In Stratford, Two ...

Ontario Street
Stratford, Ont.

I made a store clerk here in Stratford chuckle the other day when I told her that Joyce and I were two English teachers here on a nerd's holiday.  (She probably laughed because it was so obvious.)  Our days are full and tiring--though never tiresome.  Here's today, for example (yesterday, by the time this goes online), Thursday, 15 August 2013

• 7:10  I struggle out of bed after a late night.  Othello did not end last night until about 11:30, and by the time for Lights Out it was after midnight.  Very late for me.  It's Lights Out back in Hudson about 10 p.m.--or earlier.  This morning, I dress and head out while Joyce answers email and gets ready.
• 8-ish: Coffee Culture (a Starbucky outfit here in Canada), a short walk away.  I eat a wheat bagel (strawberry jam), take my calcium supplement (Lupron--my cancer med--can weaken bones), read the New York Times on Kindle, check my email and Facebook (also on Kindle), then settle into "my" chair--a nice black leathery one--and read 100 pp for a book I'm reviewing for Kirkus Reviews.  (Today I finish the book and will write either later today--or tomorrow when we'll have more time: no matinee tomorrow for us).
• 9:30: Joyce arrives; we chat; then she settles in to do some reading, too, while I finish the Kirkus book (whose title and/or subject I cannot mention: Kirkus requires anonymity; my name will not appear on the individual review, only among the list of reviewers at the front of the publication).
• 10:15: We head back to our room to see if housekeeping has been there (nope), so I head over to Balzac's, another coffee shop we really like here, while Joyce heads out to look in some of her favorite shops.  I get another coffee, read on Kindle a few chapters of a novel by my former student, David Byron Queen (I'm nearly halfway done!); I read a long chapter in The Mill on the Floss.  Joyce arrives, and we talk a little more--then head back to the room, which housekeeping has visited but has somehow forgotten to make up the bed.  Oh well.  I like to forget that part of my daily routine, too.
• 11:00 I sit here, right now, working on this blog post; we will have lunch here in the room shortly--fruit-and-yogurt parfaits we bought at Coffee Culture earlier and stored in our little fridge in the room.  Then ... more work here in the room until we head out for our two o'clock matinee performance of Measure for Measure at the Tom Patterson Theater, an easy walk from our room.
• 1:00: We walk around town a little before the show, stopping at one of our favorite shops on York Street, Callan Books, one of those little places with a small inventory--but one so intriguing that I almost always leave behind a few (or more than a few) dollars.  Only Callan was gone!  It's now called Wee Book and Photo Shop, and the only books are the few remaining from Callan's inventory.  He retired this year.  So--yet another of our favorite places ... gone.  (I'm getting the message!)  And, okay, we also stop at McLeod Scottish Shop, where I found a dark green wool sweater I liked--and bought.  Look for it in the fall!

• 2:00: A wonderful production of Measure for Measure with some of the best actors up here, including Geraint Wynn Davies (he played Duke Vincentio), whom we saw in the audience last night at Othello.  (We often see other actors watching their colleagues perform.)  The director was Martha Henry, who performed so well in Taking Shakespeare the other night.  She found both the humor and the darkness in this troubling play--one not often performed, not as often, anyway, as it should be.
• 5:00: A small dinner at the York Street Kitchen on Erie (turkey sandwich on homemade sourdough bread--not as good as you-know-whose but plenty good!); Joyce has--for the second night in a row--shepherd's pie.  Back to the room to relax and read and write until we head to the large Festival Theater, a mile away, for The Merchant of Venice tonight.
• 8:00: A fine production of Merchant--always, for me, one of the most difficult of the plays to watch--and figure out--and think about later.  The performances were strong--again--though Portia's rhythmic speech grew a little ... repetitive?  She was good--but didn't have the vocal variety of some of the others.  Good to see back onstage Jonathan Goad, who's been away for a few years but once played many of the major male roles here--from Shakespeare to Tennessee Williams.
• 11:15: Back in the room after a long walk in the dark (the theater is more than a mile away, to the east of town)--but a great conversation with you-know-who.  Now sitting at this screen, thinking about sleep ... and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ...