Early this morning, after breakfast and brushing my teeth, I removed the car from the parking lot in front of the townhouse to a spot adjacent a nearby tennis court. It’s only a hop and a skip to there from the townhouse where we’re anticipating that substantial roof work will commence either today or tomorrow. I wanted to make room for the trades. And it constituted but a small intrusion of my otherwise bromidic day. Nonetheless it marked for me a noticeable adjustment to my stringent routine, one which lately has been disturbed by other minor though acute complications. As a consequence I was ready to regain my balance and to dedicate myself to earnest and uninterrupted shiftlessness.

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Key Largo is an island in the Florida Keys, an archipelago off the south coast of the U.S. state. It’s a popular holiday destination where onshore and offshore state parks provide opportunities for wildlife encounters, fishing, kayaking and diving.

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The reflection of the morning light upon the water in the marine inlet projects itself onto the second storey windows of the townhouse opposite. The entirety of the building is ablaze in light, a startling rejection of obscurity. Beneath on the pathway adjacent the marine inlet I see the occasional walker fulfilling his or her constitutional duty, some are walking a dog.  A drop of avocado oil forms at the corner of my mouth as I manipulate my ham and cheese single slice combination, employing the smallest renditions of knife and fork available in the kitchen drawer. The knife has serrated edges for precision and limitation.

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I am beleaguered to imagine a more idyllic resort than Buttonwood Bay (BWB) on Key Largo, Florida in the United States of America. Knowing as I do so many others who are exceedingly well-travelled boundlessly about the entire globe, I approach this celebrity with noticeable caution and with no immoderate hesitancy. Nor do I wish to imperil or discredit the prior judgement of others. I accept that each of our worldly preferences is the product of incalculable experiences whether empirical, emotional or psychological. I therefore willingly prefer to confess my own limitations rather than contradict those particular emanations. Though my comparisons do not for example include Bali or other similarly exotic venues nor the continents of South Africa, South America, Australia and New Zealand, I can however speak and adjudge with a particle of credibility by having frequented the eastern North American shore along the North Atlantic Ocean from Newfoundland to the Florida Keys; in Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, the Costa Brava and the French and Italian Riviera; in Mexico the North Pacific Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Mayan Riviera; and, numerous islands in the Caribbean Sea.

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Fried bread isn’t for everyone. I like it for breakfast with an “egg in the hole” (what some call an “egg in the basket” though it is also known by a variety of other expressions such as “bullseye eggs”, “eggs in a frame”, “eggs in a nest”, “gas house eggs”, “gas house special”, “gasthaus eggs”, “hole in one”, “one-eyed Jack”, “one-eyed Pete”, “pirate’s eye”, and “popeye”; the name “toad in the hole” is sometimes used for this dish though that name more commonly refers to sausages cooked in Yorkshire pudding batter). This dish is also known from its frequency in many films including Mary Jane’s Pa (1935) with actor Guy Kibbee, Moon Over Miami (1941) with actress Betty Grable, V for Vendetta (2005) with actors Hugo Weaving and Stephen Fry and my personal favourite Moostruck (1987) with actors Cher and Nicolas Cage.

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The dawning spectacle of another quintessential day on Key Largo heightens the partiality of the staunchest Calvinist on this vivid albeit sterile Sunday morning. Nothing absolutely nothing above but blue sky, the kind that bleaches on the periphery. Within this implacable ether melds the very brookable tropical costume of white linen and silken synthetic shorts, unpretentious levity and pragmatism. Some pomade to complete the preparation, to straighten the limits, to adjust the chaos, to compose the artistry of one’s being. The hour is yet so early on the Sabbath that there is no disturbance to my propitious agenda of indolence.

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The provenance and heritage of the Buttonwood Bay interloper is not long materializing with or without the most casual address or confab. Even without such iconic nouns of address as Phiddy (to whom I was yesterday happily introduced at the center pool) sojourners here are by my reckless suspicion and calculation more predominantly associated with the Anglo Saxons and Italians than with the those whom might for example instead promote my personal favourites Franny and Zooey of JD Salinger’s memorable Glass family from the Upper East Side in New York City.

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“Moi, je suis le centre du monde!”

Before gas powered air conditioning, before the artful contrivance of the amber wooden deck, before the skilful modelling of the garden by the craftsmen since dispersed as far abroad as the eastern shore of Nova Scotia, before the polished emerald ivy vines had mounted the corrugated red brick walls and twirled the corners of the house undercutting the drawing room windows and front door mat, long before the thought of disposition instead of acquisition, an unpretentious and nondescript tradesman offered to “slurry coat” the concrete foundation of the house.

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For most of us living in the Western hemisphere, European superiority has long been touted, first by the Greeks and Romans then by the Vikings and Saxons (latterly the Germans) and finally by the Scots, the Irish and the British Empire. China is presently on the edge of asserting its modern global dominance.

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Nothing like a Bach keyboard allegro (Concerto in D Minor) to get the morning off to a jumping start!  Plus workmen hammering on the roof immediately above one’s head while yet reposed upon the feather down pillows. Then of course the parade of routine morning ablutions (including the clarification of one’s spectacles and muting the faint perspiration within the shank of the 18K gold ring), pulling on a clean linen shirt, followed by an invigorating sliced green Granny apple! Awakening from last night’s preponderantly disturbed sleep was relief of its own, unfastening oneself at last from the greenish grey turmoil of cyclical thought, pondering unimaginable and out of mind detail, sorting through yesterday’s now distant affairs and those fleeting utterances which are spawned like mercury in the stream of reverie.

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