausting: following the midterm election across the border. Also a tale for another time.
Rarely do I binge-watch, but I ran rapidly through the first season of High School, adapted from Tegan and Sara's autobiography. Changes to the source notwithstanding, they did a good job. The book moved between the sisters' two perspectives and the series uses this technique, but the episodes also include events from the perspective of significant supporting characters: their mother, stepfather, and close friends. The coming-of-age tale features a number of angles: queer teens, twin tensions, developing musicians, and a portrait of a lost time and place, Calgary in the mid-1990s. Railey and Seazynn Gillilanda may be a tad too old, but it's beguiling to realize their remarkable depictions represent their first professional acting jobs. High School also benefits from strong writing.
Even better-written: Kim Fu's recent short story collection, Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century. If I had only read the first half of this book, I might have called it my favorite read of the season.* I should say, however, that something like that is true of most short fiction collections. The lesser stories aren't bad-- her style remains solid-- it's just that the best stories, literary posts from The Twilight Zone or dark reflections in a Black Mirror-- are so much better.
Souwesto Words, dedicated to southwestern Ontario writers, became a live event again this year. I did not participate (beyond having copies of Live Nude Aliens in their book store), but I did enjoy watching local historian Vanessa Brown interview criminologist and true crime author Michael Arntfield. They focused, in particular, on serial killers and the unsolved cases in this region, many of them involving girls and young women. Inexplicably, a local small press publisher confused me with him shortly before the event. Maybe all bald writers look alike to her.
I wonder if he has brand-new children's pyjamas in the trunk of his car.
*It faces stiff, space-faring competition from Eric Choi's Hard SF collection, Just Like Being There.