Category Archives: General

Sunday serendipity

His conscience was perfectly neutral. For it was his deliberate opinion that no form of ecclesiastical polity was of divine institution.

Thomas Babington Macaulay.
“The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 3.”

Those sage words reputedly reflected the thinking of the King of England William of Orange. At first blush the observation appears directed solely to the paramountcy of the state (parliament) over inherited dominion of royalty or prelacy (the theory being in some sectors that entitlement derived from apostolic lineage specifically succession from St Peter). It was an equal obstruction to both Catholic and Protestant claimants.

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100% charged

We’re prepared. Ready to go. 100% charged. Buffed and primed. Paradoxically we’ve nowhere to go. And just as well! We’re inert, presently resigned to unrepentant immobility, smugly content to languish in the cool summer breeze and warming yellow sunshine, book in tow, listening to our favourite music or watching a new show. Eager to succumb to hypnotic drifting dreams filled with sometimes curious images and soporific lacquer. The things that take you somewhere else. That magic feeling “Nowhere to go, nothing to do!

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Tatlock

This afternoon we inadvertently drove to the Village of Tatlock, a highly secluded venue in the Township of Lanark Highlands. The object of our outing had been the Village of Clayton (more immediate and far less obscure) but the proverbial winding country roads overtook us. The drive could not have been more pleasant! The azure sky was clear, the temperature pushing 75 degrees. The air was fresh. Obviously we were meandering. Just killing time while there was a showing of our apartment for sale. We have agreed with our Landlord (who is soon to be 93 years of age) to vacate in order to facilitate administration of his private capital. As I said to another resident here, “It’s a venture of mixed feelings – not because we have any reservation about leaving. We’re terribly happy here. Yet we’re excited about the new place especially as it is on the other side of town where we have our residential roots.”

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Sitting by the river

Forty-six years ago my morning, noon and night were consumed running my solo law practice. I employed three secretaries. And in keeping with the tradition which my predecessor Raymond A. Jamieson QC had afforded his farming clientele over his 52 years of practice, the office was open Saturday mornings (though unlike Jamieson I didn’t balance by closing Wednesday afternoons). I regularly ate my lunch out of a can while leaning over the kitchen sink to avoid getting either fish pieces or oil on my waistcoat. Once when I attempted a healthier concoction by assembling raw vegetables and tomato juice in a blender, I failed to secure the lid tightly and the contents exploded on me and the kitchen cupboards. I was momentarily distraught.

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It’s all how you look at it!

Live happily ever after
With a Chablis and some laughter
“Between the Sheets” is lovely
With a dizzy blonde and a bottle of bubbly!
There’s nothing sicker in society
Than a lack of liquor and sobriety!
So, down the hatch
Here’s mud in your eye
Take a bracer
With a chaser
Wash it down with Rye!
Bottoms up!
Stirrup cup! It’ll put you in the pink
And all you have to do is
Drink, drink, drink, drink, driii-ink!

Christopher Lee “ Name your Poison”
The Return of Captain Invincible

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Country café

After breakfast this morning at the golf club we toddled northward to the Madawaska River in the Village of Burnstown in the County of Renfrew. It was a leisurely drive from the Village of Appleton towards the Ontario provincial hinterland of Algonquin Park and La Verendrye Wildlife Reserve along the the route once travelled by erstwhile adventurers, coureurs de bois, railway and waterway commerce from the St Lawrence River. The pathway is to this day remarkably forested and seemingly unspoiled by centuries of human intervention.

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Upriver

No doubt you’ve encountered occasion on which your developing perspective is less than complimentary, times when you feel more acquainted with friction or obstruction than progress and accomplishment. It is an unsettling toxin and certainly one from which immediate removal is preferred. Regrettably the synthesis of objectives is not always evolutionary; or if it were, the alteration can be punishingly obscure or protracted. Make no mistake ingenuity insinuates not only what we imagine to be a favourable credit for oneself but also what blends with the private ambitions others may have. Metaphorically the journey upriver is fraught with unexpected deadheads, weeds or the mere contradiction of what is no more elegant or calculated than the natural flow of the river at that particular juncture.

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Lunch on the patio

As part of the moving process – that is, shifting across town from one apartment to another – we’re obliged in accordance with our mandatory accommodation of the landlord to vacate our current premises on occasion to permit the estate agency to “show” the place and to create “virtual” showings available on-line for prospective buyers. We’re only too pleased to cooperate. Today for example the estate agents informed us they wished to take photos and videos in addition to showing the unit to an interested party.  The processes we were advised would take place from 11:00 am – 2:15 pm approximately. Accordingly we ensured that we first straightened the place then fully abandoned it in order to allow the uninterrupted transaction of business by the various commercial parties.

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À propos…

Ce qui vient à propos, opportunément.

It would require a far more perspicacious individual than I to enlarge potently upon the many moments convenable which heightened today’s unhurried breakfast of family members at the Mississippi Golf Club on the bulging Mississippi River. Each of us was by some coil related to the other. One for example is renowned by the cumbersome description, “the son of the daughter of the brother of your mother”; another equally taxing, “the partner of the brother of your mother and of your cousin once removed”.  Or words to that effect.  I’ve probably got it wrong. I was never good identifying complicated lineage. It is an exceedingly trying sequence, one which naturally depends on one’s perspective.

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… because man goeth to his long home

12 Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;

2 While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:

3 In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,

4 And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low;

5 Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:

6 Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.

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