New albums last week from favourites Shame and Sleaford Mods had me casting a gaze backwards to simpler times, sorta.

True Story. My kitchen for the longest time was behind that window. I stood back there I don’t know how many hours doing the dishes or just leaned against the old farmhouse sink contemplating the leaded glass, the sorry state of my forearms. Corned beef we had if it was a good week, and a murderous slaw heavy on beets we’d planted where the tannery lands fought it out with the river.

I’m a sucker for top ten lists. And this year it was music I leaned on more than books. Once the three-month shutdown was over, Cheri and I ran most of the rest of the year, and it was these records I played as I drove the hollowed-out streets.

For buyers, multiple offers are the worst, most stressful part of real estate these days. Mere mention of them causes good people to break out in a cold sweat. And I get why.

They're putting in new streets all over. And the act of naming them feels like an afterthought.

We admire very much the work of local sketch artist John Wright. He’s agreed that perhaps we can complement each other’s work. Here are all the details.

Another in a series of vaguely plausible narratives informed mostly by the things we see and hear, and imagine, in this crazy business.

Les bought the house because the ginkgo tree across Montreal Street just about broke his heart. The way it swung violently from lime green to lemon yellow every October.

I was up early listening to the new Metz album and reading far too many headlines. It’s a mess out there and this is a small part of my reaction to that new music and bad news.

A supergroup of sorts, Muzz have got me through a lot this year. Maybe they can help you too.

It’s been all multiple offers all of the time, in recent years. The industry in Kingston has changed dramatically. Given that competition is so ubiquitous now, shouldn’t we give some thought to whether everyone is getting a fair shake?

September is going to bring a whole new set of worries to an already exhausted population. How on earth will we cope?

Here’s what’s bugging us right now, practices we think just aren’t smart, or fair.

Open houses are okay again, says the Ontario government . We think they’re making a mistake.

The reorganization of lower Princess St is well-intended, and some form of it may well be necessary for our public health and the economic well-being of the city’s commercial core, but what’s there now is a disaster.

One blazing hot day I came upon a beast, a slab of black bear big as a garden shed, in a clearing of gorse and sand I don’t know where, like something out of nightmare or myth…

Everyone has a take on the news, a position. I just didn’t expect (and why, I’m not sure) for The Globe’s to be in such stark opposition to the plain facts.

The third in a series of microfictions in which I try to give an alternative life , a new story, to something lost or abandoned in the Inner Harbour neighbourhood. It’s found art, sort of. And this one has ghosts in it.

The world seems to change almost hourly. Things are fluid, as they say. Yesterday I listened to Doug Ford's announcement that stores in Ontario can re-open next Tuesday. I was sitting on my front step looking out at the empty street, wondering if it might rain, and I’ve got to say that right then it seemed a mighty dramatic step. To be honest, I'm still not quite sure how I feel about it. But it does mean, I’m positive, that the real estate world will become instantly much more active.

I don’t know how this recliner love seat got down beside the K & P trail. Just dumped over the fence of one of the Montreal St houses that back onto this stretch, is a distinct possibility. But sometimes it’s going to be richer than that.