Undeniably it soothes the languid persuasion of sustained contemplation and meditation that today is Sunday, a day traditionally devoted to what might more aptly be called the private adherences of the week, including for example select (perhaps sacerdotal) music and literature (such as Jane Austen). I am foremost engaged in the opening act of breakfast, a superior event which to me is as common and repetitive as matins and vespers once were. Curiously my selection of breakfast and Sunday morning domesticity has altered over time (but only the nature not the substance). The paramount absorption of my immediate environment – an immersion of both topical and temporal singularity – is the view upriver across the meadow.

I prefer to interpret the almost imperceptible modification as nothing more narrative than the fleeting passage of time, the serendipitous positioning of oneself from an adventitious outlook, recovering one’s bearings from youthfulness to venerability. The metaphor of this geographic insertion is too coincidental to gainsay. Over a period from 1976 to 2023 (47 years) I have vaulted myself from one side of the river to the other and back again whence it all began but with similar cutting exuberance and novelty.

One wonders for how long the seemingly changeless circumstances will be preserved? Will it possibly be that one side of the river or the other is a distinction without a difference? In the distance two canoeists paddle in their traditional red, narrow keelless boat with pointed ends, disappearing off the edge of the page prescribed by my casual view.

My current romantic situation is far different from what it was 47 years ago. Likely that particular character – itself now in its 27th year (since 1996) – will remain forever singular and special. Meanwhile, here we remain, happily seculded on one side of the river, looking upriver in the direction to which we are adjusted by our apartment on the second floor.