I’m with your mother, Stilly. When the thermometer crawls above, say, 27°C, I hunker down and avoid the great outdoors until things get sensible again.

The house looks pleasantly rational, with all stuff corralled in appropriate places and nothing in the gangways. Dust and cat hair levels are approaching unsociable, but I’m not expecting company so I’m not too bothered.

I signed up and paid for a week of music camp in the first week of August. It’s in Goderich, 80 km up Highway 8, so it will be a fair stretch to drive to and from each day, but I’d rather commute and sleep in my own bed than spend the week in a crappy motel — Goderich lodgings are typically booked years in advance for this event. But I need to play tunes, and learn a new song or two, and meet new people, so I’ll be on the road each day.

My other major adventure for this year will be at the end of September, when I will pack up the car and head south to the FSGW Getaway on the Maryland shore for the first time since before the pandemic. I’ll be gone about a week, maybe 10 days, as my SIL in Windsor wants a visit as well, and I want to avoid interstate highways as much as I can. Road-tripping on my own again after so many years — it’s a bit daunting, but the all-day lunge across Ontario to Ottawa is almost routine now, so I know I can do it.

Why not fly? Because sleeping bag, mandolin, guitar and special pillow, that’s why. (You know you’re old when a special pillow becomes a life essential.) And because I loathe modern air travel, with its constant security theatre and atmosphere of suspicion. It’s stressful in a way that I can hardly tolerate any more, far worse than hours and hours of road, keeping the car between the ditches and not getting lost.