Odds & ends

• I spotted my first back-to-school post on social media yesterday, from someone in the U.S. It's only mid-August...!  I expect to be bracing myself against the onslaught for the next full month... sigh... 
• Dh & I went to the mall this morning. The temperature around noon was 29C, humidex reading 39C (it's currently 33C & 42C) -- the mall was busy (some of them back to school shoppers, I assume) -- it was very clammy/humid inside there too (despite the a/c) -- and I saw a rack of WINTER COATS on display in one of the women's wear stores!! I mean, seriously?? 
• Carrie Hauskens of Blooming With Care was a guest on NBC's high-profile Today morning show with Jenna Bush Hager (the former president's daughter) and Tyra Banks on Aug. 1st -- International Childfree Day.  She & her husband resolved to live without children after infertility and the stillbirth of their daughter Clementine. What a platform!!  I especially appreciated Tyra Banks's thoughtful comments -- she actually "got it" -- you can almost see the light bulb going off over her head. ;)  You can watch her segment -- a full 9 minutes! -- here. 
• Jody Day of Gateway Women was interviewed in an article for the Associated Press that was published in a number of major U.S. newspapers, including the Washington Post and Seattle Times, as well as online news sites -- about  "Why the search for meaning can cause ‘purpose anxiety,’ and what to do about it."  (I'm not sure I've heard the term "purpose anxiety" before, but I certainly believe it exists!) 
• Says Jody:  "Even after 14 years of my work being widely discussed across the world, this is the first time I've been in the mainstream US press!"  IT'S ABOUT TIME!! -- Congratulations!   
• On a similar note, Katie Couric Media recently shared a personal essay:  "This Isn’t the Midlife I Imagined — Here’s How I Pivoted at 55."  The author pursued parenthood until she was 54 (!) -- and realized, after spending time with a friend's teenager, that it was time to pursue new dreams. Still, she struggled with the question of "what now?"  She concludes: 

This version of midlife is different from the one I expected; it’s more trial and error, more exploration and unknowns, but I’m learning to live it fully — and I’m uncovering interests and dreams I never knew existed as I go. I’m excited to see what awaits. I’m no longer chasing the life I thought I was supposed to have; I’m focusing on the one I have right now.

• This was an interesting article in the New York Times recently, about a co-housing community of aging women living in "tiny houses" in Texas.  **NOTE:  Not everyone in the community is childless.**  Nevertheless, it's interesting to read about how one group has structured such a community and is making it work!  (Gift link attached.) 
• The love of my life -- when I was 15 years old, lol -- Stuart "Woody" Wood of the 1970s band Bay City Rollers (whose memoir I recently read and reviewed), and the current band lineup (he's the sole remaining member of the classic 1970s lineup) -- played a concert at the Highland Games in Fergus, Ontario, about 1.5 hours from here/Toronto, on Saturday night (while I was otherwise engaged, attending a family wedding -- not that dh would have been keen to take me to a BCR concert anyway!  lol).  
• On Sunday afternoon, they posted photos & videos on their social media of Woody and the other band members out & about in downtown Toronto -- including Nathan Phillips Square, scene of a hysterical mob of some 55,000 screaming teenaged girls, on a hot summer day in June 1976. (A photo from that day appears on the inside cover of their "Dedication" album -- unfortunately, while I could find photos of the album cover, the inside cover photo remains elusive! but there are other photos from the day available on Google.)  
• Needless to say, almost 50 (!) years later, it was quite a different scene -- the square was almost completely empty -- and I posted a comment to that effect on the video. And Woody actually responded to my post!!  Teenaged me was THRILLED!!  (lol)  (Okay, 60-something me was pretty tickled too!  lol)  See the screenshot below (with a few redactions). 
  
  
  
  

"Mania: Tartan, Turmoil and My Life as a Bay City Roller" by Stuart "Woody" Wood

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember that I spent 2-3 years of my teenaged life in the mid/late 1970s in the thrall of... the Bay City Rollers (lol).  Next August (2026) will mark (big GULP) 50 (!!!) years (!!!)  since my sister, two of our best friends and I screamed ourselves silly at a Rollers concert, along with about 12,000 other hysterical teenaged girls, at the old arena in Winnipeg. (You can find my past posts about the Rollers here.) 

In recent years, I've read several books about the band -- some better than others -- including memoirs by two members of the classic lineup (bassist Alan Longmuir and lead singer Les McKeown -- both sadly gone now, as well as Ian Mitchell, who replaced Alan). (The links go to my blog reviews of their books.) 

Now it's guitarist Stuart "Woody" Wood's turn to tell his side of the Rollers' story (with the help of collaborator Peter Stoneman). Woody was my favourite -- the man I wanted to marry when I was 15 (lol)  -- and although I am now happily married to someone else (and so is he -- and coincidentally, they don't have any kids either), I could not resist hunting down a copy when I first heard about it on his Facebook page. "Mania:  Tartan, Turmoil and My Life as a Bay City Roller" is not yet available in North America -- and to have one shipped over from the UK would have been ridiculously expensive -- but I was able to get my hands on an e-copy last Tuesday, a few days after it was published on June 19th, and dove right in.  :)  It was a fast read that kept me turning the pages. (Obviously, your mileage may vary, depending on your interest in the band!)

Woody, now 68 years old (the same age as the guy I actually did marry) was still just 16 years old and (as he describes it) "wet behind the ears" when he joined the band in 1974 -- the last of the classic lineup to be added. A poor student prone to daydreaming, he had dropped out of school to train as an apprentice electrician, and had been playing guitar in local bands (in Edinburgh, Scotland) for a couple of years when Tam Paton, the Rollers' uber-controlling manager, spotted him. He was first invited to work part-time as a roadie for the Rollers, and eventually to join them when another member dropped out. 

The Rollers were the hottest band in Edinburgh then -- and their weekly salary was double what Woody had been making as an apprentice electrician -- so he accepted -- just as the Rollers started taking off nation-wide, on the strength of their single "Remember."  Soon afterward, "Rollermania" -- which many compared to Beatlemania, a decade-plus earlier -- was under way, spreading to North America, Australia, Japan and beyond.  Young Woody was thrust into a relentless schedule of touring, playing night after night after night (more than 300 days in 1975) to increasingly larger audiences of screaming teenaged girls -- then fleeing them after the show -- plus press interviews, photo sessions, television and radio performances and interviews, writing and recording sessions.... Tam fed them "vitamins" to keep their energy levels up, and then other pills to help them sleep. They toured the world, but their fame was such that they didn't actually get to see very much of it. Trapped in their hotel rooms, they could not go out for a walk, or into shops or pubs, etc., without attracting a hysterical mob.  Even the Wood family home was besieged by fans ringing the doorbell day and night and leaving graffiti on the walls. Woody's parents eventually had to move. 

In Toronto in the summer of 1976 -- a few weeks before I saw them in Winnipeg -- their limo was mobbed and nearly crushed when they tried to attend an interview at a local radio station (just a few blocks away from where I'd be living, a decade later!). That same summer, some 50,000 fans turned out to see them make a brief personal appearance at Nathan Phillips Square (Toronto city hall). It was a hot summer day; girls were fainting in the crush of the mob, and the Rollers were quickly whisked offstage and sped away for fears of everyone's safety. You can hear snippets from that day on the song "Yesterday's Hero" -- the album version, from their "Dedication" album. (Other versions cut out the crowd noises. Listen to the lyrics... oh, the irony...) 

“At that age you’re not so much scared as the adrenaline is in full flow. I’d be terrified if that were to happen now,” he writes.  

It's been a while since I read Alan & Les's memoirs -- but I feel like Woody's book was the best at capturing the mania of that chaotic time, and the personal and professional turmoil he and the others lived through. It's a book that lives up to its title and subtitle!  

It was fun at first, but after a while, the hectic lifestyle began to take a toll.  Inevitably, the mania began to fade. The hits stopped coming, the record company lost interest in promoting them, Tam's intense monitoring tapered off, drugs entered the picture, and the band members came to a dawning realization of the legal and financial mess they were in -- which eventually led to years of bitter legal battles. In 2016 -- more than 40 years after their heyday, and 300 million records sold -- the band members finally received a settlement for a undisclosed amount of money (believed to be in the range of  70,000 pounds sterling each -- don't quote me, but my calculations would put that at about $85,000 US in 2016).  

It was also probably inevitable that, thrust together under these incredibly stressful conditions, conflict would arise among the band members. Woody makes no secret of the longstanding mutual dislike between him and Les McKeown, although he does give Les full props as a first-rate frontman. He doesn't have a lot to say about drummer Derek Longmuir (Alan's younger brother), or Ian Mitchell, Pat McGlynn or Duncan Faure, all briefly part of the band. He admits to a few fistfights with Eric Faulkner -- but he respected Eric's musical abilities, and they lived on a farm together for a while, and wrote songs together, including a few of the Rollers' hits. His buddy in the band was Alan, who served as the best man at his 1997 wedding. They were sadly estranged before Alan's death in 2018, but his enduring affection for the man shines through the pages.  

Of Tam Paton, Woody confirms in an author's note at the beginning of the book that the man was as awful and abusive as it's been rumoured (the rumours include sexual abuse of at least some of the band members) -- but he refuses to go into lurid details here. “I moved on a long time ago and don’t want that beast to be any part of things concerning my life. I don’t need therapy; I have coped in my own way and have no need to spill my emotion,” he writes.

It's not all sad and serious stuff, though -- there are some passages that had me literally laughing out loud until my sides ached. And I loved the warm foreword written by Rod Stewart!  :)  

Les quit the band in 1978;  Duncan Faure was hired to replace him, and the band limped on for another few years before eventually calling it quits. Woody and Duncan teamed up with drummer Richie Hall in South Africa for a while as Karu, based in Los Angeles;  later he teamed up with Ian and spent five mostly happy years in South Africa in a band called Passengers, before returning home to Scotland in the early 1990s. 

Over the years, there were were several Roller reunions, featuring various combinations of past band members, but never the entire classic lineup. With encouragement from his wife, Denise, he got involved in playing and producing Celtic music and, until just recently, he was a part-time lecturer in music production at a local community college. 

Woody has owned the rights to the Bay City Rollers name since 2003 and, for the past several years, has been touring with a new version of the Rollers -- the lone member from the classic lineup still out there playing the old songs. He does it for the love of the music, and for the fans, and enjoys it a lot more than he has in a long time. His life has had a lot of ups and more than its share of downs -- but at heart, he's an optimist, a "glass half full" kind of guy. For all the records the Rollers sold, he's far from being a millionaire -- but he seems happy with his life today, and I hope he "keeps on rolling" as long as he wants to.  :)  

I closed the book with a smile -- then looked up some old clips on YouTube to link to here. And got a bit teary. It was so long ago now, and it was fun while it lasted...  

A solid 4 stars. (As I said above, your mileage may vary, depending on your interest in the band!)  

This was Book #20 read to date in 2025 (and Book #4 finished in June), bringing me to 44% of  my 2025 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 2 books behind  schedule to meet my goal.  :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2025 tagged as "2025 books." 

"Legend in Green Velvet" by Elizabeth Peters

I had another book in mind to start reading this past weekend on the westbound flight to visit my family over Christmas holidays... but I set it aside in favour of a real "comfort (re)read" for me, and one I've been meaning to re-read for a long time now -- one of my favourite novels by one of my favourite authors, Elizabeth Peters (whose real name was Barbara Mertz, and who also wrote thrillers under the name Barbara Michaels). I've written before on this blog about my long love of Peters/Michaels and her books -- including how seeing her speak and getting her to sign a special copy of her book for me in November 1998 was a welcome distraction in my post-stillbirth grief. 

Peters (who died in 2013) was probably best known for her Amelia Peabody books, about the adventures of a feisty Egyptologist and her family in the late 1800s/early 1900s, but she had two other series that were also a lot of fun -- about Vicky Bliss, an American historian working in a German museum, and Jacqueline Kirby, librarian turned romance novelist -- plus a lot of standalone books too. 

I first remember reading -- and love, love, loving -- "Legend in Green Velvet" when I was in high school, from our local library. I later bought a paperback version -- which I still have (it survived the pre-condo move book purge!) -- and have a digital edition on my e-reader as well (which is the one I had with me on the plane). It was published in 1976, when I was 15 years old and deeply immersed in my teenaged Bay City Rollers mania, with an adjacent obsession with all things Scottish -- which might explain why I remember it with such great fondness. ;)  

Our young American heroine, Susan, has also been obsessed with Scotland and Scottish history and legends her entire life -- and now she's scraped together enough money to spend the summer in Scotland, working on an archeological dig in the Highlands. It's a dream come true for her. But shortly after her arrival in Edinburgh, a strange old man slips her a cryptic message -- then her hotel room is ransacked -- and Susan finds herself being framed for murder, and on the run with a handsome (if rather cynical) young Scottish laird -- who (once he reluctantly shaves his lavish beard) bears a striking resemblance to a certain well-known public figure (then and now -- who was, at the time, one of the world's most eligible bachelors). This becomes a running joke throughout the book.   

I hadn't re-read this book in years. It's not very long, but it took me longer to get through than I expected (because life, Christmas prep, aging parents...).  It's a light read, full of lessons about Scotland and its history, and (as with most Peters novels) a lot of humour along with the action. (Romance too!) It's dated in many respects, but I still enjoyed it and (for me) it was the perfect way to kick off the holidays. :) 

4 stars on Goodreads. 

This was Book #49 read to date in 2022 (and Book #3 finished in December), bringing me to 109% of my 2022 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books! I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 6 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2022 tagged as "2022 books."  

"My Ticket to Ride" by Janice Mitchell

If you've followed my blog for a while, you'll know that I spent several teenaged years in the mid-1970s obsessed with the top boy band of the day, the (cough!) Bay City Rollers. Whenever I had a fight with my mother, I would lie awake at night, plotting how I would run away to Scotland (where the Rollers were from)(and then she'd be sorry...!).  I never did quite figure out how I was going to manage to get to Scotland all by myself on my $5 a week allowance (plus occasional money from babysitting)  ;)  (I'd never even been on a plane before, and it was a lot harder to research and arrange those sorts of things in pre-Internet times)  but there was nothing I wanted more than to go to there, meet my favourite Roller (Woody), marry him and live happily ever after. 

Janice Mitchell lived my dream -- a version of it, at least. In 1964, at the age of 16, she and her friend Martha (Marty) ran away together from Cleveland to London, with the goal of meeting the Beatles (they figured hanging around the clubs frequented by the band in Soho would do the trick) and getting jobs with Brian Epstein (he's a busy man, he must need help! and Janice could type!!).  They actually made it to England (after cashing in Marty's college fund)(!), found and rented an apartment, and spent 23 days there, sightseeing, visiting clubs and hanging out with local boys (including a hitchhiking trip to Liverpool), before they were apprehended by police and abruptly hauled back to the States. The girls didn't realize their disappearance had made international headlines. Not only did Janice and Marty suffer personal consequences, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and rock and roll generally, were banned from Cleveland for two years afterward, until 1966 (!). 

Not allowed to talk about what had happened, and encouraged to put the entire episode behind her, Janice didn't tell anyone about her amazing adventure for more than 50 years (!). She went on to become a journalist, a federal investigator (now retired), a private investigator and adjunct professor.  She's still a Beatles fan. :) 

Now, she's written a book about the experience. You've gotta love the title: "My Ticket to Ride: How I Ran Away to England to Meet the Beatles and Got Rock and Roll Banned in Cleveland (A True Story from 1964)."  :) 

I first heard about Janice and her book via Ann Moses, who was the editor of Tiger Beat magazine back in the 1960s/early 1970s. I read & enjoyed Ann's memoir "Meow" a few years ago (reviewed here) and have followed her on Facebook ever since then. 

"Author Janice Mitchell contacted me a few years ago and asked me for advice for a book she was working on," Ann wrote in a Facebook post last September. "After hearing her summary of her adventure, I told her the story was “golden” and to forge ahead."  

This all sounds rather light-hearted, and there's a charming naivete to the teenagers' plans and escapades -- echoes of a simpler, more innocent time -- but there's a dark/sad/serious undercurrent to Janice's story, too -- one that lifts the book above a simple fan-girl's memoir. Janice's parents were alcoholics, who left Janice with an aging great-aunt and uncle and disappeared when she was 8 years old. She didn't see them, nor her younger sister and brother, for another 20 years. Music, and the Beatles, gave colour and meaning to her somewhat dreary life. She truly believed she would not be missed and that her great-aunt would be better off without having her around to worry about. 

Janice remembers the police officers in England treated them with kindness -- those in their own country, not so much. They were taken from the plane in Cleveland straight to a juvenile detention centre, until their families were able to bail them out, and charged with juvenile delinquency, based on complaints of forgery, truancy, disobedience and running away. This treatment seems like a huge amount of overkill -- but, as one of the book blurbs says, it was "an era in America when young women exercising some control over their lives presented a serious threat to adult society."  Clearly, not everyone back then was a Beatles fan...! 

This was a fast read, and I enjoyed it hugely (I'll admit it was right up my alley). If you're a Beatles fan (as I am), or (like me) ever dreamed of running away to follow your favourite boy band, you will enjoy this book. :) 

5 stars. 

(Caroline Sullivan also lived a version of my dream in the 1970s,  WITH the Bay City Rollers. She and some friends (who called themselves the "Tacky Tartan Tarts")(!) followed the Rollers around the U.S. for four straight summers, from 1975 to 1979  (She wound up sleeping with one of them too -- unnamed in the book, but it's not hard to guess who it was.)  Now a music journalist in Britain, she wrote a memoir about her Rollermaniac days called "Bye Bye Baby: My Tragic Love Affair with the Bay City Rollers" in 1999.  My British penpal from those days -- one of the few penpals I'm still in touch with from that time -- sent me a copy before it became available here in North America. :)  I enjoyed that one too.  :)   )   

This was Book #19 read to date in 2022 (and Book #3 finished in April), bringing me to 42% of my 2022 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 6 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2022 tagged as "2022 books."  

Odds & ends

• I've been following Meaghan Daum on social media ever since I picked up her book "Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids" -- which I have yet to finish/read completely -- but it's an essay collection, i.e., the type of book you can easily dip in & out of. I did blog about the book when I first discovered it, here. It comes from a mostly childfree perspective but includes stories from people whose "decision" not to have kids was not necessarily a clear-cut or entirely happy one, by the way. 
• She recently posted a promotion for an episode of her "The Unspeakable" podcast on her Facebook page, titled "The Tyranny of the Midcareer Pivot."  My interest was piqued, and so I had a listen (it's just a half-hour long monologue).  I'm 9 years older than Meaghan, who is 51 (I'm 60 = a borderline Late Boomer/Early GenXer), but wow, there's a LOT here that's familiar. Very (VERY) grateful that I was able to "pivot" into retirement in my early/mid-50s. It's tough out there. (For everyone, I know, but she articulates the particular difficulties of the midlife worker in the current environment very well.)  
• I didn't listen to this podcast episode from Anne Bogel (aka "Modern Mrs. Darcy") and "What Should I Read Next?" but I did enjoy reading through the transcript (thank you to podcasters who provide these!).  Episode #293 features a reader/listener from Calgary and discusses how to "Streamline your (digital) TBR." My own Goodreads "want to read" list currently numbers 350+ (and let's not get into how many unread books I have on my Kobo e-reader and Kindle phone app...!).  Some great suggestions here. 
• Speaking of reading -- I just finished my first book of August -- "The Mother of All Dilemmas" by Kathleen Guthrie Woods. Review to come shortly. 
• This fabulous interview with Jody Day of Gateway Women in The Age Buster blog first appeared last November (2020), but I only just discovered it. Some eye-opening thoughts from Jody on the "unholy trinity" of ageism, sexism and pronatalism. 
• And speaking of pronatalism -- David Frum (conservative writer and commentator) and I do not always see eye to eye, but I very much appreciated this brief Twitter thread from him related to pronatalism. (Perhaps more so because it's 23 years today that I went for an ultrasound and heard the words no pregnant woman wants to hear: "I'm sorry, there's no heartbeat."  :(   )  The comments are mostly supportive -- although a few people bring up adoption (eyeroll) and more than a few do not seem to know what pronatalism is.
• (I am not sure what triggered these comments from him -- he has three grownup children -- but I suspect, from the comments, that it may be the recent comments by the author J.D. Vance, who is running for the Republican Senate nomination in Ohio.  I vented about Vance's comments, and the approving reaction from Fox News, in a recent post.)  
• As a self-confessed fan of the Bay City Rollers ;) you can imagine my amusement when Telus (a telecom provider here in Canada) released a new TV ad featuring the 1976 BCR version of Dusty Springfield's classic 1963 song "I Only Wanna Be With You" as background music. :)  I can't find a video clip of the ad itself (yet?), but here's a vintage video of the Rollers singing the song (with both the late great Les McKeown, lead singer, and the late adorable Ian Mitchell, just 17 years old here). :) 

Right now

Right now...* 

*(an occasional (mostly monthly) meme, alternating from time to time with "The Current"). (Explanation of how this started & my inspirations in my first "Right now" post, here. Also my first "The Current" post, here.)

Pandemic diary/update: (And once again, this section is almost a post unto itself...!) June was Month #15 going on 16 (!) of living with the COVID-19 pandemic.  

After hitting an all-time one-day high of 4,812 on April 16th (shortly after the most recent lockdown/restrictions began), daily new case numbers here in Ontario have (thankfully!) been steadily declining. Yesterday, the province reported just 184 new cases -- the lowest since Sept. 10th, 2020.  The seven-day rolling average of new cases fell to 268. Hospital/ICU numbers have also declined.

This is due in part to the success of the latest lockdown/restrictions/staged reopening process -- but also undoubtedly because of our rapidly rising vaccination rates. Vaccinations began rolling out (very slowly) to the general public in March, and the second round, which also got off to a bit of a slow start in May, is now going gangbusters. As of yesterday (June 30th), 67.5% of all Canadians had received at least one shot, and 29.2% were fully vaccinated. Here in Ontario, 67.4% of the total population have received one dose of vaccine, and 32.6% are now fully vaccinated. (Among adults 18+ in Ontario, those figures are 77.7% and 39.3%, respectively.)  

Initially, the wait between first and second shots was pegged at 16 weeks -- then it was lowered to 12 weeks. By mid-June, with the new Delta variant of the virus starting to spread, the province decreed that anyone who had had an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna) could get their second shot after just 8 weeks. Those of us who had AstraZeneca, however, still had to wait 12 weeks, whether we were getting AZ or an mRNA shot for our second dose. People were not happy about that -- and so within days, the wait time was shortened to 8 weeks for AZers too.  Dh & I had our first AstraZeneca shots on April 5th... as a result, people who got their first shots of Pfizer in May, long after we did, were getting their second shots before we were even allowed to try to book ours!  One more round of ups & downs for us AZers to endure...!  

To date, most Canadians have received Pfizer or (to a lesser extent)AstraZeneca, because initial shipments of Moderna were delayed. Now it's the other way around:  vast quantities of Moderna are flooding into the country, while the latest Pfizer shipments have been delayed, creating a Pfizer shortage.  Of course, those of us who took AstraZeneca for our first shots are now being urged to choose an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna) for our second.  (And how privileged are we, to have the luxury of choice??) (Early data on "mixing" has been promising, but there hasn't been a lot of it to date.)  To make things even more interesting, Moderna has not yet been approved here for use among children aged 12-18 (but Pfizer has).  As a result, many clinics are reserving what little Pfizer is currently available for the 12-18 age group. But because Pfizer became "THE" vaccine by default (when Moderna was not available and AZ fell into disfavour), many people are now outright refusing Moderna at vaccination clinics -- even though it is essentially the same thing as Pfizer -- running the risk of unused vaccines going to waste...!!  You can't make this stuff up...! 

Anyway! -- If you read my blog regularly, you know I've posted (*cough* -- whined, lol) about how difficult it's been to book second shots -- and I'm almost hesitant to post this because, I don't want to jinx myself (lol) -- but later this afternoon, dh, BIL & SIL & I will be going to get our second vaccinations at one of the big centres, about 20 minutes from where we live. 

Last week, I'd called the drugstore where we got our first shots (& were registered for a second), but was told they were only giving AstraZeneca;  they didn't have any Pfizer yet. By then, we'd decided we'd rather have the Pfizer (if only to stop my mother from complaining, lol).  SIL told me she'd been on the provincial booking portal and seen lots of appointments available at this particular site, but they wouldn't say whether they were offering Pfizer or Moderna (BIL was hesitant on the Moderna). I decided to have a look for myself, and when I saw all those appointments available, I thought, to heck with waiting, I don't care if it's Moderna, and booked for me & dh. Phoned SIL and she promptly booked for the exact same time for her & BIL, lol. I said, "If the drugstore comes through with Pfizer before then, we can always cancel," but they haven't -- and we didn't realize at the time that basically there wasn't any Pfizer to be had anywhere for people 18+. 

So, today is the day! and I can't think of a better way to celebrate Canada Day!!  After two weeks, i.e., by July 15th, we will (finally!!) be considered fully vaccinated.  (This gives a whole new meaning to the term "two-week wait," doesn't it??)  My parents received their second vaccinations earlier this week (yay!!), and my sister and her partner will get theirs early next week.  

Our most recent stay-at-home order, which began April 8th, officially ended as scheduled on June 2nd. However, other restrictions remained firmly in place until June 11th, when -- certain thresholds re: vaccinations, new cases, ICU numbers, etc. being met -- some things began to reopen, including larger gatherings, outdoor dining and some non-essential retail (at 15% capacity), after what some have called one of the longest and most stringent lockdowns in the world. 

There's supposed to be a mandatory 21 days until the next stage of reopening is allowed to proceed, to ensure new case/ICU numbers remain low and we reach certain vaccination levels. For example, stage 2 was scheduled for Friday, July 2nd, assuming (among other criteria) 70% of all adults with first vaccinations and 20% with second shots. As usual, however, our premier simply could not resist the opportunity to score some political points by reopening before the long weekend (eyeroll)(Canada Day) -- and his wife and four daughters were nagging him about wanting to get their hair and nails done (eyeroll again) -- and so Stage 2 reopening began a few days early -- i.e., yesterday, Wednesday, June 30th -- which includes hair and nail salons and malls (all at reduced capacity). (Yes, I know I've been whining about my own hair, lol -- but even though I desperately want a haircut, I don't believe that's sufficient reason to reopen earlier than health officials recommend.) 

Stage 3 reopening is currently scheduled for around July 21st -- although we've already exceeded the required vaccination levels required, and some people are pushing for an earlier reopening there too (which would include indoor dining and other indoor activities, including casino reopenings and larger indoor gathering limits).  Health officials, however, want the government to stick to the established timeline. Guess we'll see...!  

On top of dh's usual (once or twice weekly) trips to the supermarket for groceries and for takeout dinners on Saturday nights, this month, we've been to BIL's six (6) times to spend time with SIL & Little Great-Nephew -- once or twice a week (generally mid-morning, as LGN takes a nap in the afternoon after lunch). 

Dh also helped BIL & Older Nephew move some stuff from BIL's house to the kids' new home, about 45-60 minutes north, after they took possession on June 1st. They've been having some work done (installing a new kitchen and some built-ins in the family room, de-popcorning the ceilings, installing new flooring in the upstairs bedrooms and painting), and won't be moving in until later in July.  

Otherwise, we've continued to stay close to home (both by edict and by choice).  Unfortunately, we are part of an increasing minority: for example, EuroCup soccer is HUGE in the predominantly Italian community where we live, and there were HUNDREDS of people jamming the streets, celebrating, in the old downtown/village area last Saturday afternoon, after Italy won its do-or-die game against Austria... in direct violation of gathering limits, not a mask in sight (and how many of them do you think were two weeks past their second shots??).  Dh went to pick up our takeout dinner around 5 p.m., while the game was still on -- the restaurant's recently reopened patio was packed, with a long lineup waiting outside, and there were massive lineups at all the other restaurants & stores he passed by.  And later, as we ate our dinner, we watched as several groups of young people, unmasked, made their way from the parking area to one of the neighbouring townhouses, toting cases of beer and platters of food -- obviously headed to a party. Sigh... I know it's summertime, people want to be out & about, things ARE getting better -- but IT'S NOT OVER YET!! 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** 

Also right now:  

Reading: I read 2 books in June (all reviewed on this blog, as well as Goodreads, & tagged "2021 books"):

• "Emily of New Moon" by L.M. Montgomery -- which my L.M. Montgomery Readathon Facebook group began reading & discussing together on June 14th. :)  If you're an LMM/Emily fan, come join us! -- we're only a few chapters in! 
• "Anxious People" by Fredrik Backman (for my "Clever Name" virtual book club). 

This brings me to 34 books read so far in 2021 -- 94% of my 2021 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 36 books (!!). I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 17 (!) books ahead of schedule. :)  (Dh stopped tracking his reading on Goodreads -- again! -- with his most recent total at 62 books (!), but likely much higher.)  

Current read(s): 

• "Summerhills" by D.E. Stevenson (chapter-by-chapter group read with my DES online fan group). 
• "Emily of New Moon" by L.M. Montgomery (chapter-by-chapter group read with my L.M. Montgomery Readathon Facebook group, as mentioned above). 
• "The Menopause Manifesto" by Dr. Jen Gunter. 
• "Hungry" by Grace Dent (the July pick for the Gateway Women/NoMo book club).

Coming up: 

• "Love Lives Here: A Story of Thriving in a Transgender Family" by Amanda Jette Knox (July's pick for my  "Clever Name" virtual book club). 

Did not finish:  

• "Poisoned" by Jennifer Donnelly (June's pick for the Gateway Women/NoMo book club). This was billed as a feminist take on an old fairy tale (Snow White). Fantasy is generally not my genre of choice, but I enjoy taking part in book club discussions (and I've been introduced to some great reads through them that I might not have picked up otherwise) -- so I downloaded this book to my e-reader and started reading. But I found it difficult to get into -- and there were other, more alluring books waiting in the wings to be read (some for other book clubs too). I rarely abandon a book once I start it (and who knows, I may pick it up again at some point in the future), but I just couldn't get interested, and so I've set this one aside. Your mileage may vary...! 

A few recently purchased titles (in both paper & digital formats, discounted or purchased with points):   

• "Me & Mr. Darcy" by Alexandra Potter 
• "A Girl From Yamhill" by Beverly Cleary 
• "A Bigger Field Awaits Us" by Andrew Beaujon 
• "Let Love Rule" by Lenny Kravitz 

Watching: 

• I didn't watch minute by minute, but I kept tabs on the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs series between my beloved Winnipeg Jets and the legendary Montreal Canadiens earlier this month -- in which the Jets lost all four games played (best of 7). I guess there's always next year...!  (The Canadiens are facing the Tampa Bay Lightning in the finals -- game 3 tomorrow/Friday night!)
• Aside from figure skating, I'm generally not that interested in watching sports. I'll watch hockey now & then (I am Canadian, after all, lol), but personally, I think hockey in June/July is ridiculous. ;)  Nevertheless, I have followed the Jets since they were part of the WHL back in the 1970s. I vividly remember the day they became part of the NHL... that sad, sad day they left Winnipeg, and the ecstatic day they returned.  If I had to pick one team that I would call "mine," they would be it. :) 
• I finished watching season 4 of "The Handmaid's Tale."  We've gone waaaayyyyy beyond the original Atwood novel, and there was a lot of wish fulfillment going on, lol -- especially in the season ender! Not sure what they'll do in season 5 -- and there will be a season 5 -- but I will still be watching...!  
• After reading "Us" by David Nicholls recently (reviewed here), I enjoyed watching a two-part (four-hour) screen adaptation on PBS Masterpiece this month. Great New York Times review here! (And I blogged about how it affected me, here.)
• We wound up watching all four hours (!) of "KISStory" on A&E Biography on Monday night, lol.  I was not a KISS fan back in the day -- as regular readers of this blog will recall, I was a huge Bay City Rollers fan when I was in my early/mid-teens in the mid-1970s -- around the same time that KISS first began topping the charts -- and, back then, BCR & KISS fans HATED each other with a passion. ;)  (BCR fans were mostly young girls;  KISS fans back then were mostly young males.)  But what can I say -- they're kind of like the wallpaper -- they've always been there (they were part of my youth too, and they've been around almost 50!! years now...), some of their songs really are kind of catchy, and I feel almost kind of affectionate about them these days. Anyway, I enjoyed watching.  
• There was a rumour, when I was at university in the late 1970s/early 1980s, that KISS had played the residence auditorium where I attended so many dances/socials/parties -- several years earlier, in the early/mid-1970s, before they hit the big time. Years later, someone did some digging -- and it was true! It was the fourth show on their very first tour in 1974. (They were a little too weird for Winnipeg at the time and got booed, as well as picketed, lol.)  

Listening:  Dh has been listening to the Stingray Seventies music channel lately for some variety from  the classic rock channel we usually listen to. Obviously, there is some overlap -- but you get more of the sappy/silly stuff that gave Seventies music a bad name here (lol), along with the good stuff. Still, it's fun when you can instantly recognize a song from the first few bars and sing along to (almost) every word, even if you haven't heard it in a very long time...!  

Buying (besides books, lol):  Not much!  Most non-essential retail outlets here (aside from supermarkets and drugstores) could only offer curbside pickup until June 11th, when they were allowed to reopen with limited capacity. We figured they'd be swamped when they first reopened, and so have not ventured anywhere yet. Malls just reopened yesterday, as part of stage 2. We may bite the bullet and head there soon -- my cellphone is literally starting to fall apart (splitting along the seams), and I desperately need one with more memory, so... 

Eating/Drinking:  Our usual rotation of favourite takeout choices, including amazing thin crust/wood oven pizza, spaghetti rapini agli e olio, rotisserie chicken, chicken fingers and fries... and a trip through the McDonalds drive-through, one night when we were desperate, lol.  

A couple of times, en route home after visiting SIL & LGN, we've swung by the supermarket for some takeout soup or pizza for lunch -- I wait in the car while dh puts on his mask and goes inside, and we warm things up in the microwave when we get home. (In pre-covid times, we'd go for lunch there together and then do the grocery shopping.) 

Wearing:  Mostly denim shorts & tank tops, now that the hot, humid weather is here.  

Trying: To stay cool amid a wave of heat & humidity -- but not to complain too much about it, since it's nowhere near what people in British Columbia/the U.S. west coast (Seattle, Portland, etc.) have been dealing with (at least we have air conditioning!! -- many of them don't, since they just haven't needed it in the past).  On Tuesday, it was 49.6C (!!!) in Lytton, a small town in the interior of British Columbia -- a full 21 degrees hotter than normal.  (That's 121F, and hotter than the all-time record high in Las Vegas!!) They broke the all-time Canadian heat record (set in 1937), three days in a row! 

Then last night (Wednesday), the entire town was evacuated with about 10 minutes notice, then engulfed by wildfires.  :(  Other towns in the province are being flooded, the result of mountain icecaps melting in the extreme heat.   

Please don't try to tell me that climate change isn't real.  :(  

Wanting:  What else? -- a haircut!!  lol  (Friday will be 16 weeks since the last one!)  I called the salon in our Old Community where our regular hairdresser of the past several years is now working -- or was supposed to start working, anyway, right around the same time as the last lockdown kicked in...! -- and left a message yesterday afternoon, begging for appointments ASAP.  

Celebrating:  I'm happy to report that I got a call back from the salon a few hours later, and we are now booked for haircuts, late Saturday afternoon, July 10th!!  (Dh said he would take an appointment at midnight if that was the first one available, lol.)  I CANNOT WAIT!!! 

Feeling: Sick & tired of this pandemic (and my pandemic hair!!)... but hoping that we'll soon be able to start safely spreading our wings a little more... 

Right now

Right now...* 

*(an occasional (mostly monthly) meme, alternating from time to time with "The Current"). (Explanation of how this started & my inspirations in my first "Right now" post, here. Also my first "The Current" post, here.)

April was Month #13 going on 14 of living with the COVID-19 pandemic.  In last month's "Right Now" post, I wrote: 

The region where I live (near Toronto) came out of lockdown on Feb. 22nd (and there are some businesses in Toronto & Peel regions that STILL haven't been allowed to reopen! -- hair & nail salons, gyms, no indoor dining at restaurants, etc.). However, case numbers are almost as high as they've ever been, including a huge surge from the new, more contagious variants -- and it's almost a certainty that there will be a THIRD shutdown/stay at home order soon... sigh... 

(I REALLY hate being right in this case.)  I started trying to write a summary of the rollercoaster ride and twists & turns this province has experienced over the past month (alone!), but gave up when it started reaching "War & Peace" length (and I'm only slightly exaggerating)...!  It's one of those things that needs to be seen/experienced to be believed.  

Suffice to say the provincial government doesn't know what the frack it's doing and basically has been throwing things at the wall to see what will stick. It took months & months of begging from the medical experts before they FINALLY agreed to a paid sick leave plan last week for those workers whose companies don't offer one (just three days, when most experts were asking for 10 to 14, to accommodate the recommended length of quarantine). Daily new case numbers reached an all-time high of 4,812 on April 16th, and the seven-day average only just dipped back below the 4,000 mark again this week.  Hospitals are jammed, and ICUs are at capacity. The patients being admitted are both sicker and younger.  Tragically, a 13-year-old girl living one town over from mine (one of the hardest hit regions in the country) died at home last week:  her mother was already in the hospital with COVID;  her father hesitated to take her to the hospital because he was afraid she would get transferred to another hospital far away (a possibility), and because he thought that since she was young, she would bounce back. She didn't.   

At the moment, we are under our third lockdown/stay-at-home order of the pandemic, scheduled to last until (at least) mid-May.  Almost everything is closed, including all non-essential retail (curbside pickup only). For the first time, however, larger "essential" stores, such as Walmart and Costco, are restricted to selling groceries and pharmacy items only (something other provinces have done, but Ontario had not yet).  All schools are closed (at-home learning only again). The provincial government has continued to resist closing down most construction sites and non-essential factory production -- so several local municipalities (including Peel Region and the City of Toronto proper) have taken matters into their own hands and have ordered any business with five or more cases of COVID-19 to close for at least 10 days.  

Meanwhile!  Vaccination efforts FINALLY began to ramp up (albeit the rollout has been messy). Dh & I happily received our first shots of AstraZeneca on April 5th (and BIL & SIL got theirs the following day). We likely won't get our second shots/become fully vaccinated until at least mid-July (the current protocol is that second shots come four months -- yes, FOUR MONTHS (16 weeks) -- after the first, in order to give more people the chance to get that critical first vaccine, with at least some protection against the virus).  As of yesterday (Friday), 32.4% of Ontarians have received at least one dose of vaccine, but just 2.5% have received both ( = fully vaccinated). In Manitoba, my parents and my sister's partner both received their first shots recently (Pfizer), my sister's boyfriend got his earlier this week, and she will get hers tomorrow/Sunday. Yay!! 

On top of dh's usual (once or twice weekly) trips to the supermarket for groceries and for takeout dinners on Saturday nights, this month, we went (together -- with some trips including multiple stops): 

• to the pharmacy on April 5th to get our first vaccines!! (see above)
• to the supermarket (after getting our shots).  
• to see Little Great-Nephew (oh yeah, BIL & SIL too!  lol), twice (earlier in April, pre-new lockdown), including once (maskless, on April 6th)to stay with him while his grandparents got their first vaccines and his parents were at the lawyer's office about their new house. 

Otherwise, we've continued to stay close to home (both by edict & by choice). 

*** *** *** 

Reading: I read 7 books in April (all reviewed on this blog, as well as Goodreads, & tagged "2021 books"):

• "Do You Have Kids? Life When the Answer is No" by Kate Kaufmann
• "The Bright Side" by Cathrin Bradbury 
• "The Princess Saves Herself in This One" by Amanda Lovelace (poetry) 
• "I Had a Miscarriage" by Jessica Zucker 
• "Lady in Waiting" by Anne Glenconner
• "Shang-a-lang" by Les McKeown (lead singer of the Bay City Rollers, who passed away last week). 
• "She I Dare Not Name" by Donna Ward.

This brings me to 23 books read so far in 2021 -- 64% of my 2021 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 36 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 12 books ahead of schedule. :)

Earlier this month, dh decided that Goodreads was stressing him out and so he stopped tracking his reading there. Last week, he went back on again. (Recall what I said about his social media use in a previous post...!)  By mid-February, he had already blown past his 2021 Reading Challenge goal of 24 books; by the time he stopped tracking, in early April, he'd read 49 (!).  He's now at 52 (and likely higher, if he counted the books he read in between). 

Current read(s): 

• "What's Not Said" by Valerie Taylor (our next NoMo/Gateway Women book club pick). 
• "Katherine's Marriage" by D.E. Stevenson (my DES group's current selection under discussion, previously read and reviewed here, and a sequel to "Katherine Wentworth," reviewed here and here)
• "Chronicles of Avonlea" by L.M. Montgomery (currently under discussion by my LMM Readathon FB group -- previously read & reviewed here)  

Not being counted as an April read, but previously read and discussed at an online/Zoom meeting of my "Clever Name" book club held earlier in the month: "The Vanishing Half" by Brit Bennett. We'll be talking about "The Thursday Murder Club" by Richard Osman (which I already read & reviewed here --and thoroughly enjoyed!) at our May meeting (date TBD). 

Coming up: 

• "Summerhills" by D.E. Stevenson (for my author fan group, once we finish "Katherine's Marriage" -- a sequel to "Amberwell," which we read and discussed last year). 
• "Us" by David Nicholls, which has been in my TBR pile for a while, but has been moved up -- there's a four-part TV version that will be shown on PBS, beginning on June 20th. :)  

A few recently purchased titles (in digital formats, discounted):   

• "Outlawed" by Anna North 
• "And Furthermore" by Judi Dench 
• "The Great Influenza" by John M. Barry 
• "The Great Believers" by Rebecca Makkai

Watching: I started watching two new shows on PBS on Sunday nights this month:  

• "My Grandparents' War," sort of a variation of "Who Do You Think You Are?" in which British celebrities explore the stories of their grandparents' lives during World War II.  Unfortunately, there are only four episodes (starring Helena Bonham-Carter, Mark Rylance, Kristin Scott-Thomas and Carey Mulligan). I don't know if they're planning on making any more, but both dh & I thoroughly enjoyed it. 
• "Atlantic Crossing," based on a true story about how the Norwegian royal family fled the country after the Nazi invasion of 1940, how Crown Princess Martha and her three children wound up spending the war as refugees in Washington, D.C., and her friendship with  U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Some of it's a bit contrived (e.g., FDR's secretary, Missy LeHand, is jealous and resentful of her boss's relationship with Martha, and Eleanor is a bit of a sourpuss), and some of the details have obviously been embellished beyond historical fact, but I'm enjoying learning about a part of WWII history that goes beyond the usual British/American-centric narrative that we're used seeing and hearing about. 
• At the end of episode 2, there's a very moving scene that had me reaching for the kleenex box -- set in a stunning fjord (supposedly in Finland), where a small boat is taking the Crown Princess and her children to a ship that will take them to safety in America. They are trying to hide their identity, but some Norwegian fishermen recognize them, stand up in their boats and begin singing the national anthem. One by one, sailors on the other boats follow suit. Martha acknowledges them by holding up her young son (Prince Harald, the future/current King Harald V), and he waves to the men in the boats as they sing. This really did happen! 
• The show reminded me of a children's book I read and loved as a kid -- "Snow Treasure" by Marie McSwigan -- about how the Norwegians managed to smuggle millions of dollars in gold bars from the national reserve out of the country, right under the noses of the Nazis, by using children on sleds as cover. Also based on a true story!  Anyone else ever read it? 

We also watched Ken Burns's three-part documentary, "Hemingway," about the famous writer, also on PBS this month. (I've never read much Hemingway -- but "The Sun Also Rises" was, I think, the first novel I read in my first-year university English class -- 20th-century literature, I think it was called.) 

I stayed up to watch the Oscars (again) -- even after I considered setting the PVR and watching my regular Sunday night shows instead. 

We recently stumbled onto (and started watching) reruns of "Soap," which I watched faithfully when I was in high school in the late 1970s... it now comes with a content warning!! lol  It was very controversial in its time, and some of the content is politically incorrect these days, but it was a groundbreaker in many respects (for example, the character of Jodie Dallas, played by a young Billy Crystal, was one of the first openly gay characters on prime-time TV).  

And the first two episodes of season 4 of "The Handmaid's Tale" aired Thursday night on the CTV Drama channel (formerly known as Bravo -- three episodes were released on Hulu in the States on the same day). Part of me wonders (not for the first time) just how many times June can ALMOST escape Gilead?? -- it's getting a little monotonous.  But I've come along this far, so....  

Listening:  I caught up on the last couple of most recent episodes of The Full Stop podcast -- including one with author Kate Kauffman, one with Jody Day, celebrating Gateway Women's 10th anniversary, and one with just the three hosts chatting, which is always fun to listen to!  

I follow supermodel Paulina Porizkova on Instagram, and I listened to an interesting (and very frank) conversation she had recently with Ashleigh Banfield about aging, the death of her estranged husband Ric Ocasek of The Cars (and the fallout from that, including finances), and more. (I gather it was aired on TV;  there are video clips available, but this link is a sound file of the entire conversation -- or almost the entire conversation;  it cuts off rather abruptly at the end.)  I was thrilled to see her at the Oscars as Aaron Sorkin's date, looking gorgeous as always! 

Following: Bruce Arthur's columns in the Toronto Star about the pandemic and how the Ontario government is (not) handling it. Unfortunately, they may be behind a paywall, but if you can read them, they are excellent.  (And scathing, lol.)  

Buying (besides books, lol):  Ordered some (more) essential oils from Saje to replenish my supplies (I previously ordered some, including some Christmas scents, during from the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales last November. Haven't been to a store in more than a year now, and probably won't be for a while still.  

I also ordered a nifty squeegee/window cleaning kit, as recommended by my house cleaning guru on Instagram, @gocleanco. ;) It was on back order when I ordered it, but should be here in a few weeks. I can't wait to try it out on our balcony doors, and maybe even on my nemesis, the shower cubicle!  

And I ordered some chequebook registers. I don't write many actual cheques these days, but I still keep track of all our debits & credits/deposits -- what's going in and what's coming out -- in a paper register (and balance it every month or so). (Hey, my dad was a banker! And I worked as a teller at a credit union one summer while at university, too -- at a time & place when we were still using paper debit and credit slips...!)(And yes, I CAN get it to balance! -- sometimes...  lol...) When I was working, I would just go downstairs to the bank branch and request one from one of the tellers. Even before I lost my job (summer 2014), it was taking longer and longer for them to hunt one up for me. 

Then we moved here in April 2016. I went to two different branches of our bank here, trying to explain what it was that I wanted to clearly bewildered young tellers, raised in the age of Internet banking, who had never heard of such things. Thank goodness at the second branch an older teller overheard me and came to my rescue. Apparently the branches no longer stock them (!), but she was able to order me a bundle via the bank's website. The last one from that batch is almost completely filled in... I found where to order new cheques on the bank's website, but not the registers. I wound up ordering some from (guess!)  Amazon.  Hopefully they'll last me at least another five years. Apparently some people now use Excel for this purpose, but I'm not very well versed in that program. Sigh... 

Celebrating: Dh's 64th birthday, mid-April  :) -- his second during this pandemic. This time around, I managed to buy him a proper birthday card (pre-lockdown) and (Eating/Drinking) we baked a chocolate cake (from a mix we had on hand in the cupboard, with icing from a can... it was still pretty good!). 

Mourning: The death of yet another one of the Bay City Rollers, the boy band of my youth -- my sister's favourite, lead singer Les McKeown, at the way-too-young age of 65 (on top of bassist Ian Mitchell last fall, age 62, and founder Alan Longmuir in 2018, age 70). See my recent post, here. Humming:  BCR tunes in the shower since then! 

Enduring: A last blast of winter, with snow flurries two days in a row last week (followed immediately by temperatures in the high teens)(Celsius = mid-60sF).  This past week has been mostly grey & rainy.  Gotta love Canada in the spring...!  

Smelling: Cannabis. :p  It's nice to be able to open the balcony doors now that the weather is starting to be nicer -- but some people are obviously using the opportunity to sit out on their balconies and indulge. (More noticeably so than the previous springs that we've been here since the stuff was legalized.) Sigh... 

Wearing:  Brought out the short-sleeved T-shirts when the weather turned warmer -- only to have to add a cardigan when it got cold again. (Soon! Soon!!)  

Trying (and failing):  To get up the motivation to start walking again regularly...!  

Wondering:  If and when things will ever return to some kind of normalcy. :(   It's been a very LONG winter/year!  

Wanting:  The people I love to stay safe while the new virus variants run rampant and vaccines slllloooowwwwwlllly roll out...  

Loving:  That I seem to have found my reading mojo again. (For now, anyway...?!)  

Feeling: Like I'm languishing. Not looking forward to (eek) Voldemort Day. The ads and emails have been flooding my TV screen and email inbox for a few weeks already, since Easter.  

But, it's May!  Yay!! 

"Shang-a-lang" by Les McKeown (in memoriam)

I was puzzled to see a vintage photo (c1976) of Les McKeown pop into my Instagram feed last Thursday morning. And then I gasped as I read the caption below it:  Les, the lead singer of the Bay City Rollers, was dead at the far-too-young age of 65.  He died two days earlier, on Tuesday, April 20th, "suddenly" at home (no cause has yet been revealed), and his Japanese-born wife of 43 (!) years and son were requesting privacy. (He was a diabetic and had previous problems with drugs & alcohol.) 

Les's death followed on the heels of the also way-too-young deaths of guitarist Ian Mitchell just last fall (at age 62), and of founding member Alan Longmuir in 2018 (age 70). I wrote about both of them on this blog, here and here. 

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know that the Rollers consumed my life for a couple of my teenaged years in the mid/late 1970s. (My poor mother will tell you it seemed like an eternity, lol.)  My sister saw them in their first appearance on the short-lived Howard Cosell TV variety show (!) in the fall of 1975 and called me to come watch. I was in my bedroom, absorbed in a book or something, and ignored her. "You'll be sorry!" she told me, and she was right, lol. (No such thing as VCRs or PVRs or YouTube clips in those days, kids! -- you snoozed, you lost...) We saw them together the following summer, when I was 15 (live, at the old Winnipeg Arena on August 15, 1976 -- 15th row floor seats -- although we didn't stay in them, lol -- which cost $6.50 each).  It was the first concert we'd ever attended.  Les was her personal favourite (mine was the bass player, Stuart "Woody" Wood). (I emailed her within minutes of reading the bad news.)  

As the band's frontman, Les naturally got a lot of the attention, and the girls. He had a crooked smile and a swaggering stage presence, and something of a bad-boy image -- cemented when, driving his new sportscar, he struck and killed a 76-year-old woman. (He was fined and lost his license for a year.) He left the band in the late 1970s for a solo career, has taken part in various reunions over the years, but has mostly toured with his own band, doing Rollers oldies. 

As I wrote a little while back, I had an opportunity last March to see Les again with his current band (called "the Legendary Bay City Rollers" -- to distinguish them from the "official" Bay City Rollers, whose name is now owned by that band's only original member, my teenaged favourite, Stuart/Woody). But the logistics of getting to and from the concert venue -- not to mention the small matter of a looming pandemic -- led me to turn down the invitation. 

I will admit I was torn:  Woody was my favourite (and his version of the band played a gig at a casino north of the city a few months earlier) -- but Les was the voice. I didn't really want to see either of them by themselves:  if either one had at least one other band member from the classic lineup with them, I might have gone. Would I have gone if I'd known it was my last opportunity to see Les and hear that voice sing those songs from my youth one more time? I'll never know for sure (although I suspect I would have still stayed home).  

And so I spent Thursday afternoon and part of the evening wallowing in YouTube clips, smiles intermingled with tears. There is nothing like the music of the boy bands of your youth, be they the Osmonds, the BCR, NKOTB, the Backstreet Boys, 'NSync, One Direction, BTS, or whoever it is that's hot right now.  The Rollers were not the "new Beatles" (by a long shot) -- but they did sell more than 120 million records in just a few short years, and that's not too shabby (even if, sadly, their bank accounts never reflected it). They were young and cute and a little exotic (Scottish! -- those irresistible -- if indecipherable -- accents!!  lol) -- and some of their songs were pretty catchy. Days later, I am still humming "Remember" and "Shang-a-lang" and "Bye Bye Baby" and "Rock and Roll Honeymoon" and "Let's Go" and (of course) "Saturday Night."

Those were more innocent times. I don't think I'd ever want to relive my teenage years -- way too much angst! -- but it would be fun to experience the dawning of Rollermania, and the hysterical wonder of that very first concert again. (Although I think this time I'd bring ear plugs and save a little more of my hearing, lol.)  

*** *** *** 

I knew Les had written a memoir (originally published in 2003), but when I'd checked it out a few years ago on Amazon, it was out of print and used copies were priced higher than I was willing to pay. When I heard of his death and stumbled on a link to the book again, I discovered that a Kindle version was available.  I happily downloaded it to the Kindle app on my cellphone and started reading. That was Thursday, and I finished the book this (Saturday) morning. 

"Shang-a-lang: My Life With the Bay City Rollers" (titled "Shang-a-lang: My Life as an International Pop Star" in some editions) was written by Les along with Lynne Clarke and Irvine Welsh, who wrote the foreword. There's a section at the end with fan comments about the impact Les and the Rollers have had on their lives. 

Les grew up in a tough neighbourhood of Edinburgh, with a chip set firmly on his shoulder -- the youngest of four brothers from a poor Irish immigrant family  As a teenager, he started singing with a local band called Threshold, which put him on the radar of Rollers manager Tam Paton. When the Rollers' lead singer, Nobby Clark, abruptly departed the band, Les was called in to replace him. He bought his mother an electric dryer with his first big Rollers paycheque.  

Les's voice comes through clearly here -- including the use of Scottish dialect ("couldnae," "didnae," "wouldnae," etc.).  Some of the terms I was familiar with from my teenaged Rollermaniac days (e.g., "trews,"chip butties"), while other references (Mary Whitehouse? Will and Gareth??) went right over my non-British/Scottish head. These could have been clarified/explained for a non-UK audience. There are also some typos/continuity errors, particularly near the end, that should have been caught by an editor. (As a former editor/proofreader, this kind of stuff matters to me!)   

Typos and head-scratchers aside, the book is also somewhat marred by Les's snarky comments about the other band members -- Eric Faulkner in particular. He also doesn't have much nice to say about the band's ultra-controlling manager, Tam Paton (although he is far from alone in that respect!). (After Paton's death in 2009, Les claimed the manager raped him.)  Personality clashes are one thing, and some of Les's criticisms about how the band was run are valid -- but I also think some of his personal insinuations were uncalled for and could have easily been left out. 

Those reservations aside, I mostly enjoyed this trip down memory lane. It's ultimately not a very happy story, but Les tells it with wit and humour. This comment, for example, about the advent of punk rock, cracked me up: 

The birth of punk rock did nothing to make me feel more secure in my job. I daydreamed about what it would be like to spit and puke along with the best of them, but I quickly realised the idea was just a hopeless dream and downed the rest of my glass of milk. 

I'm obviously pretty familiar with the Rollers' story by now, but I was glad to have the opportunity to read Les's side of things, and to learn more about his life over the past 40 years. The book ends in 2003, with Les promising to start work on a sequel. I am beyond sad that we'll never see a full reunion of the classic lineup (or that promised sequel), but thankful for the memories, and for this book that brought them flooding back again. 

3.5 stars on Goodreads, rounded up to 4, because I'm feeling generous and nostalgic. :) 

This was Book #22 read to date in 2021 (and Book #6 finished in April), bringing me to 61% of my 2021 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 36 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 11 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2021 tagged as "2021 books." 

(My 2019 reviews of Alan Longmuir's memoir and another book about the band, here. All my BCR-related posts on this blog can be found here.)