Not a lot to see with this one, other than that it came from a fragmentary memory that bubbled up in a vaguely melancholy moment earlier in this New Year, and which seemed to curl its way upwards and steal its way in to my consciousness like the wispy smoke from a Dragon's Blood incense stick I had just lit... It was the scent-trigger of: "I have smelled this once before, a long time ago..."

And that was when the vision came up of a period in my childhood, where I had a paper route for about a year in my hometown (from about late 1984 to early 1986). It was one of those Metroland papers (which were mostly ads and stuffed to the brim with flyers), and hence, they were delivered for "free", at least nominally, although folks could willingly pay if they so chose. Most of the ones who paid were lonely old folks.

One of my favourite customers was a little old lady about ten blocks from where I lived, who lived in one of those narrow-but-deep three storey, white-painted gingerbread houses with a screened/glassed (depending upon the season) front porch on the lower two floors.

On the day of the month, I would go around the route to collect as well as deliver, she would often invite me in for a cup of tea and some macaroons. If the weather was nice, it would be on the screened front porch, which was all white-painted wicker and chintz, or in the front sitting room, which was decades-out-of-date Chinoiserie. There was also always incense burning (cones in an ancient-looking brass burner), usually the aforementioned Dragon's Blood, although sometimes I think she had sandalwood or Nag Champa.

She was also one of those older women of the Lost Generation who, even though she was at least third-generation Canadian, her family had resolutely preserved their Affected British Accents. It was a more innocent time, and obviously I can't lay any blame on her, as like many other people, she and her husband were very much a product of their times (as we all are, to be honest), but there were a lot of things and various knickknacks in her house that would be considered unacceptable for various reasons in our current cultural sensibilities (especially with regards to things like Cultural Appropriation). And really, when we get right down to it, to a greater or lesser degree, we're all just as guilty, even if we don't know any better (as that sweet, little old lady of so long ago, really didn't). So, really, I can't blame her.

I also remember that she paid in silver dollars, and fifty-cent pieces, which, even in the early-to-mid-Eighties was already very old-fashioned and anachronistic. Indeed, one day she told me that when her father was still alive, he always paid the paperboy with shinplasters.*


* In Canada, shinplasters were paper currency notes with a face-value of 25¢, which were issued from 1870-1923, and gradually disappeared from circulation after that, although very small amounts continued to be used up until the 1950s.