Salut, Daniel!
Thank-you for your email, good to hear from you as always.
I sent that particular blog – “Old Hat” – to a number of my closer friends and acquaintances whom I wished to inform of our present travel plans as we shift from the usual simple Florida menu for the winter to new possibilities. I hadn’t anticipated that the blog would excite such interest in my personal profligacy! Re-opening my historical manoeuvres has unwittingly characterized me as a schemer!
Over the space of the last 75 years (my entire life) I have owned 25-acres of vacant rural land, a small residential house in an old part of Town, a large residential house in a new part of Town, a condominium and parking space in a trendy urban area and a designated heritage building with four units (two residential, two commercial). Though I’ve owned more real estate and had more headaches for doing so than most people I know, I am seldom if ever asked my opinion on the subject of real estate investment. If I were asked, my unadulterated thesis is this: rent; don’t buy.
For years I have been reading the history of England. In the process I’ve learned there is more than one book entitled the history of England. For example the latest tome I’m reading is by Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800 – 1859), “The History of England, from the Accession of James II”, five volumes of 1,000 pages each. The number of other independent authors addressing the same overall subject is too numerous to mention. Some have a parenthetical allusion to a particular reign of monarch; while one at least by Thomas Frederick Tout (1855 – 1929) is unqualified (though it covers England’s medieval period or Middle Ages in the 1200s). Another dwells primarily upon the era of the Magna Carta during the same period. There is even the History of England in Verse (1876); or, if you prefer, the Oxford History of Britain.
Really there is little that surpasses the excellence of a balmy summer breeze! Such is the atmosphere today. After having spent a lifetime not having to bear deprivation, I am currently adapting myself to today’s economic reality. My erstwhile extravagance was predominantly the product of the lines of credit of every chartered bank of the Dominion of Canada (with an immodest measure of succour from the mortgage securities).
As I sit here at my desk overlooking the green meadow and the windswept river, I am further enhanced by the indescribable fortuity of score selectivity from Apple Music. All my favourite tunes!
The start of a new month such as today on Tuesday, August 1st is in this instance notably more distinguishable not for its date at the beginning of the month (and all that that entails for those of you inclined to rejuvenation and purgatory) but rather for the uncommonly cool weather we’re having. Naturally I hesitate to utter the word autumnal. But admittedly the thought had raced across my mind.
By serendipitous misfortune Petro-Canada gas stations (where I have for decades purchased automobile fuel and car washes) have lately suffered seemingly insurmountable technical obstacles related to the management and performance of their gas pumps and drive-through car washes. Though I have only tried my Petro-Canada gas card and car wash card at three separate stations (all with complimentary failure), the alleged Internet scam appears to be universal for Petro-Canada.
My patience with my historic provider ended this morning when confronting yet another impediment which the franchisees were unable to perfect except by handing me a free car wash code each time I trouble myself to get out of the car and stand in line at the interior counter to inquire about the on-going status.
It was an effort to get out of bed this morning. I kept tossing from side to side anticipating the impending duty of performance. It is His Lordship’s 70th birthday today. Accordingly I felt a degree of revelry were not inappropriate. I had been awake for what felt like hours already. I kept mulling over in my mind the commission I had to put my feet on the floorboards before nine o’clock (by which time I figured I’d be able fully to address the celebratory exigencies of the day). As it turned out, following my impenetrable dosing, it was closer to ten o’clock before I threw back the duvet and thus effectively declared myself among the living. Now, hours later, after having accomplished morning ablutions, enjoyed a BBQ sausage luncheon on the picnic table beside Almonte Butcher (with Ivy, Jericho and their dad), having reeled in my erstwhile physician from his personal medical remedy to join us momentarly at the trough, and finally having routinely gone to Stittsville to have the car washed (and afterwards while there to investigate the new Halo Car Wash including getting a free introductory car wash), I have as usual resorted to my mahogany desk in the ‘drawing room to seek the predictable stimulus of the upriver view beneath the stormy and ever-changing atmosphere.
Heading out to sea while understandably not for the faint of heart, is otherwise and (by what I imagine to be reasonable standards) considered a glamorous and fetching celebration charged with magnetic potential and intrigue. What after all could be more wholesome than bouncing about on a cork on open water miles from land’s end or familiar territory with nothing but the horizon to indicate whence you came or wither you go! And from what little I recall of my erstwhile sailing days, the character of the sea is highly mutable though seemingly inconspicuous.
The rain has formed shiny blobs of water each the size of a beetle on the black balcony railing. Beyond the balcony perimeter in the field 100 yards away the corn stalks arise from their nutritional palette with golden crowns in parallel lines throughout the 25-acre parcel. A hawk sails low over the weeds and flowers in the meadow. The river churns endlessly on. A squall flattens and polishes a portion of the river surface surrounding a large shoreline tree. The sky is a uniform murky grey with the occasional blur of azure. The humidity is palpable. The blobs of water on the balcony railing are not drying. They persist like clear plastic buttons or ornaments suitable for a cake. The dilapidated barn in the distance is now almost completely consumed by the surrounding verdancy in the field.