There were 28.9% fewer real estate listings in January than in the same month last year. And there were a whopping 71.7% fewer than in January 2020, which is really quite remarkable. It’s as if a stream has been dammed. Buyers and agents descend on any decent listing like vultures…

Another in a series touching on some of my favourite things. This one is focused on the south coast of England - a rocky beach, and clouds piling up just over the horizon.

A few choice words on the thoughtlessness required to block access to the needle drop box behind the Integrated Care Hub. Because aren’t times tough enough?

It’s all-too-popular these days to approve showings of thirty minutes, rather than the traditional hour. And I get that no one wants strangers in their house fogging up the the windows for any longer than necessary. But that’s not the reason for this move, and I don’t like it.

I look for signs that it’s getting better out there, pandemic-wise. And if I can’t find those, I’ll lean on predictions from people I respect. That’s what’s happening here.

He grew up in Leeds. This was in the ‘70s, when the world revolved around Billy Bremner and then, when Billy went off to Hull, Gang of Four. In ’80 he moved to Mississauga, lived not far out of the shade of the Square One Shopping Centre …

Another in a series of sketches in which I try to imagine what others might be thinking and going through. A reflection, I suppose, on circumstances and good or ill fortune

“By the end, it felt that the song had been implanted more or less permanently in my head. It felt sculptural somehow, as if I could run my hands over it, and it felt organic too, as if its meaning might continue to grow.”

I find those dividers that have been installed on so may of our park benches so that people can’t sleep on them to be a really hostile, oppressive sort of urban architecture. A park in Montreal shows there is another way of going about things.

An imagined history, a snippet of conversation anyway, from inside a house gone to seed.

I walk often down to Belle Island. A community of unhoused neighbours has appeared among the trees. The inhabitants either couldn’t give a damn what I think or they eye me warily. Both strike me as reasonable reactions to my presence. I can only imagine what they say to each other.

I was worried, I’ll admit it. I didn’t like albums two and three nearly as much as I wanted to. But the debut was something else and so I hoped for a return to form, a fulfillment of all that promise.

Real estate has changed a lot the last year and a half. Most of those adaptations are positive, but I can always find fault, you know I can.

There’s not a lot of balance when it’s really busy. One morning this week I attempted to make a little sense of things, or at least record a few instants that otherwise would have been lost to the wind.

I don’t like the idea of showing property to unvaccinated buyers. It’s not complicated for me. If you haven’t had your shot, you should shop for your next place online.

This evening, in the shouty aftermath of a storm that never really showed, I walked fields of long grass throwing themselves about dramatically just off Montreal Street, where the municipal golf course used to be. A short walk along the K & P Trail from Doug Fluhrer Park, it is perhaps the city’s best-kept secret.

If you find this, I want you to know that we were fine right up until the moment we weren’t fine at all. We didn’t suffer much. We’d gone to pick strawberries, lured off the main road by a pick-your-own sign and an arrow aimed down the green lane…

The latest in a series in which I think about why I like the things I do. This time it’s a little painting that I look at most days.

It’s damn busy out there. It’s hard to find the time to read a book, much less write one. My daughter turned thirteen yesterday and I can’t fathom how that’s possible. The moments blur together, like a film ripped at triple speed through a smoking projector.

There is a new sort of music coming out of England these days - an often text-based, impressionistic or confessional sort of rock. Dry Cleaning are part of that movement.