My stockpile for idle amusement is admittedly finite. Inexplicably I hesitated this morning – an unparalleled springtime day – before launching onto the county roads for a routine but undetermined dawdle about the local countryside. There were however conditions precedent first to be fulfilled. After our conjoined and modest constitutional in the exercise room on the stationary bicycle and treadmill – and upon afterwards having sponged up the invigorating Vitamin D while briefly reposed on the balcony – the outstanding weather at last communicated its irresistible magnetism.

Over two “quad” espressos at Neat Café in Burnstown, Renfrew County during which I fully restored my erstwhile lethargy – and between casual asides with Proprietor Mark Enright and petty communications on the open air deck with Marcel the miniature dachshund – I opened a welcome email from Bobby Ball containing photographs of the latest Old Boys reunion in Toronto.

Shamefully perhaps I hadn’t an immediate recognition of all my former colleagues (who, I am quite certain, were able to bear the deprivation of my company). With others by contrast, I have maintained longstanding and repeated interaction. Some are former confederates in historic and memorable vacations to the Caribbean and Florida. Sadly some are no longer whinnying among us. I recall for example Ricardo Schmeichler (from Caracas, Venezuela) with whom I attended Alliance Française in Paris, France in the summer of 1964.

The novelty of social interplay is, I am convinced, an assured formula for both improvement and distraction. It is not though an advantage that comes without qualifications, among them geographic, temporal and digestible. Seated comfortably as I now am at my drawing room desk looking upriver, I once again suffer the restraint of unforeseen limitations. Answering these native and visceral impediments is nonetheless a dialogue I’ve frequently had with myself. Life – though unfathomable – has its boundaries. Reflection upon the past is noticeably punctuated by both memory and persuasion. Ultimately the conclusion is to answer the appeal of what animates – and within the discernible scope of the narrative.