Pickled fish is a food group. I’ll eat pickled herring any old way I can get it, though my favourite form is the rollmop: a herring fillet wrapped around a hunk of kosher dill pickle. Fortunately, Ottawa has substantial Jewish, Polish, Baltic, and Dutch communities, so every supermarket stocks it.

Tosh showed up this morning at ten past seven in an ancient one-ton van that he stuffed end to end, roof to floor, with flattened cardboard, bundled paper, and wood offcuts. Yet another stack of flattened boxes remains in the garage, plus the leftover hardwood, so he promised to return tomorrow for Round Two. I’ll expect him when I see him.

The burglar alarm technician just left, and the house is once again wired up against bad guys. The zebra blinds for the bedrooms and the enormous south-facing back window will be installed tomorrow afternoon. And the rest of the bookcases from Amazon have been shipped, so I should expect them early next week. That means hieing myself out to IKEA for several more shelving braces, as the three that arrived on Tuesday have an unnerving sideways wobble. But all of this activity means that I may well get those books unpacked before Hallowe’en.