My word for the fiery things on my gas-fired kitchen range (or cooker, if you’re Brit) is « hob ». The coils on an electric range are « burners ».

This week I went back to the Y for pool class, which worked out so well I clean forgot that today was Needle Day and I had to go to Kitchener to be shot. The Y has a booking website now, and twice as many classes as there were before the pandemic began because now the pool can accommodate only 10 people. The locker room is far more tolerable with only about a dozen women in it, and the pool itself is still a witch’s brew of chemicals but at least now it’s a comparatively clean witch’s brew of chemicals.

I have spent rather a lot of time this week on the phone talking about house repairs and in Zoom meetings about the future of the choir. So far I have seen neither hide nor hair of Tony the carpenter, and the choir probably won’t survive another winter without genuine live-and-in-person rehearsals and performances.

But just when we thought things were looking up, variant COVID began surging in Ontario cities, especially greater Toronto. Consequently, the Diocese of Huron cancelled real-life Easter services yesterday (no Anglican super-spreader events allowed), and today the provincial government announced that another general lockdown will begin at midnight on Friday.

Now I’m wondering when I’ll ever get another haircut.