Santa

It’s late November and already the days are infused with the pervasive exhilaration of “the Season”. It is impossible to take no notice of the swell of influence. It is standard commercial activity to play Christmas carols in shopping centres. It is no accident that this switch in white sound definitively took place precisely upon the expiry of the American Thanksgiving Day holiday. XM radio has an entire channel dedicated to Christmas carols (and oddly that station has for some reason temporarily replaced its “Forties on Four”, a collection of American standards from the 1940s). Last evening I received an invitation to a Hanukkah party, but it was weeks ago that I received two other invitations to similar Christmas house parties. It is nothing to encounter people talking about holidays and family gatherings. My mother has been wringing her hands for weeks about what she will get her granddaughters for Christmas presents (aside that is from the regular cheque which she pointedly mentioned was not indexed). Normal business commitments are being pushed aside until the expiry of the season’s social affairs. In short our mundane daily preoccupations are now overshadowed by this commercial/religious/family flashpoint.

Sunday Morning Indolence

Unusually the temperature is expected to reach a high of 11˚C today which at this time of year gives the effect of distortion and lack of resolution. If one were to ignore this supernatural feature of the day, it otherwise offers a further and diminishing opportunity to ride one’s bicycle which for me is the last form of physical exercise (apart from swimming) I am able to undertake painlessly. On balance such manifestly inconsequential considerations as the weather and bicycling are welcome contemplations on a Sunday morning.

Swimming Upstream

Yesterday began robustly enough in the fresh morning air with a sunny bike ride along a nearby country road. This ebullience was however to be a short-lived element of the day.

After our customary ablutions we trekked into the City on a mission to find a tailor to fix the tattered buttonholes of an old handmade sweater of mine. While parked outside the mall, and while I was fussing over my new iPhone 4S, a car pulled up directly beside mine. This instantly bothered me because I deliberately park as far away from other cars as possible; and there were ample vacant parking spots all around me. It further incensed me that this fellow felt the need to park immediately adjacent my car as my driver’s side door was open wide while I pored over the iPhone. The elderly fellow (who I could tell instantly was a nosy Parker) then unloaded himself from his vehicle and proceeded to plant himself like an inspecting policeman directly in front of my car where he pronounced “Nice car!” It was a gratuitous comment as far as I was concerned. His fat wife then likewise removed herself from their car. Apparently imaging that I had not heard her husband’s observation, she repeated it, adding that the car was a nice colour. When I failed to respond to either of them, although they knew I was aware of their presence because I glanced askance at them, the unattractive woman retreated and transformed their former compliments into something less flattering by muttering that “the car is nice but the driver is not Mr. Personality” or something to that effect.

Frugality

Frugality I have lately discovered is not only about penny-pinching, prudence and economy. Tragically it’s also about abstinence and self-denial. That isn’t exactly what I had bargained for months ago when I first began thinking about thrift and planning to reverse years of unrestrained profligacy. Adding this element of asceticism to the remedial project goes well beyond mere moderation in my opinion; in fact it transforms the endeavour from what I imagined to be saccharin accounting to something entirely different and personal, and not in a good way.

Down to Earth

In September the country fall fairs are ubiquitous; and while the choice is extensive I was however especially intrigued by the recent newspaper advertisements for the Middleville Fair. I have often passed through Middleville en route to Lanark and in so doing I have noticed the eye-catching agricultural grounds whose very old buildings bear the remnants of the signs of fairs gone by. Additionally Middleville is on pleasingly high ground and charmingly small enough to provide what I expected would be a more intimate experience than some of the larger fairs held closer to the limits of the City of Ottawa. As it turned out an added and unpredictable feature of this year’s fair in Middleville was the superlative weather on Saturday. The skies were crystal clear, light blue, blazing sunshine yet it was cool enough to invite the sporting of a wool sweater from one’s erstwhile secreted wardrobe.

Sunny Saturday

The exceedingly pleasant Saturday was swiftly winding down. The Howard Miller kitchen wall clock ticked rhythmically and undeterred towards six. The busy Saturday, replete as it had been, was lamentably coming to its closing stages. After their bicycle ride early this morning, after their breakfast at the golf club, and after having gathered and unloaded their groceries (by which time they had all but exhausted the first half of the day), B and D had both been out for lunch, separate congregations, D with B’s sister (L) and daughter (J) and her girl-friend (A); B with another lawyer (K) who was beating the bushes for his urban litigation practice (estate contests and Plaintiff’s counsel in personal injury suits). By all accounts, when B and D rallied at home by happenstance at almost the same time after lunch, their respective social and business engagements had gone well. For D’s part, after their most satisfactory lunch at the new Crêperie, L and the girls had visited the house and admired the garden, the patio and the recent improvements to the garage and brick lamp posts. L, who had more than once mentioned the possibility of selling their expensive family home nearby the Canal in the City, clearly had an eye on the less expensive and more expansive rural housing market. For his part, B and his ward (the younger City lawyer) had shared hard facts about the murky past and about current business practices, two lawyers dryly discussing life as seen from the Bar. They had wandered up and down the Riverwalk from the old Town Hall to the Victoria Woollen Mill where they had dined by the waterfall (though neither of them had paid much attention to what was beyond the extent of the white linen covering their table). Theirs was a soulful expatiation, a commiseration between an older and a younger lawyer. B had felt the need to share the lessons of life which he had learned. K regretted the untimely death of his father at age 59.

The Millstone News

August 1, 2011

The Toy Box has for several years been my literary platform. I suspect however that I shall now end the regular use of this blog. At the recent invitation of the editorial board of the new e-newspaper in Mississippi Mills, I have happily embraced the opportunity to sustain a column in the paper ("By the Way"). If you would like to examine the new platform, here is the web site address:

http://www.millstonenews.com/