We were late getting going this morning, a bright and clear, fresh day with a predicted high of 72°F reminiscent of Hilton Head Island. I couldn’t convince myself to make my bed (that youthful legacy of the Protestant Work Ethic). So instead, wavering on the edge I slumped back onto the bed, burying beneath the duvet to avoid the breeze of the overhead fan and to cover my impudence. It was after eleven o’clock before I stumbled into the shower and did what I could to improve my plummeting public appearance.

Apparently my matutinal complacency was energized by the recent cool air and grey skies. There will no doubt be occasion to recover. Yet this morning I felt uncommonly vagrant, unsettled in my routine. Such is the secondary evolution of the weather. Like the seasons it transmutes one’s former nature and spirituality to a capricious domain. Apart from the construction of my breakfast of sliced green apple et al., I prolonged my wayward emotion by applying myself instead to the government of Pages. Overnight I had, during repeated waking assaults of neuropathy, warmed myself to the assembly of a photo album which patently exceeds the presentation afforded by my own web site or any other format I have hitherto used (including what I have yet to discover on MacBook Pro under Photos).

My sternness of character enabled me to create after hours of hit-and-miss industry a passable photo album. In the process of doing so I was interrupted and derailed by His Lordship to address the phenomenon of “Easily guessed passwords”, what he severely hinted was an impending security issue on a number of web sites.  Upon investigation we determined (once again with arduous schooling) that there are few websites about which to concern oneself. The intelligence afforded by most web sites (at least those we use) is instead equivalent to knowing the amount of another’s latest gasoline purchase; that is, scintillating but meaningless. The other web sites of predominant significance were seemingly well preserved. By the time these two enterprises (the photo album and the passwords) were retired it was almost two-thirty in the afternoon. My daily ritual was completely disrupted! The only absolution lay in a tricycle ride (however curtailed it may be) and perhaps a swim in the pool.

Though the pool was pleasingly quiet upon arrival it was a short-lived isolation.  I did at least secure a comfortable pew in direct line with the brilliant but descending sun before the commotion began. A troupe of what I subsequently concluded to be four parents and twice as many teenage (or slightly older) children arrived amid a tumult, complete with a cooler, glass beer bottles and what were either nefarious combustibles or vaping instruments (which at least one of the female parents persisted to puff while in the pool and hanging onto the edge). Picture my discomfort!

There is no denying that we have been spoiled in the previous two months here when frequently we had the pool to ourselves day after day.  I quietened my annoyance by reminding myself that we were now in the middle of an annual but relatively brief holiday affair. Even when the New Year has passed, and the crowds will of course increase, it is more assured that the newcomers will be old fogeys with less inclination for whatever it is that stimulates young transients.

In any event I confess that I have again remorselessly lapsed into unrestrained curmudgeonly angst. The visitors today thankfully hadn’t the need for country and western music to enliven themselves. There!  I’ll stop now.