Oliver has a friend — let’s call her Violet to preserve her innocence — whose family run Owls Hollow, a wonderful store for toys, books and games on the outskirts of Charlottetown.

To ensure that Oliver doesn’t spend his inheritance on Playmobil (and, man, do they have Playmobil), we’ve imposed a “visit once a month” on trips to the Hollow.

In theory.

But rules being rules, we’ve been there two or three times this month; this morning was a special trip to introduce my Dad to the wonders of the store.

Every time we’ve been there “Violet” has had the run of the place to herself, has immediately taken Oliver under her wing and, in essence, given him the keys to the kingdom.

While we civilians are limited to the public areas of the store, Oliver gets an all access pass to the secret back rooms where the secret “in development” toys are kept (one can only assume). A few weeks ago I stood up from a browse through the children’s book section to find the two of them holding an impromptu scooter vs. pedal car race around the first floor.

Surely if you’re going to be born into a family, being born into the family that runs the toy store is about as good as it gets (I’ve got nothing against near-shore sedimentology, but, well…). Violet wears the lifestyle of a toy magnate well (she’s one of the nicest kids you’ll ever meet; she’s also a pretty good salesperson); her presence on the scene is going to make it hard to stick to the once-a-month schedule.

References to the complex relationship that Prince Edward Island has with alcohol often highlight that prohibition came first and left last here, with a ban on the retail sale of alcohol enacted in 1900 and not lifted until 1948. Usually that’s where the story ends.

The reality is that the liquor laws of PEI are still firmly rooted in the temperance movement of days gone by: liquor sales are a tightly regulated government monopoly, regulations about where and when alcohol can be served are bizarre, and alcohol continues to be treated, at least officially, as a demon against which strong defenses are required. The Liquor Control Act runs 41 pages, its accompanying regulations another 51 pages; inside you’ll find prose such as:

The Commission being of the opinion that all proprietary or patent medicines, extracts, essences, lotions, tinctures and preparations which contain alcohol, whether of a solid, semi-solid or liquid nature, can be used as a beverage or as the ingredient of a beverage, hereby prohibits the sale thereof by retail within the province, except by persons duly licensed by the Commission to keep and sell the same by retail.

and:

A licensee may obtain special authorization from the Commission to permit dancing in the licensed dining room area for private functions closed to the general public.

and:

An application for a permit for a clergyman to purchase wine for sacramental purposes shall be in Form 3 and the permit shall be in Form 4 and there shall be no fee for such permit.

We’re 59 years after prohibition “ended” and yet, in so many ways, the attitudes that gave rise to it are still at the heart and soul of our liquor legislation.

In the day to day course of my life this is of absolutely no importance to me. But last night we came up against the full force of these laws, and significant tantrums ensued.

Summerside, you see, is hosting a Tall Ships Festival this week, and part of the entertainment scheduled was a Lennie Gallant concert last night at the Silver Fox Curling Club. My parents are in town this week, and we thought it might make a nice night out to take them up for dinner and the show. Catherine phoned earlier in the week and reserved 5 tickets — “two seniors, two adults and a child” she told them. No problem.

When we showed up at the Silver Fox last night at quarter to eight, however, the man at the door took one look at Oliver and shook his head: the concert, it seems, was a “licensed event.” Meaning no kids. We could go in without Oliver, or, maybe, get our tickets refunded and all go home empty-Gallanted.

Now keep in mind that we’d just walked across the street from the Loyalist Country Inn where Oliver sat amongst his family has beer and wine were consumed inside a bar festooned with manifestations of alcohol. But that was okay because, well, it was in a location “such that food may readily be procured for consumption therein.”

Move across the street, however, and add music (no doubt a enabler of the demonizing influences of alcohol in ways I just can’t understand) and all bets are off.

Oliver, as you might imagine, understood none of the subtlety of all this, and was convinced that the evil man at the door simply didn’t like him. It took a lot of explaining about “backwards laws” and the composition of several distractatory songs to disabuse him of this. And I’m still pretty sure he’ll bear a lifelong feeling that the people of Summerside have a hate-on for him.

I don’t consider myself one of those bitter new residents of PEI who are always going on about the lack of decent arugula and the paucity of good ballet. I’m a pretty satisfied guy when it comes to the Island’s eccentricities and conservative tendencies.

But although I’m not even a particularly engaged consumer of the demon alcohol myself, this would appear to be one area of Island life that could use an injection of some modernity.

That’s the headline for this CBC story this morning. I thought, upon first seeing it, that they were reporting about property development issues. But they weren’t.

YSlow.

Bob Wiseman and Bob Snider play The Haviland Club in Charlottetown tomorrow night, July 26. They are both brilliant musicians and I expect it will be a show worth attending; all the more so given the venue.

Remember: it’s Wednesday, and if you live within walking or cycling distance of the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market you’ve got an interesting option for lunch.

I update my Plazes location and status many times a day. Which does a good job at updating my Plazes contacts about where I’m at. But I’ve also got Jaiku friends. And Twitter friends. And Facebook friends. Surely there should be a way of having my Plazes presence information trickle elsewhere.

Fortunately this is made not-too-difficult (if not exactly painless) by the APIs available for each of the above (API = “way of talking to a service using a computer program, not a web browser”). And so is born PresenceRouter, an AppleScript Studio application that grabs my Plazes presence and does the trickling.

So I use the Plazer as the “mothership” and update my status message:

I fire up the PresenceRouter, and it connects to Plazes, grabs my status, and sends it elsewhere:

The end result is that my status is now echoed to Plazes, Jaiku, Twitter and Facebook:

Whether it makes sense to do all this client-side is up for discussion, but in the meantime it lets me keep a toe dipped in many presence waters without having to wildly thrash about updating each every time I walk across the street.

No code to release yet as it’s all very fresh, but I will soon.

Back in June, after an excellent dinner and drink with Olle and Luisa, Olle walked me to the train back to my hotel. We spontaneously each took a photo of the other once I was inside the train, Olle with his Nokia N73 and me with my Nokia N70. Olle’s photo appeared in his Flickr stream this morning, providing a counterpoint to my version:

Looking at the two photos hurts my head: I can’t seem to easily figure out who took each one.

OzBus operates “a regular overland service for backpackers travelling between London and Sydney.” It takes 12 weeks and costs about $7800 Canadian.

We took our inaugural trip of the season out to the Brackley Drive-in Theatre last night, stopping at The Lobster Claw for dinner as usual (the roast turkey dinner is as good as it ever was).

Bob has been busy this season at the drive-in: there’s new lighting for the canteen, renovated washrooms, a new coat of “drive-in paint” on the screen (is there anything Northumberland Paints can’t do?), and a completely automated projection system with its own “clicker” just like you’d use to start your VCR at home (well, not quite just like that — it’s considerably snazzier).

Coming out of the canteen with the popcorn chicken in hand, Bob asked if I wanted to “do the honours” and start the show myself. I ran back to the car, dumped the chicken in Catherine’s lap, and ran back with Oliver to let him do the honours. Which, given all the new automation of the place, simply involved climbing up on a step ladder and pressing “Start Show.” The fan came on, the lights dimmed, the projector started up, and the show was on. Magic.

Coming up next week is a double bill of Ratatouille and Transformers that might be the best time to take a trip out all summer if you’ve got kids.