For someone such as I who is so shamelessly irreligious it is a pitiful confession when I say that lately things have gone so remarkably well that I suspiciously wonder when the tide will turn! This conjecture that misfortune automatically follows beneficence is about as close as my mystical confrères get to the subject of spirituality. I haven’t yet undertaken the nervous habit of crossing my fingers or looking into the sky for descending saucers. I shall accordingly adopt the high road and carry on, not as though this is all perfectly natural and to be expected (which I don’t for minute think it is) but unelaborately as though the accomplishment is both gladdening and memorable (which it unquestionably is).

A number of issues percolated to the fore today. It began inauspiciously with a visit to the Almonte General Hospital or more exactly the Ottawa Valley Health Team, a distinction which for me is irrelevant because both capture the sole matter of medical clarity.  The cheerful outcome I hadn’t anticipated upon this afternoon’s convention (in addition to dismissing the medical urgency) was the discovery that the attending nurse was the daughter of a former client, married to the youngest son of a former neighbour. I should have known she was spun from local cloth when, in response to my enquiry where she lived, she said Adelaide Court.  This curiously caused me to squint questioningly. It was with an indisputable element of arrogance that I acknowledged I was unfamiliar with the exact street. I suggested it must be in one of the “new” neighbourhoods. The nurse permitted me to sink into this misconception, then gleefully asked, “Have you heard of Pecker Hill?” to which I replied with some resistance, “Yes, what is less colourfully known as ‘Irish Town’ I believe”.  She confirmed my response. I immediately recognized the area of town to which she referred.  We then together conjoined the additional fact that I knew her uncle and her paternal grandparents. This conviviality was preceded by my disclosure that her father and his brother had engaged me as counsel at the outset of my career some 45 years ago.  Importantly for me that occasion of employment was my introduction to an extraordinarily esoteric legal term appropriate to a shareholders’ agreement inventively called a “Shot Gun Clause” which I can assure you is about as threatening as it sounds if you’re on either end of the licit device because as you might suspect every clause of a corporate contract of this nature is reciprocal. Its activity therefore exacts precision and planning.  My clients had done both.  It was illustrative of the success of their careers that ensued.

The day today was blissfully bright and sunny.  I thankfully punctuated the fine weather by bicycling about the neighbourhood. Subsequently I sat in the garden patio in the warming sunshine.  Need I add more!