I am just a Billy Bee, a wretched silly me, I walk with pain and with a stick that all the world can see.
I am just a Billy Bee, I haven’t any care, I just bought a Cadillac and know what I like to wear.
I am just a Billy Bee, nearing the end of life, but haven’t any worry as the doom is not yet rife.
The distress of others is not uncommonly overlooked. The matter was especially poignant for me today as I returned from a contrastingly buoyant meeting in Arnprior earlier this morning. Tricycling nonchalantly about the neighbourhood, admiring the lovely gardens and exhibition of general exuberance and grandeur, my smugness dissolved upon seeing a poorly clad middle-aged woman struggling up the hill from the river with what appeared to be a plastic bag loaded with empty bottles. Upon subsequent consideration and reflection, I have deduced that she may have been rummaging through the waste bin along the river.
I have a lot of habits. To the point almost of qualifying as obsessive. My routine daily behaviour though tolerable is predictable. It always has been so even though the sinews of convention have altered over the decades as I progressed from childhood to adolescence to working then retirement. Each period of my life had its obvious exigencies and repetitions. The closest I come to being different (that is, estranged from my normalcy) is when occasionally I research the library of Apple Music (to which we have a gratifying monthly subscription). It speaks to the difficulty surrounding the dare to be different that even though we have an immense collection of music from which to choose – and to do so fleetingly if so desired – I inevitably stick to what I am accustomed after years of evolution, training and social influence and prejudice.
It is with immoderate hesitation that I alight upon the topic of automobile driving; specifically, the conduct of the passenger vehicle on public roads. This is not because I do not adore driving. I categorically do. What however provokes this apparently unbridled diversion from what is normally the acme of my personal sustainability is the recognition that I may by doing so be cultivating unwittingly a social alarm. Allow me to explain.
It is no admission that scenery matters. Everyone talks about the importance of having a view, whether from the cottage down to the lake, from the penthouse over the city, from a hotel room to the sea or overlooking the pool. It is frequently an ephemeral magic parodied by E. M. Forster in Room with a View. Though the theme of the novel is understandably and regularly touted as the restrictive and repressed culture of Edwardian England, it was always for me rather an assessment of the dynamic of the view. Though my interpretation is less demonstrable than a young woman’s developing love for a free-spirited young man, it is not entirely void of its own romanticism.
Have you ever reached a point in your life when you stop to ask, “What now?” It’s a curious question because normally the issue doesn’t arise. I mean, for the most part, life is a matter of doing this or that, getting something, doing something, going somewhere. But seldom are you left just sitting with absolutely nothing in mind, remorsefully asking “What now?”
The nescient mind is both gullible and artless. It is a bad combination for those who are adventurous, though pliable for those who are treacherous. The unsettling distinction however is that more often than not it is each side of the reputed peril which similarly witnesses the other. In the end there is a lingering question concerning who, us or them, is misinformed and thus driven to a faulty conclusion?
Photograph: Doreen and Garnie Ziebarth, pictured on their wedding day in 1963, will be honoured as Pakenham pioneers Friday, Jan. 25, 2019 during a special Pakenham Frost Festival ceremony at the Stewart Community Centre.
I interrupted my routine tricycle ride this brilliantly sunny morning to play the piano at Fairview Manor. It is frankly a depuration for me. From the several kind comments I heard from others (primarily nursing staff), the impromptu performance was welcome. The staging however reminds me that my talent is painfully limited though well intended. Afterwards I chatted with a senior administrative assistant, Cindy, whom I have never met before. She is a local girl from the Pakenham area, a member of the well known Ziebarth clan (and her mother was a Symington, a family name of equal renown). I explained to her that having been a lawyer in the area since 1976 I was familiar with the names. It was the start of an enormously entertaining confab for the next half hour or more. We began by mentioning Duncan Abbott (former acclaimed Pakenham lawyer) and his wife Evelyn Wheeler (who coincidentally was our lawyer upon my retirement).
Reading Country Life this morning while lounging after breakfast I remarked openly (as I have frequently pondered privately) that the magazine is an unending temptation to buy and to spend. The two are naturally aligned but one precedes the other of course. It matters not however (at least not to the reader) whether one is unable to accomplish the peril; though certainly it likely does matter to the estate agents, architects, builders, goldsmiths, auctioneers, museums, art gallery concierges, furniture retailers and tradesmen who undertake the risk of advertizing themselves or their wares in the magazine. The vulgar retail underlay is redeemingly besotted with fascinating chronicled accounts, embellishing manor photographs and uplifting (though frequently dangerously historical) accounts of fishing, hunting, guffawing and guzzling, recipes, book reviews, travel logs, automobiles, Luxury Notebooks (pens, bicycles and nosegays), independent boarding and day schools, interior decorating, rug cleaning and repair, decorative arts, a young woman of note (curiously a feature never recorded in the Table of Contents though regularly published), riddles, crosswords and puzzles, cartoon, antiquities, insurance and finally classified advertising of it all.
There are few if any episodes which could possibly surpass this evening’s extempore dinner with my erstwhile physician at his country seat in the Village of Ashton. We were unexpectedly hailed prior to noon today after returning home from a summary medical attendance and grocery shopping. The invitation was for a late afternoon swim then dinner on the patio before the mosquitoes overtook.