Heading south

Today is November 15, 2014. To my astonishment, we find ourselves on the road in a hotel in Charlotte, North Carolina.  I suppose that that fact alone would not be particularly astonishing, but what is in my mind astonishing is that we are on route to Hilton Head Island for four months. At last I can delight  in the exclamation I am wintering in some southern clime.

Bleak Winter Day

Even unpremeditated consideration of life in mid-January in Canada must inevitably include an allusion to the misery of the weather, the sodden grey clouds, dirty yellow light and blackened urban snow.  I supplemented the trial by visiting my aging father at his “retirement” institution on Sunday morning.  It is of course ridiculous to label the singular feature of his residence as one of retirement.  He is almost 96 years of age and has been retired for over 30 years.  His room (hardly up to the elevated nomination of a “residence”) is in the Alzheimer wing of the hospital.  It is impossible to escape the babbling and occasional wails of the surrounding “residents” (another nicety).  The drably clad nurses and service staff perform their duties with practiced distance from the disheartening surroundings.  It is useless to glamourize the scene.  It’s not a home or a residence; it’s an asylum, a last stop, a safe haven for the frail and failing from the methods of the outside world.

New Year’s Day (2014)

I can’t imagine having spent a more lethargic day, the celebratory first day of the New Year. Compared to many mornings we slept late until something approaching six o’clock.  After our typical matutinal ceremony on the computers and a healthful breakfast of black coffee, fresh fruit, eggs, bacon, English muffin and granola we succumbed to our indolence and smothered ourselves once again under mountains of blankets, sheets and pillows for a most gratifying mid-morning snooze.  When we revived before noon we were freed the nagging obligation to venture out-of-doors by the uninterrupted drizzle. Cheerfully we capitulated to watching New Year’s Day movie specials on the television.  Of course we broke up the proceedings long enough for another round of sustaining nourishment.

New Year’s Eve (2013)

It is late afternoon on New Year’s Eve, also known in other parts of the world as Old Year’s Day, Veille du Jour de l’An or St. Sylvester’s Day, the last day of the year, December 31^st.  I imagine there are a respectable number of people about to begin the celebration of New Year’s Eve.  I am guessing there are men and women preparing their costume for the evening particularly if they’re planning to attend a formal occasion though they may only be donning some (possibly new) comfortable clothing for a more casual rally.  Very likely there are people who are in the frenetic throes of final preparation of food and drink for themselves and guests.  Certain couples will have made plans for a private and perhaps elegant celebration whether on home turf or in a romantic resort.  Perhaps even complete families have something special in mind to mark the occasion.

Doing Nothing

While it would be a sizeable stretch to label me a man of action, if one ignores the James Bond theme I easily qualify as someone who prefers activity to serenity.  Nonetheless there are times when sitting still and doing nothing can be really quite pleasant.  For example, after a long and exhausting bike ride I especially enjoy reclining in the sun on a chaise longue; or, if the weather is cooler, taking a nap.  Reading a book almost anytime is always profitable (though my preference is either at the end of the day in a comfortable chair with a martini or on a beach where I may be moderately distracted by the Ocean and sea grasses).  A steam bath or sauna, particularly if punctuated by a revitalizing swim, is equally agreeable. I won’t object to watching a stimulating movie or attending a theatrical performance.  I have even been persuaded without regret to take a guided tour when visiting a new place.

Tourists

Tourists as a class of people are subject to much disdain. The vilification is popular not only in cartoons (where the sloppy casual appearance of over-weight and brightly dressed tourists are regularly ridiculed). Tourists generally enjoy a poor reputation for public performance.  The real proof of the snootiness is the mere fact that you have probably never entertained a tourist in your home. Tourists inspire a degree of derision which invites aloofness. Even when the shopkeeper or innkeeper makes his or her living from the business, entertainment or accommodation of tourists it is a thinly veiled secret that they disparage the sight of tourists.  Small wonder therefore that as a tourist on foreign soil you are liable to face a predictable lonely existence and there is no amount of expenditure which will garner the same hominess of friendly acquaintance as in the place where you live.  At best a tourist can count on token deferral and polite condescension.

Picture our delight therefore at having spent a thoroughly agreeable afternoon today on Hilton Head Island with two people whom we hardly know, two fellow tourists.  In spite of being thousands of kilometers from home we four enacted an afternoon ceremony worthy of the most refined social foregathering.  Initially it may be tempting to compensate the exuberance of the congregation by dismissing it as a chance encounter of people who hail from the same provenance.  Certainly it was pure coincidence that we first met a year ago on the beach near Coligny Plaza, they walking their handsome French bulldog Max, I recovering still from the loss of my own Frenchie.  But nothing came of that encounter until by pure chance the same collision of people and dog reoccurred exactly one year later!  Well!  I mean to say!  If ever there were messages in the stars!

As a result it was but a small revelation to receive a generous invitation from our new acquaintances to rally with them for a drink at their place in Sea Pines at 1:00 p.m. today, Saturday afternoon.  Our hosts, J and A, are a married couple – at least that is what we presumed; and he runs a sole proprietorship.  Other than that we knew nothing of them and likely they knew even less about us until today.  Yet the short-lived alliance had all the hallmarks of workability and at the very least respectability and promise.  Accordingly it was without indecision that we gleefully accepted our unique invitation and began looking forward to it, wondering from time to time what was to come of it.

This afternoon as we drove into the laneway which led to our hosts’ habitation, we encountered the Laird of the Manor dutifully walking his faithful French bulldog Max.  The sight of them instantly raised our spirits as we are perpetually in need of a dog fix. I parked the car in the drive and was immediately greeted at the door by Her Ladyship, an eye-catching Nordic looking woman.  We all retired into the home and went about a summary tour of the place, exchanging comparative observations about the various rental opportunities on the Island.  Naturally Max monopolized a considerable amount of our time (a predisposition which by the way continued unabated during the subsequent three hours of our gathering).

Routine Paradise

As inclined as one may be to characterize a holiday as “getting away from it all”, it would appear that deep-seated convention trumps novelty. Possibly because I lack innovation (or worse, inspiration) it apparently requires no more than seventy-two hours for me to establish a patent and less than glamorous routine in any environment. The only difference this morning, for example, was that with the benefit of two days’ reiteration the agenda was accelerated.  As usual we busied ourselves early this morning (between 2:30 am – 4:30 am) with our computers.  It is pointless to toss in one’s bed if the mind is revolving.  Better to get up and distract one’s self with industry. Given the holiday nature of these days and not being preoccupied with my law office I find I am spending time on web sites which normally would exhaust me either by their uselessness or their dreariness, things like Facebook and LinkedIn, both of which I unreservedly lump in the same heap as Twitter – vacuous natter.  But my insistence to master the fundamentals of modern technology drives me nonetheless to address it.  I am also consuming a great deal of my time amending profiles on a number of other material web sites since I lately changed a common email address (to correct at long last a stupid spelling mistake made by Bell years ago).  The repercussions of such trivial modification are incredible!  This is especially true now that so many sites are connected to one another and because we have no less than five computing devices with us on this trip alone (four fewer than we have when on home turf if you can believe it).