Category Archives: General

The good life

His political career, though it had brought great calamities both on the House of Stuart and on the House of Bourbon, had been by no means unprofitable to himself. He was old, he said: he was fat: he did not envy younger men the honour of living on potatoes and whiskey among the Irish bogs; he would try to console himself with partridges, with champagne, and with the society of the wittiest men and prettiest women of Paris.

Paul Barillon d’Amoncourt, the marquis de Branges (1630–1691), was the French ambassador to England from 1677 to 1688.

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

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We’re moving to Italy!

Earlier today after my breakfast and a short but expiative bicycle ride about the neighbourhood – and while driving to the city for a car wash as is my wont – I first went to see the construction site of our new digs adjacent the Mississippi River just to catch an updated glimpse of what’s coming. As I approached the building site, and within the preceding parkland which borders the edge of the River, I saw two young men, shirtless and dripping wet emerge from among the cattails and bulrushes, seemingly getting out of the RIver after a refreshing swim on this sultry summer day. The temperature was 30°C. Only moments before, at the intersection of Martin St S and St Paul Street where there is a boat launch and protective sails hung above a quiet sitting area, there had been two men, one a slender athletic man, the other a paunchy older man, similarly attired and glistening from water stepping onto shore apparently having likewise sought relief from the humidity. Forty-six years ago it was I who swam with my Yellow Labrador puppy in the cool waters of the Mississippi River from the identical launch. My residence was then only steps away on Martin St S.

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Square your actions

The Square and Compasses (or, more correctly, a square and a set of compasses joined) is the single most identifiable symbol of Freemasonry. Both the square and compasses are architect’s tools and are used in Masonic ritual as emblems to teach symbolic lessons.

Some Lodges and rituals explain these symbols as lessons in conduct: for example, Duncan’s Masonic Monitor of 1866 explains them as: “The square, to square our actions; The compasses, to circumscribe and keep us within bounds with all mankind”.

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A nice little tea room in the country

When an extended-family member from the city asked me today about “a nice little tea room in the country” it got me thinking. There are presumptions about the country, some favourable, others not so, we all know that. The Town Mouse vs the Country Mouse has been going on for a long time. But the enquiry today hinted at a greater depth than was readily apparent.

“The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse” is one of Aesop’s Fables. It is number 352 in the Perry Index and type 112 in Aarne–Thompson’s folk tale index. Like several other elements in Aesop’s fables, ‘town mouse and country mouse’ has become an English idiom.

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QSS Arkadia

In the summer of 1963 I was 14 years old, travelling with my sister (age 12) and my parents from Montréal, Canada to Le Havre, France aboard the QSS Arkadia. Apart from an Irish priest (he may have been an Archbishop for all I know) he and our family were the only ones in First Class. My mother (who was a devout Roman Catholic) spent time drinking with the priest. My father did not drink. We all dined together.

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Funny how things happen

“If I am inclined to suppose that a mouse has come into being by spontaneous generation out of grey rags and dust, I shall do well to examine those rags very clearly to see how a mouse may have hidden in them, how it may have got there and so on. But if I am convinced that a mouse cannot come into being from these things, then this investigation will perhaps be superfluous.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosphical Investigations

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Vision for the future

It isn’t as often that I am consumed by plans for the future as I am currently. Oddly it is the most strategic of those plans which inspires the least consumption. Instead the overriding competition comes from matters of far less significance – or, at least, of far less current import. That got me thinking; whence derive the whys and wherefores of collywobbles?

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Mother’s Day – Sunday, May 8th, 2022

My mother died in October, 2018.  While I cannot point to the precise day of the month, I remember what I was doing at the time.  I was lying by the pool on Longboat Key, Florida.  We had just arrived there from Canada. My partner had (I presume) received an email from my sister – or perhaps it was a telephone call – notifying us of mother’s death.  When he came to pool and bent to my ear to whisper the news, my reply was, “Good!”

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Get a grip!

It is easy to lapse into a melancholic state of mind and in the process lose touch with reality. We have a habit of mystifying things from a distance, colouring them with perhaps unmerited speculation. Yet looking at things frozen in a moment renders an oddly expansive image of the whole which embraces the past and the future in one frame. Reflection is both fanciful and insightful. And at times lachrymose. The important people in one’s life are like the finest strains of doleful music, the softest garmet of silk, the tenderest flush of hues.

“But time is ticking!“

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