In the summertime.  That's what the song said.  Vacations happen in the summer. I think that dates back to when no-one anyone really knew could afford to take vacation in a different climate, so summer offered the only hospitable opportunity to stop working and do something else.  Vacation.  A verb, as well as a noun. So, "what did you do on your summer vacation?"

Well, I'm not very accustomed to vacations at any time of year, perhaps coming from years when I was employed and got paid to have them, but not enough to enjoy them, and then a decade of being self-employed.  Then, no-one is paying for that vacation time.  But I have travelled, relatively far (to Europe and back, several times, and to Central America, once).  In every case, I travelled somewhere to do something.  Vacation as a verb, often with a vengeance.   After years of doing vacations that way, I think I've decided that -- generally speaking -- when I vacation, I want to stay in one place, or at least sleep in one place, for up to a week at a time. 

With that in mind, after the summer from hell, my life partner and I thought about how to spend up to a week, on "vacation".  Originally, we thought of going to London (the real one, over the pond, not the one in Ontario) for a week.  We have a friend who lives there, so it became an almost-affordable proposition. And I've never been there, but they speak the same language I do. Sort of.   Not that they'd admit it, of course.

Then we thought about six hours on a plane.  Jet lag.   And always wondering if we were going in the right direction to get to where we thought we wanted to go.  And we thought London would still be there another time, when we had more time.  And, the most important reason of all, going to London would mean that we'd miss the Montreal film festival.  Again. 

The festival runs the ten days ending with Labour Day.  And it's become a ritual.  Although in very recent years, the ritual had become to talk about how much we regretted missing the festival. 

So this year, the vacation is the film festival.  Three days of movies.  We "do" between three and five movies a day while we're there.   A perfect vacation to me -- my mind is engaged enough, with things other than anything to do with my life, to prevent it from focussing on my life.  For hours, and days, at a time.

There will be an absence here, while I am watching "there".  But I'll be posting  entries that are collections of movie reviews when I stop watching movies long enough to do that.  The silver screen calls. At last. "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille."

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