Southwestern Ontario is easing gently into winter, after a really nasty Remembrance Day. The sky is blue today and most of the snow has melted again. The squirrels are out of bed and fossicking around in the snow, looking for my expensive tulip bulbs, I bet.

But it's plenty cold once the sun goes down.

Tonight the Stratford Concert Choir sings Handel's "Messiah" in a mid-Victorian church that happens to be the largest indoor space in town that is not the Festival Theatre or a hockey arena. The draft from the transept door, which blasts across the orchestra and the front rows of the choir, would freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Most members of the Soprano and Alto sections augment their performance outfits (long black gown, strand of pearls) with sweaters and skiing underwear, but the memo seems not to have reached the orchestra. Last night at the dress rehearsal, the fourth desk violin and viola were obviously shuddering. The men, of course, do just fine in their dinner jackets. Damn them.