Immediately upon awakening this morning I cast my eyes toward the open bedroom windows. In an instant 10,000 dandelions saw I at a glance! Then afterwards, from the drawing room onto the balcony overlooking the river, I further profited by lounging for a moment in the  yellow sunshine upon one of our new fabric deck chairs.

The Water Music (German: Wassermusik) is a collection of orchestral movements, often published as three suites, composed by George Frideric Handel. It premiered on 17 July 1717, in response to King George I’s request for a concert on the River Thames.

The first performance of the Water Music is recorded in The Daily Courant, the first British daily newspaper. At about 8 p.m. on Wednesday, 17 July 1717, King George I and several aristocrats boarded a royal barge at Whitehall Palace, for an excursion up the Thames toward Chelsea. The rising tide propelled the barge upstream without rowing. Another barge, provided by the City of London, transported about 50 musicians who performed Handel’s music. Many other Londoners also took to the river to hear the concert. According to The Courant, “the whole River in a manner was covered” with boats and barges. On arriving at Chelsea, the king left his barge, then returned to it at about 11 p.m. for the return trip. The king was so pleased with Water Music that he ordered it to be repeated at least three times, both on the trip upstream to Chelsea and on the return, until he landed again at Whitehall.

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I am able to recall almost every rainy day in the past six months, not because they were particularly memorable but because there were so few of them on Key Largo to recollect. Even during the past three weeks since we crossed the border from the United States of America to Canada, the weather has been predominantly clear. Yesterday I received an email from our former next door neighbour on Buttonwood Bay (she and her husband are from Boston).  She alluded to rejoining us this coming winter on Key Largo for more sunny days. Thus when I awoke today to see doleful cloudy skies and dripping beads of water upon the floor-to-ceiling windows, I was in the mood for a very different music than the one to which I am accustomed. I won’t say mournful but at least melancholy. Rainy days do that to me.

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The word candid is connected with the word white (implying innocence and freedom from malice). In the context of the etymology of candescence it has more to do with the heat from which it derives than the light it emits. In the literary setting the import is strong emotion and passion. In the artistic milieu it is pronounced gemstone colours.

candescent is glowing with heat; white-hot, while incandescent is emitting light as a result of being heated

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The medical appointments we had this morning and this afternoon were not what I’d call drudgery – one never likes to belittle even the most routine scientific enquiry – but I have to say it was all a bit of a grind! These consultations were by any estimate conventional (though critical) affairs, things we do every year. I was especially anxious to complete the agenda and put stuff behind. Since our return to Canada three weeks ago on April 27th we’ve been exponentially focussed and diligent. Happily we’ve wrestled the numerous complications to the ground. I am beginning to regard the universe with a more enlightened view.

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I have always liked things to be just so. Organized. Clean. And properly positioned. Everything tight. Some there are no doubt who would call it obsessiveness. Cloying preoccupation with meaningless detail. Getting one’s world just so. Hmph!

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Sitting in my car, waiting for my passenger, is eventful because on this approximate location and date (June 11, 1976) almost exactly 47 years ago I stepped foot on the nearby property which was to be my first residence in Almonte. The residence was then the retirement home of Rev. George Bickley and his wife Anne who for the moment together occupied the manse of St. Paul’s Anglican Church around the corner (poignantly immediately across from the original Land Registry office built around 1860).  The contractual matter of my employment as a junior lawyer by Messrs. Galligan & Sheffield, Barristers, Solicitors and Notaries Public at their offices on Bridge Street had been concluded days before over dinner at the Mississippi Golf Club in the Village of Appleton.

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I suspect there isn’t anyone who hasn’t contemplated what Country Life labels with some equanimity the distinguishing features of the Town and Country mouse.

Strangely both parties blame the other for misunderstanding or not appreciating the benefits and advantages of living in the town or in the country. It is natural that the prejudice should affect each equally; such is human nature, a bias for what we applaud and an impartiality for what we do not.  Nonetheless there were occasions when the balance was viewed as unfair.

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The 1 mL syringe portion of THC 20:20 Cannabis Oil I took under my tongue late yesterday afternoon while sitting at my desk, reading, writing and complacently regarding the very pleasant upriver view, stimulated as well the delectation of the subsequent evening meal. But it had also a persuasive soporific effect. I was in bed by nine. I hadn’t any reservation about the propriety of an early retirement because I had been up at 6:00 am that morning. So I felt I had earned the entitlement to excuse myself from the sentient ambience of the apartment as it quelled its daytime brightness with the softened lamp lights reflected upon the precious Persians. I tried reading Thomas Babington Macaulay’s History of England from the accession of James II but I kept nodding off.

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Slowly we’re turning the wheels beneath our prevailing exigencies. The things which we knew had to be done upon our return to Canada; and the things we’ve since discovered which have added weight to the cart and provoked new dimensions and necessities. On balance we are pleased with what has transpired (and what has not).  Even as I write Mark Thompson of Inverness Homes (contractual) is doing touch-up paint work throughout the new apartment. Earlier this morning I signified the achievement of complacent residency by languishing upon a patio chair on the balcony overlooking the endlessly flowing river. Because I was peering directly into the blazing orb, my eyes were closed.  Soon I fell asleep, my head lapsing to the side, stiffening my neck. I awoke when the heat became too penetrating. The breeze was slight only. Our southeast prospect affords us about 150° of radiation from sunrise and throughout the day until the sun moves around to the southwest corner of the building to its point of setting on the distant horizon behind the Old Town Hall.

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