For (second-to-) last two rolls from Montréal, being of a certain age, I was reminded of a Simpsons episode from years ago. In a sort of reference to Hitchcock’s The Birds, one of the characters gets into a phone booth while birds are swarming, picks up the phone and requests “the biggest seed bell you have” and on hearing the reply, responds “no, that’s too big.”

That’s about sums up how I feel about my selection of Phoenix for my remaining colour film before it was time for surgery. I wrote:

In this case, feeling the good feels for Harman, it was two rolls of Phoenix I. Montréal’s lovely, but one of my favourite things about it is that it’s not antiseptic like Ottawa and Toronto have become. A little bit of humanity, to my mind, called for a film with a little bit of grit and imperfection too.

“No, that’s too [much] grain.”

In this case, it had been long enough since I last used it that I had clearly forgotten just how much grain, how askew the colours, and just how little dynamic range this film has. In hindsight, I likely would have been more pleased had I gone with my first choice: Kodak Ultramax.

Nevertheless, on this roll, we took a leisurely walk down Saint-Denis where we boarded the Metro at the Berri-UQAM station. We were making our way to Saint-Henri, where friends live, who we planned to meet for dinner. Since we arrived a little early, Kathleen and I decided to wander a little and, of course, pay Saint-Henri Books a visit!

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