SynchroniCITY

I cooked one of my favourite Friday night meals - home-made fish and chips, watched The Desert Fox  and then sat out on the deck drinking a Napa Valley Chardonnay while looking out over Toronto in the dusk. Magic. What could be better?

Well, maybe this:

I smoked a Diarum Black (leaping to my own defence saying that I don't smoke, have never smoked and never will be a smoker) and must admit that it was bloody delicious. These have to be the best cigarette offering - ever.

You might have guessed at this stage that The Old Girl, my lifetime partner, is away this weekend. She is in New York/Baltimore and is in no position (well, location really) to veto my recreation choices (although, as she is wont to do, she telephoned when I was in 'mid-drag' and rumbled me).

Sitting out on the deck, sipping wine, having a puff and the occasional swig of soda water (anyone who doesn't own a Sodastream machine needs their head read) I thought that music should be added.

I listened to the exceptional Dire Straits  'Sultans of Swing' album before putting on  Kind of Blue The Miles Davis, Bill Evans, John Coltrane and others album (if you don't have this GET IT).

Mellow feelings - music, wine, outlook (16th floor of a condominium  looking over a big city) and the deliciously inebriating  Diarim Black all just lulled me away.

Then.

In the midst of Flamenco Sketches with the edgy and nicely strident  trumpet played by Miles Davis several fire engines raced down one of the avenues wailing away with their own strident solos. It could have been annoyingly intrusive but, because of the setting (sitting on a deck overlooking a city) and, more probably  due to imbibing wine and smoking unfamiliar cigarettes, the juxtaposition of the two sounds just blended together and somehow fitted.

Magic. You are never too old to experience new things.