Rainy Days at the Cottage
by Paul Grissom

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If you’re a Cottager you’ll understand. Seasoned cottagers will declare, “There’s no such thing as a bad day at the cottage”. Don’t believe them. I’ve had plenty of cold, rainy, wind-spitting days when sky and water were a spirit crushing grey and there was nothing to do but light a fire, lay on the couch with a full glass beside me and scribble random thoughts in my notebook. Annie would read, the cat and I would fall asleep. The result is this book: 38 years of thoughts about storms, maintenance, fishing, birds, bugs, various local characters, my love-hate relationship with cottage country labour… These are our stories, but I’ll bet everyone who has (or wishes they had) a Vintage cottage like Rebel’s Isle will find we have a lot in common. (If you plan to get your own Vintage cottage some day this could be instructive, but beware, I might talk you out of it).

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It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. Author, Paul Grissom is a retired advertising creative who just won’t stop. He loves to fish, paddle his kayak, paint, build the odd piece of rustic furniture in his cottage workshop, and he claims to be a master of the Weber kettle grill. An old folk singer, he performs, sometimes to applause, at open mic sessions near his home in Port Hope, Ontario. This book is a collection of journal entries he’s kept over 36 years which, taken together tell the story of a young couple who fell in love with an old shack on an island in a cottage country lake; and how they learned (often the hard way) how to be cottagers. The people he writes about are real, the stories only somewhat fictionalized (never let the facts get in the way of a good story) and while you’ll get a laugh from some of his characters, in the end the joke is usually on Paul.

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Paul Grissom