Changing the Philips Sonicare electric toothbrush, while not the highlight of my day, represents an undertaking at least as significant on my agenda as tilling the garden in the springtime is no doubt for some. It’s one of those trifling but meaningful intervals, in this instance especially apt to the mid-point of our six-month winter sojourn in Florida. Coincidentally this preoccupation coincides roughly with another quarterly dental obligation; namely, a visit to the hygienist which I accomplished last week. It’s all part of the fundamental attention to the six senses – sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. Less than a month ago I went for an eye examination with a local optometrist (part of what my ophthalmologist recommended as a three-month corollary to surgery late summer). The visit to the audiologist is more of an annual thing as is the family physician’s attendance (though recently the traditional one-year rule has been replaced by the “as-needed” imperative). The family physician adequately covers the generic issues of physiology (“the branch of biology that deals with the normal functions of living organisms and their parts“). All this is to say that, aside from having gassed the car and had it washed today, everything is in ship-shape repair! Oh, I had my hair cut as well! That – and our recent tour at the nail spa -definitely complete the cycle.

Oddly it was bicycling which I did not do today as would normally have been my custom. Though I needed a break from the exercise, the prime motivation for its avoidance was that I was bound to perform a duty as chauffeur mid-afternoon. Instead of attempting to take a hurried bicycle ride late this morning after my haircut I opted instead to repose by the pool en plein air so to speak, nourishing my equal appetite for sunshine and permitting myself to recover from the indignity of having had to eject myself from the lair at an uncommonly early hour this morning in order to fulfill my rendezvous with my hair architect Michael.

Prior to languishing poolside – after my salon visit – I performed a quick in-and-out at the pharmacy and grocery store replenishing my stores (pointedly in keeping with a revitalized dietary programme – which is to say a maniacal return to erstwhile purity). I energize myself accordingly though it is within the foreseeable bounds of reason and habit that my salubrity may yet prove mercurial! Small wonder I rejoice in the ritual of cleanliness! Not having a practicing religious acquaintance with spirituality from which to draw I must content myself with the profane visceral options. I have always been tactile so the alternative speaks well to me. I did however seek to augment the theme by listening to a collection of Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin – a pleasure further advanced by my new Bose Noise Cancellation 700 Headphones complete with Bose Music App. It is this or the shamefully repetitive expostulations of opposing counsel in the Trump impeachment trial. Better that I suppose than dwelling upon the social transgression of paying $4 for a donut as our much esteemed Prime Minister is lately accused of having done!