The seasons and rituals have a lot in common: they are both repetitive (the one quarterly; the other less balanced though equally compelling); they both mark different patterns; they are both elemental (the one Natural, the other Human); both are celebrated by ceremony and tradition; and they are both unavoidable. For reasons I cannot explain it was 2 o’clock this morning when I went to bed; then it was 8:30 am this morning that I awoke in order to go to the golf club for breakfast.  Neither time reflects my ritual. The unreasonable side of it all is that I willingly slumbered and arose at such conflicted hours. The circumstances hadn’t demanded the abuse. I wasn’t having trouble sleeping or digesting. My consumption of pharmaceuticals had not changed.  Nor had the time advanced or retired.  It was simply an unforeseen detail of the schedule at hand; namely, to memorialize the annual close of the golf club. Except for private functions arranged with the caterers the club will shortly close for the season.  It is a ceremony we’ve observed for many years, the inescapable dénouement of another memorable season which, in the Canadian vernacular and among the aficionados of golf in particular, is the summer. The season this year been marginally longer than normal. We’ve enjoyed a frightfully warm autumn. But today – with the practice of the ritual – we have embraced what is possibly the last yet almost imperceptible change of the season. To punctuate the event today we received, in addition to the customary well cooked nourishment, a singular note of thanks for our support from Chefs Wendy and Chris MacDonald. It is a keepsake already carefully stashed among our memorabilia.

By way of further preamble, it was days earlier that my partner Denis Primus had called his nephew Denis Secundus to invite him to join us at the club for the ritual farewell. Meanwhile at 2 o’clock this morning – my mind still curiously churning – I thought to invite our neighbour Lynne to join us. Denis Secundus had already accepted. I was however uncertain that Lynne – who had just returned yesterday from visiting her grandchildren in Deep River – would be up to a reunion on short notice. But happily she was. Accordingly the four of us spent an uncommonly prolonged and agreeable – at times wistful – affair together at the club this morning over black coffee and a gratifying meal prepared by Chefs Wendy and Chris MacDonald.

Afterwards we lingered at some length in the sunshine on the patio overlooking the fairway by the river. On the way home, passing through the quaint Village of Appleton, we detoured onto fashionable Hillcrest Drive where by chance we encountered a former client tending his impressive property.  We engaged in a brief but highly animated chat with him then went on our way

Change is affecting not only the golf club. The weather has changed – though even now the air borders balmy and the dome of grey and threatening clouds in the sky above are cracked by modest sunlight and the temperature is 18º – hardly demoralizing. We are still reeling from the nutrition of today’s currency – always fruitful to rally with gregarious people!