Headed to English Beach today on an overcast day to meet with an old friend, Dione Joseph. I first got to know her back in the days of Eagle’s Nest Theatre in Melbourne. She’s gone on to be a director, dramaturg and writer in Aotearoa, founding Black Creatives Aotearoa and co-founding JK Productions: He Kōrero Ngā Tahi. She’d been travelling Canada at the invitation of local theatre groups. We had a coffee while we caught up on each other’s lives.

We then took a walk along English Beach, looking out at the cargo ships in slow procession towards the Pacific.

Dione had been staying at the Sylvia Hotel. There’s supposed to be a ghost there and she was disappointed she hadn’t seen it. The front of the hotel is covered in thick vines that have been growing over 40 years.

Dione was meeting people in East Van gave me a ride on her Uber. She suggested I see a play, Soldiers of Tomorrow, which was having its opening night The Cultch, a nearby arts hub. We made our goodbyes and I had a look around The Drive, i.e. Commercial Drive. A bit like Main Street, it’s full of interesting shops and communal spaces. I checked through a few second-hand bookshops and music stores, then had lunch at a bagel café which gave me the wrong order the first time.

The play sounded interesting, but I was starting flag a bit (so was my phone), so I took a bus to Commercial-Broadway Station and headed back to Delta. On the way, the train speakers gave a strangulated buzz and my phone vibrated. Turned out it was a test of the British Columbia Emergency Alert system, sent to all phones if there’s danger.

After a nap at Richard and Tina’s, I checked bookings for Soldiers of Tomorrow, only to find it’d been sold out. Instead, the three of us watched episodes of Daredevil, the old ’70s series Strangers and an Icelandic detective drama, The Valhalla Murders.