For someone such as I who is so shamelessly irreligious it is a pitiful confession when I say that lately things have gone so remarkably well that I suspiciously wonder when the tide will turn! This conjecture that misfortune automatically follows beneficence is about as close as my mystical confrères get to the subject of spirituality. I haven’t yet undertaken the nervous habit of crossing my fingers or looking into the sky for descending saucers. I shall accordingly adopt the high road and carry on, not as though this is all perfectly natural and to be expected (which I don’t for minute think it is) but unelaborately as though the accomplishment is both gladdening and memorable (which it unquestionably is).

Continue reading →

My haircut appointment today was at 10:15 am.  I had made the appointment yesterday with the person whom I assumed was a new stylist at the salon notwithstanding at the time she was seated at the front desk. She had greeted me I thought rather abruptly when I entered the salon, asking “Do you have an appointment?” without so much as a “How-do-you do?”  Indeed I was at the time overwhelmed by the curtness of her so-called welcome. When I reported I was there to make an appointment, she asked “When?”,  to which I replied “Tomorrow”. She followed this mirthful repartée with, “Do you care who with?”  I said, “No” even though in all previous occasions at the salon I had been clipped by the male salon owner who at the time was engaged with a client. The new stylist did not say with whom I was scheduled but merely asked, “The name?” I replied, “Chapman”. She then interogated, “Is that your first name?”  I said “No”. This succinct response was insufficient for her. She pressed me further. I told her my first name. She then addressed me by my first name, adding the time of the appointment. As I struggled to record the appointment on my iPhone, standing at the front desk while manipulating my stick, she did not offer to provide a written endorsement of the appointment.

Continue reading →

Ours was today a formidable syllabus! It is now 3:59 pm and we have only just returned to the apartment for our 4:00 o’clock tea/coffee rendezvous with our neighbours.  The locally made chocolate is at hand; the chilled coffee is made; the Crown Derby tea cups, saucers and side plates are laid out; the tea basket, tea pot and tea leaves are at the ready. The Jane Austen Companion (various artists, The Philharmonia, Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra) is connected.  The grandfather clock has just rung four times.

Continue reading →

The cocktail hour has long held its sway over me. I am always tickled to receive a dinner invitation with the words “six for seven” attached. It acknowledges the desideratum of tipping the highball or martini glass before putting on the nose bag. Nor is the attraction simply for the liquid scheme although that alone is indisputably at the fore. The cocktail hour is a union of intoxicants, crystal, conversation, music, furniture, fireplace and hors d’oeuvres. And at one time it was a chance to light up (and here I am not speaking of nefarious combustibles).

Continue reading →

I read somewhere today that the life expectancy of the average American male is 77 years of age; for women it is 81 years of age. It’s an inevitable dissolution, clearly.  Yet I prefer to approach the impending collapse with a sense of reason not a mournful disposition. Logic I find offers a far more axiomatic clarity than mere factual scrutiny. While I await the precipitous evaporation I am curious to recall what I have learned in the interim. Herewith is my ad hoc analysis of the subject segregated into decades for convenience (though I haven’t any basis to suggest the learning process is different from one decade to the other or indeed that any particular education is devoted to one fraction or the other).

Continue reading →

Family dinners are I find unfailingly singular. This I attribute in particular to the extraordinary absence of social reserve which normally attends and so often dilutes foregathering with less intimate people. While our congregation this evening with my sister and her husband at their place in Ottawa South along the Rideau Canal was unusually small (there were just the four of us at table) we were astonished to learn upon leaving that we had lingered there for a full four hours. Throughout the entire time we had jousted with one another to unfold the latest news and stories of reminiscence. Our only notable interruption was our attempted telephone call to my niece and her husband in Beverly Hills, CA and their subsequent return call to us.

Continue reading →

Much has been written about the historic magnetism of jewellery. The sometimes apocryphal accounts cover the period of Cleopatra’s rule and the Egyptian pharaohs to the current day of rappers and the nouveaux riches. None of it in my opinion more succinctly and cleverly captures the competing elements of the draw than the casual observation of Debbie Berling in a recent email to me. She wrote,  “The allure of Beauty in its many guises”. And she ought to know.  She is the former owner of a family business of luxury jewellery.

Continue reading →

Given the indisputable cheerfulness of my being late this afternoon following my unaccustomed armchair snooze, it is arguable I had a disquieting sleep last night. I prefer to characterize the overnight drama as an absorption in matters outstanding; that is, stewing over those curious thoughts which arise only in the middle of the night and which are as frequently mere irresolute repetitions. The upshot is that after my somniferous relapse and resulting recovery I am now in that enviable state of euphoria which I have no doubt is vitalized by the well-known and common analgesic called sleep.

Continue reading →

The odd thing about Louis Audette is that, as much time as we spent together over the twenty years or so I knew him (from about 1973 until his death around 1995 at the age of 87), I reckon that neither of us would, if pressed, have much to say about one another. It is rather like talking about one’s relatives at length – not normal or usual in the ordinary course. Certainly, after a couple of drinks, given the right stimuli from the current conversation, memories of him would surface, usually in a humourous vein, but I cannot honestly say that we had a “close” relationship. We just got along and more or less tolerated one another’s inadequacies which seemed to have been painfully obvious to each of us respectively, for at least as long as it took to have numerous drinks and dinner (and then more numerous drinks):

Stayed in Ottawa last night, following another marathon of alcoholic abuse at Uncle Louis’ – not to mention the venison which his steward (Jeffrey) managed successfully to convert into something resembling a Michelin product.

Continue reading →

Try to remember when life was so tender
That no one wept except the willow
Try to remember the kind of September
When love was an ember about to billow
Try to remember and if you remember
Then follow, follow

Continue reading →