I spent some time living with my good friend John Lindsay, in a tiny little apartment.  I got the cold, dank room in the basement, and he got the slightly warmer but still dank room upstairs.  That was really all the place was – two rooms.  As it was his place and I was imposing, I was only too glad to take the frigid basement.  The three or four months that I lived there were winter months, and getting up to go to work was a rather arduous prospect.

     The big problem, however, was that there was only one bathroom in the whole place.  And it was actually in John’s room.  Which meant that when I got up early (I awoke at about 3:00 in those days to come in to work) I would wake him up if I snuck past him to pee.  And I always have to pee when I wake up.  So first thing, every morning, I would have no choice but to slip out the front door and pee off the porch.  Few of our Flora Street neighbours were awake at that time to be offended, but I did occasionally attract the attention of a passing prostitute.

     At any rate – the point of my story here is that after a while I became very good at writing in the snow.  The snow in the front yard became a white-board of sorts.  I could pass on a message to John “your mom called” or some such thing, and he would get that message on his way to work several hours later.  Depending on how much I had to drink the night before, I could perhaps write something more extensive and deep “i sing of Olaf glad and big, whose warmest heart recoiled at war”, or some such thing.

     I mention this because it came to my attention recently that, having been out of practice ever since I moved from John’s place to Kanata, my skills have eroded.  Much like the snow on the Flora Street front lawn.  I tried, just a few weeks ago, to write something erudite in my backyard.  It was John’s birthday, and I was thinking of him, and wanted to pay tribute in the snow, you see.  I tried to write a simple message “Happy Birthday John”.  It looked like OOsuiOOsuiO.  Nobody else in my family could even read it!

     It was a bit of a sad day for me.  I think my New Years resolution this year will be to practice, practice practice until I regain those skills I once had.  Maybe I’ll take up the violin again too.  Let this be a warning – if you don’t use your skills, you could lose them!  Let it also be a bonus code – “peepenmanship” will get you some points.