It is undoubtedly not uncommon upon the cusp of one’s exit from this world to find oneself unwittingly contemplating the horror of it all.  What an abrupt conclusion it is to confront the seeming inutility of it all, the sudden vacuum, the absence of convincing purpose to anything that follows and maybe even to what has preceded. It is a very uncomfortable feeling to be staring one another in the face and having no certainty about what one thinks, no certainly about what to do or where to go or why. Gone is the once seemingly natural appetite for performance, those erstwhile magical themes that once governed us sufficiently to promote early morning application and late night carousing, the now unendurable devotion to labour and money and love.

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We haven’t often the occasion on Key Largo to lament the weather. Given the mere particles of rain drops thus far today I am uncertain whether a complaint qualifies; rather the modification may be no more offensive than ambivalence. Nonetheless the variance is sufficient to inspire a remarkable number of reconstructions from the ritual resplendence of dazzling brilliance from within a cloudless azure dome.

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Most certainly I am not the first to be intrigued by heraldry (though annoyingly I haven’t yet figured how to research the provenance of each motif that has drawn me to be indiscriminately and inattentively downloaded). Combined with this transport in armorial bearings is my recent acquaintance with an App called Keepsake.  It is devoted to the retail of frames for one’s photographs, all of which naturally is conducted on-line without the necessity to attend a so-called “bricks and mortar” site. I have applied the initial “Start Framing” link to an assembly of possible frames for various photos I have taken or stolen from somewhere on the internet.  When I find a preferred frame I capture it in a screenshot which I then edit as required (mostly just cropping to get rid of the unintended paraphernalia and advertisement). I am of course left only with the framed image but I usefully employ the same on my web site (which gets at least the same if not more views than our drawing room walls).

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The expression “NOCD” (“Not our class, Darling”) was one to which I was introduced years ago by Frederick aka “Freddie” Innes (or Innis, it doesn’t matter, he continues I am sure to be as preposterous now as he was then). He mentioned the quip while the two of us were sitting, sweating on the upper level of the two-tiered wooden bench in the sauna of the private health club at the Château Laurier Hotel in Ottawa.

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A strong cup of coffee is an ideal start to the day!  Since DD introduced me to the all-in-one Spinn espresso maker I have been absorbed in the variety of coffee makers on the market. This is however but one more intrusion upon my now burgeoning frugality. I hasten to add that my parsimony is far less a product of miserliness than boundless satisfaction.

Spinn Coffee Maker

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As soon as I have published this and after having pressed the little green button to Send to Everyone I shall delete my Substack account.

I began Substack almost exactly one year ago on March 25th as we were then preparing to leave Hilton Head Island after having spent the winter there to return to our beloved home in Mississippi Mills, Canada.

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Nothing rivals the ineffable resplendence and the soothing relief of a mid-Atlantic breeze on a hot and sunny day on Key Largo.  A sudden skiff of wind off the face of the Great Lakes or the St. Lawrence River (or for that matter any lesser fresh water source) indisputably fails to match the unmarshalled strength of the subtropical ocean. Nor to go head to head with the incomparable atmosphere of a windy turbulence and assuaging salty blend. The latter is at the time practically imperceptible except upon the distance of an irreversible 1,500 miles when predictably the demulcent recollection enigmatically and hauntingly survives.

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No long after Mrs C exhausts her winter sojourn on Key Largo and returns to her native northern haunt, she embarks upon a river cruise in the Nederland. To speak plainly, Mrs. C is an attractive woman of means. She has in addition the distinction of having being a professional health care worker. As here supervisory subaltern (and myself a former professional advisor) I have taken it upon myself to conduct what I believe to be a summary of useful prerequisites governing the wayfaring of such a woman among the unclassified populace of Northern Europe. I wouldn’t dignify the observations which follow as either imperative or even universally predictable; but nonetheless they acquaint the unwitting traveller with some of the more frequent and common perils of unintended publicity such as are the consequence of a peripatetic nature.

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Say what you will, the high point of any vacation is the people you meet. In the instance this morning, it might be more suitably characterized as getting to know the neighbours better and chatting with their visiting friends who are here for a week. It naturally takes time for details to insinuate any relationship.  I find too that acquainting oneself with others at different opportunities no matter how abbreviated is assured to expand the boundaries of familiarity. Because we’re not disposed to formal or even semi-formal gatherings, we thrive instead upon casual encounters such as the random crossing of paths or what may be called bumping into one another from time to time.  It makes for a more spontaneous introduction to what is invariably an enlargement of personal knowledge on both sides.

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It hasn’t been often this past season that we’ve had a cloudy day or stormy weather. Today is a rare exception. I have to say it is a welcome interlude from what otherwise has been an unabated compulsion to expose my wasting carcass (as far as cosmetically allowable) to the burnishing rays of the sun from within the cloudless azure sky.

“Stormy Weather” is a 1933 song written by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler. Ethel Waters first sang it at The Cotton Club night club in Harlem in 1933 and recorded it that year, and in the same year it was sung in London by Elisabeth Welch and recorded by Frances Langford. The song has since been performed by artists as diverse as Frank Sinatra, Etta James, Dinah Washington, Clodagh Rodgers, and Reigning Sound and most famously by Lena Horne and Billie Holiday.

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