It is not every occasion I have to say anything at all penetrating. The closest I get to that is saying something legal or factual. Not exactly ripping.  It is the casual “asides” which capture a far less prosaic conversation, the detached whisper, remark or confidentiality,

Indeed much of life is but an ephemeral aside, a moment of intimacy perhaps, a digression, a parenthetical or incidental apostrophe in the regular flow of custom, duty and labour. A reflection on one’s past reminds us it is the punctuation that tells the story. While it is a natural sequence of retirement to evaporate from involvement, the odd consequence of inactivity is the strengthening of what transpires throughout the day.  I believe I am justified in saying I am a forward looking person.  Whatever I may record of daily events is not for historic purposes but rather as a catharsis to fulfill my present need for expression. I am meanwhile convinced there is no detail in daily life which hasn’t within or behind it an ineffable tale!

If I am not overtaken by someone or something in particular, I willingly content myself with the digestion of the fodder at hand. This is no default; it is curiosity by design. The images themselves are edited in my mind for proper absorption. The conjunction of time, place and people captivates me; and, among that synchronicity I naturally include my own collusion. By this device of insinuating life with the magic of whimsy and fortuity I have succeeded to enhance the veneer and vista of my own. It is nothing for example for me to translate a comical literary scene involving Mapp and Lucia to my own paradise of village market gardening.

Mapp and Lucia is a 1931 comic novel written by E. F. Benson. It is the fourth of six novels in the popular Mapp and Lucia series, about idle women in the 1920s and their struggle for social dominance over their small communities. It brings together two sets of characters from three previous Benson novels: “Lucia” Lucas, Georgie Pillson and Daisy Quantock from Queen Lucia (1920) and Lucia in London (1927), and Miss Elizabeth Mapp and her neighbours from Miss Mapp (1922).

In this novel, Lucia and Georgie leave Riseholme to take up summer residence in Tilling, renting Miss Mapp’s home of Mallards. Mapp and Lucia soon begin a war for the dominance of social life in Tilling.

Though further abroad from village life, my beloved oceanic scenes are as well the result of incalculable unwitting interludes, accidents of time, place and people. I am confident that I could trace, over a period of fifty years, the serendipitous evolution of these abbreviated tableaux by some modified scheme of magic. I have in some instances accommodated my supreme preferences by the realties; but always without compromising the initial gusto.