It hasn’t been often this past season that we’ve had a cloudy day or stormy weather. Today is a rare exception. I have to say it is a welcome interlude from what otherwise has been an unabated compulsion to expose my wasting carcass (as far as cosmetically allowable) to the burnishing rays of the sun from within the cloudless azure sky.

“Stormy Weather” is a 1933 song written by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler. Ethel Waters first sang it at The Cotton Club night club in Harlem in 1933 and recorded it that year, and in the same year it was sung in London by Elisabeth Welch and recorded by Frances Langford. The song has since been performed by artists as diverse as Frank Sinatra, Etta James, Dinah Washington, Clodagh Rodgers, and Reigning Sound and most famously by Lena Horne and Billie Holiday.

The stormy weather appears to have overtaken the whole of Buttonwood Bay and enervated its composition.  Earlier this afternoon (after a late awakening and a commensurately delayed breakfast of my usual improving ingredients) I wheeled my trusty Sun tricycle around Buttonwood Bay (an Outdoor Cycle which according to my Fitness App was precisely 4.39 Km). Apart from the indissoluble noise of the leaf blowers and the torches of the roof workers, there was an overall absence of activity, neither walkers (athletic or canine) nor cyclists. Humanity here has responded to the stormy weather like fading flowers to the diminished rays. Occasionally I felt a drop or two of rain though as yet there has been no material precipitation.

Meanwhile back at the townhouse I content myself with a cup of strong black coffee and the assuaging elasticity of Handel or Mozart (perhaps even the remarkable Roberto Cacciapaglia or in a moment of capitulation Stanley Black’s Hollywood Love Themes). Nor has my devotion today been entirely visceral.  In response to my recent undercurrent to make ready for departure at the end of April, I removed two pairs of sunglasses from the drawing room sideboard where they have rested undisturbed for months past to the console of the automobile from which they will in turn be removed upon our return. It is a small application of readiness but nonetheless illustrative of what remains; viz., very little. Thankfully this year we succeeded to transport from Canada far less than we normally haul back and forth often untouched.  Apart from my Tilley raffia hat I have but two suitcases and a shopping bag in the closet. Once they are filled with the little hanging in the closet and stored in the top drawer of my bedroom night table, the act of leave-taking shall be complete. How quickly things will vanish!

Until then however I intend to capture whatever streams of vitality currently abound. I feel at the moment as though I were awaiting the eruption of a comet. Having the subduing tranquillity of a day out of the sun, lingering at table with coffee and music, is akin to a soldier awaiting the call to battle. A reflective day without the stimulation of others invokes moderate estrangement and a degree of indifferent isolation. Soon too those who now surround us will melt away.

A wistful glance outside along the marine inlet where the boats are moored. The sky is predominantly grey. Clusters of cumulonimbus clouds. The wind has picked up. An occasional dart of brilliant sunlight breaks through the heavens. The illumination is fleeting. We’re predicted to be in for a week or more of windy conditions.