Life in the shade

Small-town stores can be pretty shady establishments. Here's a list of Montreal West's vilest:

1. Mrs U's
My mother really, really hates this place. I don't know what happened to provoke this, what traumatic past event would have caused the mention of the fruit store to become taboo in the Malcolm household. All she will say is that the owners are corrupt, crooked. This is all I know, yet the mention of the name strikes a chord of fear in my soul.

2. Flower shop (not florist's, the place by the key store)
Of late my mother has remarked that the owners of this place are friends of the fruit store people, and are also corrupt. We're being overtaken, it would seem.

3. Antiques Cacharel
This is by far the weirdest one of them all. There used to be two antique stores with the same name...that alone is weird, don't you think? They were constantly having going-out-of-business sales, often simultaneously...we never believed them, but one of them has finally closed. Which means, of course, that the back-alley dealings I have been imagining for the past several years are now concentrated in one place. Someday they'll be found out. Remember, you heard it here first.

4. Hotdogerie
I really, really like this place. But the owners (incidentally, not the same ones who started it out) annoy me. I like to go there and ask for the most obscure soft ice cream flavour, then watch them root around in boxes underneath the counter, smiling at my revenge for the loss of the old Chien Chaud sign.

MoWest...quaint half-suburb, or giant conspiracy? To us in this enlightened era, the answer is obvious.

Also I saw V for Vendetta and thought it really good....

Grasping at the last strands of summer. (It was great.)