I cannot conceive — and I doubt even writers more serious than me (sic) could conceive — of putting pen to paper except in hope of readers. You might as well expect a plumber to plumb without anyone to plumb for.

The Sunday Times, Tuesday, April 4, 2023
by Matthew Parris  (who) joined The Times in 1988. He worked previously at the Foreign Office, as Margaret Thatcher’s correspondence clerk, and as Conservative MP for West Derbyshire. He was the paper’s parliamentary sketch writer for 13 years and he now writes a diary column on Wednesdays and an opinion column on Saturdays. In 2015 he won the British Press Award for columnist of the year. Matthew is also a regular columnist for The Spectator and presents the biographical program Great Lives on BBC Radio 4. He has written a number of books, including Chance Witness: An Outsider’s Life in Politics, his autobiography, which won the Orwell prize in 2002.

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Dower: from Medieval Latin dotarium, from Latin dotare “to endow, portion,” from dos (genitive dotis), from PIE *do-ti, from root *do- “to give”, *dō-, Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to give.”

It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit dadati “gives,” danam “offering, present;” Old Persian dadatuv “let him give;” Greek didomi, didonai, “to give, offer,” dōron “gift;” Latin dare “to give, grant, offer,” donum “gift;” Armenian tam “to give;” Old Church Slavonic dati “give,” dani “tribute;” Lithuanian duoti “to give,” duonis“gift;” Old Irish dan “gift, endowment, talent,” Welsh dawn “gift.”

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As I removed and deleted the TeamReach App from my iPhone earlier this morning I contemplated the particulars of the gregarious personality and related communal distinctions. It astonished me to learn that in the wild, trees are usually gregarious plants; and, that wasps and bees are considered gregarious insects because the parent guards its larvae from threatening parasites (hence wasps are perhaps more accurately described as contiguous than gregarious).

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There are three swimming pools at Buttonwood Bay. Each of them is within walking distance of one another and nearby each of the residents (though obviously of varying proximity). The pool closest to us for example is less than 100 yards away. The others; namely, the Central pool by the front gate and the Island pool are nearby and easily accessible by me on my tricycle.

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Only this morning when saying goodbye to a couple leaving Buttonwood Bay for the season I was reminded of a quip I heard years ago in a Monty Python movie called the Something or Other in which the Laird of the Manor was seen at his desk, shouting “Who are those people I really hate?” Behind him (and unknown to him) approached Her Ladyship (in whose company was a handsome young priest recently admitted to the household). In the next scene, His Lordship (still seated at his desk) is overheard once again shouting, “How do you spell disembowelled?” When Her Ladyship approached (once again), she asked what he was doing, to which His Lordship replied, “I’m writing a letter to The Times!”

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Abeyance (from the Old French abeance meaning “gaping”) is a state of expectancy in respect of property, titles or office, when the right to them is not vested in any one person, but awaits the appearance or determination of the true owner. In law, the term abeyance can be applied only to such future estates as have not yet vested or possibly may not vest. For example, an estate is granted to A for life, with remainder to the heir of B. Following A’s death, if B is still alive, the remainder is in abeyance, for B has no heirs until B’s death.

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The phrase pathetic fallacy is a literary term for the attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that are not human. It is a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions, when, for example, clouds seem sullen, when leaves dance, or when rocks seem indifferent. The British cultural critic John Ruskin coined the term in the third volume of his work Modern Painters (1856).

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As uncanny as it is most of us are destined to complete a cycle of adventure in our lifetime. The revolution (that is, the completion of the circle) is more accurately defined as an evolution (capturing for example the ecological definition; viz., the movement of a simple substance through the soil, rocks, water, atmosphere and living organisms of the earth). It reputedly has something mystical to do with leaving where you are so that you may know whence you came, a sort of spiritual enterprise akin to the more fundamental retail observation that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

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The septuagenarian crowd overtook the island pool today. I switched from our neighbourhood pool to the island pool because while tricycling past the neighbourhood pool it was patently already consumed by others. So I checked out the island pool and it was comparatively sparse (a feature that changes day to day).

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Yesterday I joined Team Reach, an App for Buttonwood Bay Snowbirds containing running comments by residents, a list of upcoming events, random photos contributed by residents, a list of members (176) and a message capacity to some or all members. What’s odd about my admission to this fold is that when we arrived here last November, I declined to Join because I knew I had no intention to participate in the social gatherings of the members of Buttonwood Bay. It wasn’t because I don’t enjoy the people here (I adore chatting by the pool or along the laneway when tricycling or in the occasional private confabs we’ve enjoyed). My reluctance was primarily motivated by the experiences we have had at other resorts (most recently Longboat Key and before that Hilton Head Island) where the gatherings were predictably noisy, involving alcohol and food I didn’t care for and most importantly people with whom I had no immediate or foreseeable currency. This I know sounds decidedly curmudgeonly but the frank reason is I have by design abandoned venues which are predominantly of a persuasion contrary to my own. Certainly I know that by the application of some effort I can acquaint myself with anyone but I am unconvinced of the utility of the effort at this late stage of my life.

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