Hello All you fine Roomers and fans of GALR

As you may know, Caledon County (consisting of Stephanie on fiddle, Gaye on guitar and Rory ‘Gus’ on pipes) is a subset of G.A.L.R., and the whole damned lot of them will be part of a Scottish Celtic Concert on June 21st.

Yes, your favourite musicians will be playing The El Mocambo, one of the most iconic music venues in the city, as part of a fabulous concert mounted by The St. Andrews Society of Toronto in celebration of the 700th Anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn and Scottish Independence.

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I don’t want to jinx it, but I think I am now willing to come out publicly and say that winter is done. Yes, I’m pretty sure we have about six months before we have to worry about seeing how the snow flies (and by the way, I thought the snow flies were particularly bad last winter, the fact that they’re white means you can’t see them and they really did bite this time around).

We’re almost at that time when Torontonians start complaining about the humidity. I know you promised in March, ‘If summer would only come, I swear not to complain about how humid it is’ but you’re going to break that pledge pretty soon, because that’s what we do – we swear we’ll never forget how uncomfortable and cold we were when we’re uncomfortable and cold, but then a couple months later we do forget and then go on about how hot it is.

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Recently the Globe and Mail ran an article on the ukulele with the headline “The ukulele strikes a chord with the in crowd” talking about how the uke has become an instrument of choice for hipsters. Now it is important to recognize at the outset that if you are relying on the Globe and Mail to determine what is in and what hipsters are doing, the odds are quite good that you will be a year or two at least behind the times.

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I want you to know that I tried to think of other topics for this missive – the Quebec election, Crimea, Game of Thrones – all the burning issues of our time – but I kept getting drawn back to the break-up of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin.

Except it isn’t a break-up or a split or a d-i-v-o-r-c-e, it is, according to Gwyneth – a “conscious uncoupling.” Now I understand that as special people different than you and me, folks like Gwyneth and Chris can’t just throw in the towel, but conscious uncoupling?

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I have to say that in 2007, when then Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty announced that Family Day would be an annual statutory holiday the third Monday in February, I was pleased but also a little bit puzzled. Pleased because who could object to a holiday in February – goodness knows we need one. Puzzled because I thought it was odd for the Premier of Canada’s most populous province to set a day aside to honour a British rock band – and a somewhat obscure one at that.

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If you had the power to ban one song to ensure that you never heard it again, what song would you choose? Think about it for a minute if you need to.

I don’t know what song you chose, but I do know this, it’s a popular song – it is a song that you picked to banish because you have heard it a lot, it drives you crazy and keeps intruding upon your life turning an otherwise nice moment into an auditory hell. I’m pretty sure none of you picked Circle of Tyrants by Celtic Frost (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41PxFzoqULU) or to move to the extreme other end of the musical spectrum Butterfly for Bucky by Bobby Goldsboro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2y1nBPg4jA). The reason you didn’t pick these songs is not because they are wonderful songs, in fact I’m pretty sure that most people will hate at least one if not both of them. The reason you didn’t pick them is because, before my mention of them, you either had never heard the songs or it had been so long since they had entered your musical consciousness that it didn’t occur to you to put them on your hate list.

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Did you know that the average Canadian adult (not that any of you are ’average’ by any means) makes 5,371 different decisions a day. I know, it sounds like a lot doesn’t it, but when you think about it, it starts to make sense. First thing in the morning, ‘Do I shut off my alarm or sleep for another five minutes’, ‘What will I have for breakfast?’, ‘What am I going to wear today?’ etc. Over time, all these decisions mount up, so at the end of the day you’ve made over 5,000 of such decisions. And you know what, it gets tiring. Think of how often when someone asks you ‘What do you want for dinner?’ you reply ‘Whatever you want.’ No one answers ‘Whatever you want’ to the question ‘What do you want for breakfast?’, but by dinner we’re done.

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Wow, it’s been a pretty incredible few weeks hasn’t it. I’ve been glued to the news, as I’m sure you have as well. I can’t remember a story as compelling as the Canada Europe Trade Agreement (CETA). I suppose it helped that otherwise it’s been a slow news period but even if there was some really incredible news out there (I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head) I think CETA would still steal the show.

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