Out of sheer shame – there can be no other explanation for this – the temperatures here in Toronto have climbed, sneakily, up into the low single digits: just as I prepare to board a plane for sunny South Africa. Do you think this is a coincidence? Nah, I don’t think so! It’s shame, I tell you – shame at giving us the coldest, crappiest month this town has had in more than a century.

Let’s see if you can keep this up, buster. Let’s see what the weather is like, when I get back home at the end of the month. Or is April 1st gonna make a fool of you?

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I fly tonight to my homeland, where I was born, where my mother and my two daughters live, where the weather – fortunately and unfortunately – is the least of your worries.

Will try to send the odd missive as I go along.