I
bought $5 more [the $10 worth would
have equalled 2 grams], we walked to Bob H's house
near Judy's. Judy and a girl Pat came. [Andy,
Dave + I went out to the waterfront + smoked up]. Gillian, Bridget and I went down the street and smoked 2 splifs.
Went back, played Monté (more or less). Lesley came drunk.
Got picked up at 11 with Ralph[I'd
left by mistake a piece of hash there, which got smoked. I faded
out from these people from here on][I
remember this evening as being distinctly unpleasant. I was
very uncomfortable, nothing seemed to click, everyone was tense
and out of sorts and-- worst of all-- it was unspeakably dull.]
December
28 Thursday Holiday
[Yesterday
Alan + Gillian decided to go downtown to show Bridget [the
sights]. I decided
to go but forgot to ask what time. ...tried calling Alan +
Gillian [in the morning].
There was no answer at Alan's, and Gillian was asleep. Gillian
called me back at 12 and said we would take the 2:10 train.
I watched TV (The Greatest Show on Earth [isn't this the
circus movie with Charleton Heston?]) and at 1:55 started
walking to Cedar [Park station].
Alan was coming just as I arrived. Gillian didn't come and
Alan got worried. He called Mrs Simons who said that she left
20 min ago. Alan + I decided that she was waiting at the Pointe
Claire station [just west of Cartier and a lot closer to
Gillian's house]. The
train came (double decker [these
were still fairly new at the time]) and we sat
down in the 1st car, upstairs. We saw that there was a window
at the very front of the train, downstairs, so we went
[there]. Then we found out we couldn't smoke
[there] so we went back a car + upstairs. We got
to Windsor and waited for Gillian + Bridget].
At
2:10 Ralph and I got the train downtown, Gillian and Bridget
were in another car. We met up in Windsor Station, went to
P.V.M. [cause Gill said that her mother
had an exhibition there], then to Phantasmagoria, got
2 American flag rolling papers and one strawberry, and mint
paper [I almost bought a David Bowie
album called "Space Oddity"
[I think the title
song had been getting some airplay on CHOM(some? I remember it in 1971). None of us would start listening to Bowie until summer '73
when "Life on Mars" became something of an FM hit
and Dave bought "Aladdin Sane" (80).
I finally bought a Bowie album- "Hunky Dory"- in
Holland in summer '74].. Took the metro
to Alexis Nihon Plaza, went to a restaurant [Greenberg's
[seeDecember
9, 1972]], then to the poster
shop. Took pictures. Got the train back to my place at 7:30
[sometime during this trip- perhaps during the rush
to catch the train- we all made fun of Alan's huffing and
puffing and inability to keep up as we were going at a fairly
fast pace through the underground passages linking the metro
to either Alexis Nihon or Place Ville Marie]..
Went to the basement, smoked up [Al
wanted to try out the cigarette papers he bought at Phantas
and rolled 3 splifs], had the blacklite on. [We
all drank a coke, looked at the aquarium]. Ralph
left at 11, Gillian and Bridget at 11:40.
80.
Not quite right; 'Ziggie Stardust and the Spiders from Mars'
was released in June 1972 (though at this time the Canadian
release was usually delayed) and 'Aladdin Sane' in April 1973.
David Bowie made a big media slash in 1972, though he was not
popular with the Americans until at least 1974. I remember hearing
"Moon Age Daydream' on the radio in September 1972, and have
a traditional memory of Dave and I riding the train back from
Montreal (after he had just bought the latter album) in the
spring of 1973.
Speaking of music, the British group 'Steeleye Span' had a
song on the radio at this time, an a cappella Latin carol
"Gaudete". I liked this song, and had a copy of it later in
the '70's, until I lent it to Danielle deSmit in c. 1978 and
never saw it again...
81. Ralph's note: The Essiambres had a black cocker spaniel
named- what else- Blackie, and it was a family responsibility
to keep the dog out of the living room. Any evidence of the
dog having been in there was a cause of many arguments in
the family. I remember many afternoons when the entertainment
consisted of watching Blackie slowly encroach on the forbidden
territory and then take off when someone called him on it.