Live happily ever after
With a Chablis and some laughter
“Between the Sheets” is lovely
With a dizzy blonde and a bottle of bubbly!
There’s nothing sicker in society
Than a lack of liquor and sobriety!
So, down the hatch
Here’s mud in your eye
Take a bracer
With a chaser
Wash it down with Rye!
Bottoms up!
Stirrup cup! It’ll put you in the pink
And all you have to do is
Drink, drink, drink, drink, driii-ink!
Christopher Lee “ Name your Poison”
The Return of Captain Invincible
After breakfast this morning at the golf club we toddled northward to the Madawaska River in the Village of Burnstown in the County of Renfrew. It was a leisurely drive from the Village of Appleton towards the Ontario provincial hinterland of Algonquin Park and La Verendrye Wildlife Reserve along the the route once travelled by erstwhile adventurers, coureurs de bois, railway and waterway commerce from the St Lawrence River. The pathway is to this day remarkably forested and seemingly unspoiled by centuries of human intervention.
No doubt you’ve encountered occasion on which your developing perspective is less than complimentary, times when you feel more acquainted with friction or obstruction than progress and accomplishment. It is an unsettling toxin and certainly one from which immediate removal is preferred. Regrettably the synthesis of objectives is not always evolutionary; or if it were, the alteration can be punishingly obscure or protracted. Make no mistake ingenuity insinuates not only what we imagine to be a favourable credit for oneself but also what blends with the private ambitions others may have. Metaphorically the journey upriver is fraught with unexpected deadheads, weeds or the mere contradiction of what is no more elegant or calculated than the natural flow of the river at that particular juncture.
As part of the moving process – that is, shifting across town from one apartment to another – we’re obliged in accordance with our mandatory accommodation of the landlord to vacate our current premises on occasion to permit the estate agency to “show” the place and to create “virtual” showings available on-line for prospective buyers. We’re only too pleased to cooperate. Today for example the estate agents informed us they wished to take photos and videos in addition to showing the unit to an interested party. The processes we were advised would take place from 11:00 am – 2:15 pm approximately. Accordingly we ensured that we first straightened the place then fully abandoned it in order to allow the uninterrupted transaction of business by the various commercial parties.
Ce qui vient à propos, opportunément.
It would require a far more perspicacious individual than I to enlarge potently upon the many moments convenable which heightened today’s unhurried breakfast of family members at the Mississippi Golf Club on the bulging Mississippi River. Each of us was by some coil related to the other. One for example is renowned by the cumbersome description, “the son of the daughter of the brother of your mother”; another equally taxing, “the partner of the brother of your mother and of your cousin once removed”. Or words to that effect. I’ve probably got it wrong. I was never good identifying complicated lineage. It is an exceedingly trying sequence, one which naturally depends on one’s perspective.
12 Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;
2 While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:
3 In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,
4 And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low;
5 Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:
6 Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
In spite of relentlessly climbing the mountain we never make it to the top. Or if we do, it’s either the end of the road or it’s downhill thereafter. The summit is the allure. It is the point from which all else is perceived. And from every angle, unshielded by no more than temporary cloud. It represents the acme of one’s effort; the sudden but expansive perspective enabling one to summarize a lifetime of effort and devotion to production.
Reportedly the Russians are having a hard time of it lately. The economic sanctions are said to be extraordinarily punishing. Naturally the infection is likely most vivid among the common people not the oligarchs and criminals in the background from the perspective of their mountainous palaces or their vulgar marine floatations. I can’t imagine any amount of vodka sufficient to assuage the penalty. Just knowing that their so-called leader has intentionally caused the mutilation and death of thousands and the dissatisfaction of almost the entire world is I suspect sufficient to contaminate any feeling of national pride one might otherwise have. War is such an archaic and unforgivably childish resolve. While I acknowledge the artistic contribution of Russian writers and musicians to global improvement I am ignorant of any superiority of everyday life in Russia. Granted we most often hear only the abuses of a peculiar leader with a nefarious background in the KGB; and his offensive preoccupation with being shirtless while wrangling a fishing rod or riding a horse bareback.
The clan led by Trump presents to Americans the same marauders and robbers as their chief and his dogs. Sustained by ignorance and perceived abuse, they are reminiscent of the Celtic brand that once inhabited the uncivilized Scottish highlands (of which I have little doubt Trump’s raw lineage descends in notable measure). Nor yet have we “forgotten that the ancient Gaelic polity had been found to be incompatible with the authority of law, had obstructed the progress of civilisation, had more than once brought on the empire the curse of civil war”.
Shortly after I arrived in Almonte on a hot summer day in June of 1976 at the age of twenty-eight years I soon recaptured my passion for bicycling. It wasn’t however the idyllic outing I was accustomed to on the paved pathway along the Ottawa River in Ottawa or on the parkway through the Gatineaux Hills in Québec on the other side of the river. It was though as lonely a time as I had spent in Ottawa after my arrival there from law school in 1973 when I first accelerated my sporting enthusiasm for bicycling by buying (upon the recommendation of an aficionado whom I knew from undergraduate studies and who was then dating my sister) a Garlatti 18-speed racing bicycle with thin tyres and matching seat. If I hadn’t lost fifty pounds within months after graduation from law school I would never have sustained either my cycling ambition or application. Whether performing my articles or first year of practice at MacDonald, Affleck on Sparks Street I would not have perpetuated my bicycling routine without the contributing advantage of social isolation.