Writing a blog is the pre-internet equivalent of the blowhard standing on a soapbox in a park shouting thoughts into the ether for the consternation and/or entertainment of friends, neighbours, family or any strangers who might happen past.

When conceived in 2015 as the Meandering Maloneys, this blog seemed an easy way to keep in touch while we (Dame, Dude and Dog) travelled North America for a year. A digital postcard without the hassle of stamps and mailboxes.

Those familiar with the participants have no doubt deduced that the Dame handled all technical aspects of the online setup. She also took pictures and did much of the writing, especially early on.

Having experienced the anxiety and angst of a weekly column early in my newspaper career the idea of committing to a deadline, even a geographic one, was as attractive to me as directing the video of my last colonoscopy. Which is to say, having seen it in real time I had no desire to relive the experience solely for the enjoyment of others.

The Dame’s facility with words (journalism was her first career choice) and gift for humour superseded her spotty punctuation and with help from… ahem… a skilled editor, this blog was born. As the weeks turned into months, and the pressure for evermore witty observations ramped up, the Dame’s enthusiasm waned, and like the father who ends up cleaning the cage of the family’s pet rabbit, I was left to carry on.

The narrative concluding our journey and the need for writing digital postcards, entitled Meandering Home, noted that our travels in the U.S. had reinforced our Canadian vision of it as the best and worst of countries.

And that’s where things stood until Donald J. Trump emerged as the Republican candidate for president.

My first commentary on American politics, headlined Donald Trump, Tit or Twat?, was a homage to the Scottish knack for insult. The Mango Megalomaniac had inflamed Celtic passion by sticking his orange-tinted beak into the Brexit debate. The Scots flipped their kilts and let loose with imaginative invective ranging from ‘mangled apricot hellbeast’ to ‘witless fucking cocksplat’ to the aptly descriptive ‘tiny-fingered, Cheeto-faced, ferret-wearing shitgibbon’.

I ended that narrative with my own carefully crafted contribution: ‘bimbo-marrying, tit-kid-conceiving, morally and financially bankrupt, bronze-tinted, orange-aircraft-carrier-headed, pussy-lipped twat.

Though perhaps falling short of the evocative Scottish scorn, it received sufficient appreciation from a smattering of readers to inspire further commentary on Trump’s trashing of the Oval Office.

Over time the small core of family and friends who clicked onto the site was augmented by the occasional like-minded visitor from cyberspace who presumably stumbled upon the rantings by Googling key words like ‘Trump is a twat’.

In keeping with my horror of writing to a deadline, subsequent offerings came out sporadically, in indignant spurts, often with long pauses in between. The online host site, called Word Press, provides a facility for more ambitious bloggers to track their hits by country. It lists the number of likes and comments but provides no insight into exactly who reads or how regularly.

From time to time I vary the blog content from political to personal as life takes its toll. The Last Great Generation, My Brother Ron and Dexter A.K.A. The Dood were cathartic after personal loss. Thanks for the comforting comments. They were and are always appreciated.

The one reader I could always count on was my now departed brother Ron, who would inevitably call a day or two after publication to offer encouragement and engage in a half hour or so of Trump-bashing, giving both our wives respite. He was a gentleman, and a gentle man, and I remain convinced that his uncharacteristic apoplectic hatred of the Orange Idiot contributed in some part to his untimely demise last year from a brain bleed. RIP my brother, Trump, the one-term loser, is now feeling your mental pain.

In the month of December, the site has had a modest 326 views from 12 countries. Canada tops the list with 236, followed by the United States at 54, China at 20 and Mexico, India and France at 4,3, and 2 respectively. The rest are single hits or perhaps mis-hits. A social influencer I am not.

Have Yourself a Grateful Little Christmas,  about the empty chairs we all have in life, connected with people in the Time of the Pandemic, garnering 75 views.

The book-length entertainment I published this spring for a quarantined captive audience, Confessions of a Canadian Serial Killer, was modestly successful in that several readers made it all the way to the end. To those who didn’t make it through I take no offense and offer the same insight I once imparted to reporters in my charge. The responsibility of an unfinished story, once in the readers’ hands, always lies with the writer.

I have no idea who reads this blog, except for the occasional encouraging comment or thumbs up from people in my circle. To date I have not heard from readers in other countries other than the odd notification that I have a new follower. The consistency and frequency of visitors from the U.S. and China especially, suggest that a small group in those two countries regularly find it a worthwhile digital distraction.

To all who tune in from time to time, thanks for rewarding a writer with your attention. The human connection feels especially good in this time of isolation.

Happy New Year to Canadian readers and to those in the United States, China, Mexico, India and France. Best wishes to the one-time accidentals visitors from Nepal, Malaysia, Peru, Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea, Russia, American Samoa and other far-off places if you happened again on this site.

May your 2021 be bountiful, healthy and happy. May your vaccination be timely and your social distancing end with the warming embrace of family and friends.

Every Saturday night in the winters of my formative years I listened sympathetically as Hockey Night in Canada’s Foster Hewitt gave a shout-out to hospital patients and shut-ins who couldn’t make it to games.

Images formed in my impressionable young mind of the infirm sitting in the pale light of their black and white televisions taking small comfort from Foster’s recognition.

I was well into my thirties when I watched my first hockey game from a hospital bed. I had toiled at numerous manual labour jobs and travelled five continents without so much as a broken bone or a stitch, oblivious with the arrogance of youth that the health gods would eventually get their due.

One stay at St. Paul’s in Vancouver had me yearning for words of comfort and normality from someone like Foster. Vancouverites will be familiar with St. Paul’s as the hospital that services the Downtown Eastside, often referred to as Canada’s poorest postal code.

While there are plenty of good people and do-gooders in the Downtown Eastside, and many unfortunates with mental health issues, the postal code reference reflects the sundry derelicts, drunks and drug addicts whose dangerous habits often cause them to need medical attention. I once glanced up an alley while driving on East Hastings on a sunny afternoon and saw a naked man casually strolling along as if he were walking the sands of Wreck Beach.  Nobody took notice.

The first day at St. Paul’s, I was woken from a groggy afternoon nap by a doctor with a hostile bedside manner. He was remonstrating against an unseen patient on the other side of my curtain who had injected himself with drugs not prescribed by the hospital. A search was undertaken for the illicit substance and the disruption and subsequent ravings emanating from behind the curtain unnerved me enough to ask for a room change.

After multiple moist pleadings to hospital staff, I was shifted to a room with three female patients, one of whom talked endlessly on a phone at her bedside table, loudly lamenting the shortcomings of a boyfriend who had not yet found time to visit. The stillness of the elderly woman directly across felt ominous. She showed no signs of life and received no visitors. Late in the night I heard the patient behind the curtain next to me direct the nurse in whispers to a spot between her toes to insert a needle for a blood test, the veins in her arms and legs having long since collapsed from overuse.

I discovered during that visit and on subsequent stays in medical establishments that an institutional green bathroom, while providing momentary refuge from hospital roommates, is the world’s loneliest place at three in the morning and was always much relieved to return to my pre-hospital life.

I relate this not as a ploy for sympathy, as some who know me will undoubtedly suspect, but instead to illustrate my creds when wishing those in hospital encouragement as they lay in bed eating mass-cooked meals of bland mush, their only distraction the various pokings and proddings administered by hospital staff.

Even in private rooms, with the green bathroom all to yourself, the hospital experience is less than dignified and invariably involves the attachment of various bags and tubes transporting liquids in and out; the awkwardness of bathroom visits while attached to a pole; insertions and extractions of cold sterilized implements in nether regions; the barbering of dank private places.

Fortunately, all my hospital stays ended with positive outcomes and the professionalism and caring of the nurses and hospital staff, with very few exceptions, inspired everlasting respect.

But not even dedicated front-line workers want to be in the hospital during Christmas in the Time of the Pandemic, with virus droplets seeping through the air vents and patients stacking up in hallways.

So, in the spirit of Hockey Hall of Famer Foster Hewitt, I offer a shout-out to all the hospital patients and overworked staff tending them, from a shut-in watching CNN and Netflix on Saturday nights and pretty much every night. And some afternoons, too.

As a shut-in of Canadian privilege, I’m thinking of you as I keep my lonely vigil in the soft but colourful glow of a big screen TV, soaking up the visual warmth of the Christmas Fireplace Channel. Your struggles become mine as I mope about home in T-shirt and sweatpants, the stains upon which tell the tale of recent dinners, snacks, and drink choices. (Does red wine come out easier if you put soda water on it right away? So many important questions.)

Yes, you are in my thoughts and prayers as I swig alcohol and carbonated juice injected with gas from a personal countertop machine. I feel your pain as I pig out on pizza and wolf down butter tarts and shortbread. Staying home is a great hardship for those among us who have never experienced the privations of war, a Great Depression or famine.

Needless to say, the Last Great Generation we are not when it comes to sacrifice and pulling together for the common good at personal cost. Still, I feel confident readers will support me in this shout-out to fellow shut-ins in the Time of the Pandemic, which is to say everybody, this holiday season: “Stop whining and be happy you are above ground and living in Canada.”