We had a respectably early breakfast this morning. We chose the buffet. The server Sandra explained to us that if we wished to order à la carte, we must use our phone to scan the QR code on the back of our plastic room key to see the menu.  I tried it just to educate myself. The code on the room key directed one to the hotel web site. In any event we chose the buffet. Mine was fruit, oatmeal and an omelette made-to-order by the terribly accommodating sideboard chef. Indeed I can say that all the staff here are doing a fine job. For example the woman cleaning our room later this morning, upon entering the room saw an older woman coming down the hallway carrying heavy bags. The cleaner motioned the woman to stop and then called the front desk to have a porter come to assist.

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The only critical disappointment I’ve suffered at this hotel is that I am reminded again and again that I am not 21 years old! Naturally this is no fault of the hotel.  For example I have always mistrusted valet parking. I am just too obsessed with my cars. Today after I ignored the attendant at the lobby entrance sufficiently to signify my contempt for valet service, and after the bags had been dislodged from the trunk, I circled around the entrance and headed to the parking areas past those marked “valet parking “. It wasn’t a great distance but I nonetheless soon discovered that, although the parking wasn’t far from where I parked last time we were here, the walk back to the entrance with my stick up the hill was killing!

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This is not the first time we’ve bolted for a short visit to a nearby resort or hotel. Our list includes the Chãteau Laurier in Ottawa, the Reine Élizabeth and the Four Seasons in Montreal, Château Montebello in Québec, the Westin Nova Scotian in Halifax, St. Andrews-by-the-Sea in New Brunswick, the Jefferson in Richmond, the Parker House in Boston, the Waldorf-Astoria, the Plaza and the Carlyle in New York City, the Royal York in Toronto, Deerhurst Resort and JW Marriott Rosseau in the Township of Muskoka Lakes. Today’s visit to Playa Largo on Key Largo is significant because it was the first place we stayed several years ago when we visited the Florida Keys en route to the Casa Marina in Key West.

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After a midnight revival of Things Past – and quite honestly getting nowhere but backwards in that fruitless pursuit – I’ve chosen instead to consign my researches more profitably to that which is before my eyes. So much for the retrospective analysis of life! My deep regard will I predict encompass more than the photogenic views of Florida Bay and the nearby North Atlantic Ocean  (as undeniably entranced as I am by the sea). From henceforth the only legitimate absorption for me is the engineering of purpose and self-expression exhibited by those whom I know or by those whom I meet. If this were a recipe – which I suppose in a way it is – the sole ingredient to be added to this already flavourful concoction is the very natural feature called serendipity.

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It’s the end of the month.  The 31st day of January. Tomorrow – the 1st day of February – is the start of the most popular season on the Florida Keys; namely, the months of February, March and April. It’s the time when most so-called “snowbirds” from northern places such as Michigan and Canada traditionally make their way here to escape the rigours of winter. Recently I heard it said by someone who had the air of first-hand knowledge that anything in the Keys beyond the month of April is intolerable, that the ambient temperatures are by then unforgiving.

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Located Bayside in Key Largo, the diving capital of the world at mile marker 96. Buttonwood Bay is a 280 unit condominium community on a lush 40-acre tropical hammock that fronts Florida Bay to the West for spectacular sunsets every night. The community was thoughtfully designed to surround a magnificent protected coral rock harbor with boat slips for every unit.

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Being within a 2-hr drive on the Overseas Highway to Key West, the tip of which is 90 miles from Cuba; and given the romantic penchant for the allusion to the nefarious import of ambrosial hand-rolled cigars, it is no shock on a brilliantly sunny morning while reclining under the azure sky by the pool in Key Largo suddenly to discern the pleasing waft of a good cigar in the ether.

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This morning while munching a sliced green Granny apple and sipping a strong black java, the clever people at Apple Music lured me into a selection under their Listen Now category called New Music Mix. I am listening to it now, piped into my Bose Micro SoundLink to which my MacBook Pro is connected by Bluetooth. What a marvellous abbreviation of domestic technology!  Often I proclaim to anyone in sight that Apple Music is one of the best things to happen! Before Apple Music I confined my musical research to retail music stores which displayed their CDs in the manner of files in a cabinet through which one sorted by flipping plastic covers.

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For reasons immaterial I’ve lately had occasion to read “bios”, those short biographical profiles normally written by oneself or one’s agent or publicist for predominantly commercial purposes. The bumf contained in the bios is invariably complimentary; and, as a result, the substance is somewhat suspicious or sufficiently attenuated as to be both uninventive and in some measure questionable. Especially when one knows the person about whom the bio is written, there is often a frigid disparity between that personal acquaintance and what one reads. It isn’t so much that there are incongruities but rather critical gaps.  What it is that expresses a person’s particular characteristics is seldom reflected in these so-called life stories of limitless triumph. It causes me to doubt or to diminish the profitability of the production.

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We regularly quip, as I did by email this Friday morning with my longstanding friend Fiona St Clair in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, that we’re having to endure another day of unbridled climatic flawlessness on Key Largo.  The magnificence of the azure sky has blended with an uncommonly arid and cool northerly wind of 31Km/hr. It has made for an exceptionally reinvigorating atmosphere throughout the island.

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