Date: Monday, November 11, 2002 2:47 AM

A couple of years ago I was sitting in my living room watching Law & Order or somesuch at 2am and I heard clip-clop, clip-clop, a sound which reminded me of racehorses and show jumpers, things you rarely encounter when sitting in your living room watching the telly. It for sure wasn't in the plot [Picture it: Mike gets drunk and drives, crashes, gets his license taken away and must pursue criminals from the back of an elderly cayuse, perhaps the very one from Cat Ballou! And Lenny has to ride shotgun, holding on for dear life].

But seriously, folks.

It wasn't part of the plot, which I think was the erotomania episode that I really like, not that I identify with any of the characters. Not even Claire! Well, maybe a little when Jack gets out the bike…NO! No rice burners for me, nor no slutty DA's neither. I still don't think Claire put out.

But meanwhile, back at the living room, the clip-clop continued. And for sure it wasn't coming from the tv. [Sidebar here, but a virtual sidebar because first of all this stuff you are reading is only photons on a screen, so it cannot really have a "side bar" because there is no physical side to attach it to, and no bar: it's just pictures. Second of all, I don't know how to do a sidebar in HTML, so there you go: nothing. Virtuoso virtuality, meta-metaphosphors. Don't you wish you'd gone to grad school now? Don't you wish I had, so I'd know what I was talking about? But the clip-clop wasn't coming from anything in the living room at all, that's what I wanted to use the sidebar to explain, at least I think that's what I wanted to use the sidebar to explain, but am not sure because I started this o-so-long-ago, somewhat like the Bush family must be feeling right now, but let's get at least one of these things finished, eh?] But if the sound wasn't coming from the tv [oh, wait! Now I remember what the sidebar was for. It was to say that you used to capitalise "TV" and now you don't. "tv." Does that signify a loss of stature on tv's part now that it is running shows like Blind Date or does it signify greater familiarity, to the extent of becoming a regular, rather than proper, noun? Methinks the latter (don't you just hate sentences like "Methinks the latter"? Don't you just want to bitch-slap them a little?) And now, back to our regularly scheduled blog]

So if the sound wasn't coming from my living room and it wasn't coming from my tv (which is in, though not really of my living room) where was it coming from? Not the rest of my house: although well-stocked with four-footed beasts, the place didn't harbour anything with shoes on, nor were any of my mice hefty enough to make such big, beefy clip-clops. There was this rat once…you could feel the floor shake when it gallumphed across the dining room…but he doesn't wear shoes…but anyway, it wasn't me, it wasn't them, it wasn't Jack or Claire or even beefy Mike, so it had to be something Outside.

I dashed to the blinds (I'll bet you thought I'd never get there). I peeked out between them. I saw…

You'll never guess what I saw!

At 2 in the morning!

On Pender Street!

A team of tired, plodding draft horses drawing a wagon, with an old man at the reins.

Apparition? A hundred years ago, even fifty years ago such a sight was common enough on this old pavement, but now? The only draft horses in the city of Vancouver pull wagonsful of tourists, but not around here and certainly not in the haunted hours. It's all way west and way earlier. All good Belgians should have been tucked up in bed long since, yet there was no denying that a couple of tons of horseflesh were wearily clipping and clopping down my street, only slightly after the turn of the millennium. Not that one, this one. Well, they might have been Percherons; it was real dark, okay?

After that I used to see them all the time, or rather only at 2 am, but all the time at 2am though not every time. The clip-clop would ring out through the soggy, foggy air and they would plod past, never looking up or even to one side, just nodding their heads in unison as they headed for their mysterious destination. Where they were going I never found out: it's all city for about thirty miles in the direction they were headed.

One cold, rainy night, long about 2am, I heard the now-familiar clip-clop, clip-clop trundling down the street from west to east, just as usual. Then I heard voices.

If you don't live in Vancouver and haven't spent a lot of rainy winter nights sitting up alone reading Victorian ghost stories it probably wouldn't be your first thought that the horses had learned to talk. I, however, live in Vancouver.

Maybe I wasn't surprised to hear my mid-night-mares talking, but I was surprised to hear them use such language. "Motherfucker" did it for me; I had to peek, if only to give them a sharp look. If they were a serious hallucination they would at least know that I paid them the respect of a proper reaction.

I dashed to the blinds…but we've been over this before. And what to my wondering eyes should appear but a pair of scrawny hookers, arguing about a drug deal.

But still the sounds continued.

Clip
Clop
Clip
Clop

Had my horsies become invisible? But no…wait…there was something about the hookers. They'd stopped. The horses stopped. The hookers moved on. The horses moved on.

Of course, hooker shoes!