I took a trip to the nearest Big Smoke today to visit Lee Valley Tools, and found a festival of drifting snow on the county roads. Ugly. In town, it was a fine clear afternoon, but the minute I was on a road with billiard-table-flat fields to windward, conditions promptly soured. Such is life in southwestern Ontario. No ditch for me today. Hurrah.

The news from east Europe is unremittingly depressing and so full of speculation that I have stopped reading it. My social media feed is dominated by military indignation from every Cold War veteran of my acquaintance, most of them saying something like “I told you so!” If anything good happens, I’ll find out soon enough. If anything worse happens, ditto. Either way, there’s not much I can do about it.

Capacity limits, social distancing and proof-of-vaccination requirements go away next week in Ontario, but masking stays for now. In hope of better things to come, I have registered and paid for a music festival in August. The glass is half full!