When suddenly there is good news, when in an instant the erstwhile anxiety which complicated one’s thoughts and contaminated one’s outlook evaporates, when in a flash the view of the world changes from obscure to certain, that’s how things work. Oh, yes, there are of course other troubles to distress, other worries to deter, to discolour the Rembrandt image of the shoreline trees reflected in the placid river mirror. There are always worries to prevent one from languidly listening to the squawking geese in the harvested field below the Hunter’s Moon. There will forever be provocations. That too is how things work. But the palliative interruption is welcome. It is relief from the burden of life’s unremitting and irritating trials. Like a detour down a quiet country road.

We rallied at Equator coffee this afternoon to catch up and to celebrate his 81st birthday. Two old fogeys, two old lawyers.  More significantly, two inveterate country lawyers. We both go back fifty years. I am reminded of the quip that the only thing worse than a lawyer at a party is two of them!  I agree.  More especially two ancient country lawyers. Dare I say curmudgeonly? We were wise to have confined our reunion to an obtrusive though inviolable corner of the café where our muttering was drowned by the equally abstract popular music emitting from indistinguishable overhead speakers.

Pat arrived in Almonte about three years after I landed here in 1976. Oddly I never had a great deal of business with his firm; but I always felt attached to him as a fellow trespasser, touching as we both did upon the sacrament of valley history connoted by R. A. Jamieson QC, Messrs. Galligan & Sheffield and C. J. Newton QC.  Pat’s late wife Barbara was always one of my favourite people. There have been so many tragic and worrisome events in his life that I hesitate to align myself with him except by virtue of our professional association. He is an exceedingly intelligent man.  I know too that he has an interest in theatre, in acting … a vehicle of self-expression to which I am certain he contributed profoundly.

Then we parted. I retreated to my narrow world and simple life of unrepentant routine. Submerging back into custom and predictability. There is enough on my horizon amounting to indeterminate. Oh, I won’t imagine I can escape the haze of the future; nor have I any objective to do so.  But for the moment, within the sphere of my control, the structure and precision of what I know for certain, I am comfortable to retire. That too is how things work.