An Ontario summer is magical!  Sitting on the patio at the golf club overlooking the Mississippi River renders an ineffable picture to the mind’s eye!  Already we are contemplating our return to Canada from our treasured Key Largo where almost every day for the past six months has been blue sky, dazzling sunshine and turquoise sea. Yet as mellowing as it has been we haven’t lost our shameless appetite for cooler air and the riparian atmosphere of the meandering waterway which dignifies and characterizes so many elements of our historic rural town and surrounding hamlets.

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Cheerless and solitary have not been the customary attributes of Key Largo during our six-month stay here. But on the precipice of the near evacuation of Buttonwood Bay at the uttermost end of the season it sadly seems apt. My first clue was that I didn’t get out of bed today until almost noon. Three cups of coffee drunk late yesterday morning apparently sustained me until four o’clock this morning before I succumbed to fatigue. As well two successive days of constant sometimes heavy rainfall and menacing cloudy skies quelled my once characteristic eagerness to tricycle and sunbathe. And, second, after I finished my breakfast at three o’clock this afternoon I went for a purgative tricycle ride about the lonely neighbourhood then a swim in the pool where there were only two couples lounging beneath the grey sky, looking remarkably white and forgotten. It’s time to go home.

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In the new and relatively elliptical world of accessible technology, there prevails the credibility that what is written in or attached to my blogs, web site and other internet compositions (about 8 in all) may one day be diverting even purposeful. Since my introduction around 1984 to computers and the internet I have gloated over and profited by technology.  Initially the focus was strictly business oriented though I learned to adapt rudimentary features to less commercial enterprise. The continuing and underlying theme of my written expression is the diary, a vehicle which I initiated in handwriting at age 14 years and which I have maintained in typewritten text and on the Internet almost daily since then.

Below is a copy of an email from a long-standing friend.  The text is both entertaining and historic.  I feel obliged to keep it as a record.

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Among the several people whom I know who regularly travel about the world, the preoccupation is always the next trip. And for those of us who haven’t a lengthy manifest, the prospect of something new is especially unbeatable.  Human nature is innately curious, whether idly looking out a window at the falling rain or whimsically contemplating an upcoming trip in one’s mind.  The discovery constitutes for some an imperative, a prelude to one’s ultimate extinguishment, basically a race to the finish line. I wonder whether the worldly knight of the road imagines going to the moon? Unquestionably I am contented with whatever is upon this particular globe. But this does not diminish my personal delight in less paradisical travel. Even the prospect of returning home to Canada from Key Largo provokes an awakening of venture and mission. Already I am anticipating with keenness the beachside picture of St. Augustine, Florida.

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Throughout my life I have aimed for perfection in whatever I do. I frankly know of no other mode of conduct. It’s an indisputable blessing! But in spite of my perseverance and unremitting constancy, often I only get 99% there. Minor obstruction pertinaciously contaminates the entirety. Shamefully much of the direction is nothing more than fruitless obsession; that is, the so-called articulation of perfection is but an intrusion upon my mind, a manufactured hindrance to reality for some error-free though unidentified purpose. Yet while perfection is predominantly impossible for whatever reason (either empirically, logically or philosophically) there are certain axiomatic expressions and conveniences of thought and behaviour which invite or promote the application.

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Today’s lofty temperature, though not the headline of the ambient conditions, unquestionably completed the idyllic picture. At the pool I was surrounded by a predominantly cloudless sapphire sky. There was only the breath of wind. It was another magical day on Key Largo. To speak of it less enthusiastically would be an omission. These are I know the days to recall with covetousness when facing some raging wintry slushy drizzling day. And they shall no doubt come but soon.

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Following is an article I published December 16, 2011 in my hometown’s local newspaper The Millstone at a time when I was still practicing law.

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Curiously I find awakening on Key Largo each morning to an agenda of unsurpassed leisure to be moderately unraveling.  The predictable insouciance of each day is nonpareil. And after my customary sustaining breakfast of fresh fruit and sprouted bread I routinely punctuate the equanimity with a purifying 4Km tricycle ride about the neighbourhood of Buttonwood Bay. For that athletic endurance I reward myself by prolonging upon a chaise longue at one of the three pools.  Instantly that I am so situated I inevitably succumb to the radiant heat of the blazing sun amid the azure dome encircled by the silvery palm trees and swaying green fronds. This in turn subsequently motivates me to seek the blissful cool of the pool waters where my torpidity exalts. Thereafter I am completely absorbed in the subtropical atmosphere of balmy sea air.

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The measure of today’s radiant heat, though notably invidious, was nonetheless obscured by the ambient temperature. When approaching 85ºF the task of discerning the proximate cause of solar contamination is less assured to be precise. Yet through the cloud of electrification there persists an inarguable sensation which predicts a more elemental springboard. Nature’s warning signals are not to be ignored or uncertified. Those visceral instincts we’ve been allotted exist for a reason; and they are remarkably trustworthy.

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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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