It's a mild, wet day in Perth County, and much of the snow in Stratford has already melted away. The whitest thing about this Christmas Day is the blanket of fog muffling the town.

The cats and I are quiet, recovering from a busy pre-Christmas week and anticipating another thrash this evening when dinner kicks off at the BIL's house. My task is a "city ham", complete with glaze, that I must transport without dropping it, knocking it over, or smearing sweetened grease on the upholstery of the car.

Nephew No 2 blew through town on the 23rd, with wife & kids. They dined with me and stayed the night with the BIL before going on to his parents in Windsor. That was the first three-course meal I had cooked since sometime in November.

Tomorrow I will pack up my toothbrush and pop down Highway 401 to Windsor for a couple of days with Edmund's sisters and their families.

The recent upsurge of COVID infections caused the main-line churches to slam their doors this week and return to live-streaming their services. St James's, my parish, had an ambitious program of choral worship planned for Christmas Eve, but all that went up in smoke. Instead, Midnight Mass was a sort of ecumenical mash-up with the priest, two deacons, Wade the tenor to read the epistle and the lesson, Tim the piano-player on keyboards (both piano and organ), and me singing my head off instead of a choir. Oh, and Kyle the verger in the gallery with the camera and the mixer board.

I was tired -- at 2300 hours, I had a right -- and scratchy in the throat, but I charged through nine (count 'em, nine!) obligatory Anglican carols without messing up. Singing through a mask, the biggest problem was keeping my spectacles from fogging up completely in the middle verses. That, and access to my water bottle.

Then I went home to clean out the cats' litter boxes and go to bed.

My neighbours across the street are in quarantine, having come too close to somebody with the bug, and the mood in the neighbourhood is kinda downbeat. We all thought this Christmas would be like the old days, but it so isn't, and people are just tired of sucking it up, cooperating, and being brave. That doesn't mean we stop sucking it up, etc., but we roll our eyes at each other now in the lineup at Sobey's.

Merry Christmas, alla youse Catters out there around the world, and let's have a better year in 2022.