I just got off the phone with Niece No 2, who will gladly accept a large basketful of queen-sized bedlinen: two sets of sheets, two quilts, and a handsome green 100%-wool blanket that looks like Hudson's Bay but isn't. (The quilts and the blanket came from Edmund's mother, so I'm just ploughing them back into the family.) The Niece declined the goose-down duvet that is also looking for a new home, but it really should go back to Ottawa. Winter in these parts just doesn't get that cold.

Great-nephew No 3 (third son of Niece No 2) graduates from Fanshawe College this week, so I have two road trips on my agenda: to Chatham for the family whoop-up tomorrow, and to London (the one down the road) for the convocation on Thursday. Suddenly I'm a social butterfly.

Watson the cat is less than delighted with my new bed, which is too narrow for him to sprawl beside me with his head stuffed into my armpit. That doesn't keep him from logging a solid day's snoozing on it, however; the new quilt will soon be just as clogged with cat hair as every other bed-cover I possess.