A sigh of relief from these quarters. Having completed the door-to-door canvass on my street for the Ontario March of Dimes. People, my experience has confirmed, do not appear to know much about the March of Dimes despite its long history as a charitable organization providing prostheses, wheelchairs and medical devices to children and others in need.

They obviously don't blow their horn very much, although I do recall a campaign launched a number of years ago where they did embark on a concerted public relations trial before their annual fund-raising campaign. At that time, people were aware, recognized the charity, and gave. But peoples' memories are short.

In any event, it's done, finished, I no longer have to think about it, I knocked at the last door yesterday afternoon. The street was a minefield of slush, ice and snow piled high interspersed with deep puddles because this week it's a lot milder than the bone-chilling cold of last week when I first ventured out.

And the people who are usually wont to give to charitable enterprises did so, while those who only sometimes do, did not, and those who never give, I just skirted.

In the process I was informed in great detail by one of our neighbours in his mid-50s, that he had suffered a fall disembarking from a bus some months ago and wrenched one of his shoulders badly. He is now undergoing therapy, and his progress seems to be very slow, since he's still suffering a lot of pain and cannot move about and do the physical things we so often take for granted when we're in good health.

Another neighbour, perhaps a decade older than the previous one, told me he is blaming the medication he's taking for high blood pressure (statins) for making him feel constantly cold, and for depriving him completely of energy. Everything tires him out, the slightest physical effort, so he spends most of his time resting. He's set to see his cardiologist in two weeks' time, and as far as I'm concerned, it's not soon enough.

On the more positive side, one of our neighbours is set to go off on another travel adventure, this time to Italy, for a few weeks, while up the street yet another of our peripatetic retired neighbours is leaving in two weeks' time for a return visit to Colombia, which he had enjoyed so much first time around that his cousin, who is in the travel business, arranged for a group tour with about 40 people, and he's going with them.