The warmest of shouts out to the people of Bahá today, et bon courage, as they enter their period of fasting. (And give yourself an extra helping of sausage tomorrow morning if you got the pun in the title, be you believer or not.) I’d write more about this fasting business, but I’ve been up since six and it’s a SNOW DAY IN OTTAWA but I drove Sam to school and I’m going back to bed! Yippee!!

Today’s cosy indulgence will be sponsored by the cracking open of a novel, The Go-Between by the (alas, no longer scribbling with us¹) English writer L.P. Hartley. It’s the one with that pregnant first line, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there…” No matter how well it begins, there will likely be sleep. There has already been guitar, and there may be more. There will certainly be shovelling. (Yes, my sweet, and dishes and laundry.) And today’s forecast is that the sweet and overwhelming inspiration to write will strike me with both fists at exactly 1:00 pm this afternoon.

¹ Anyone out there get this particular literary allusion? Think snow falling “like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards”. (And if you can’t wait for next Christmas – or you need to know the answer NOW – please click here for my favourite re-creation of childhood. It’s worth five minutes. Heck. Six.)