HE IRONY is not lost on me. My return to this blog, after my not-so-great hiatus, is marked by my vigil in an empty house. Unlike Holmes and Watson awaiting the notorious Colonel Sebastian Moran and Von Herder’s airgun, however, my situation is actually quite mundane. After some 8000 km of travel from Newfoundland to Yellowknife (in the Northwest Territories of Canada) to take up a new life with a new home and a new job, I sit most evenings in a house devoid of furniture, books, computer gear, or family. Thanks to a kindly neighbour, I now have a little computer desk propping up my work laptop, which is running on an intermittant network. The furniture and library are still several weeks off (and upon their arrival, I can send plane tickets for my wife and boys). In the meantime I’m going rather stir-crazy, occupying my spare time mostly with cycling and cleaning.

But I am not completely Holmes-less. (Ugh.) While I was packing up the old place, I used some spare cycles on my computer to convert a number of Jeremy Brett shows to iPod video format. And so, in addition to reading my two books –a beat-up “Wings” Strand facsimile edition of the uncopyrighted stories, along with Christopher Redmond’s amazing Sherlock Holmes Handbook– I’m happily lying on my air mattress each night watching Grenada episodes on a screen roughly the size of a large postage stamp, or listening to Rathbone/Bruce episodes of The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

While I await my books and gear, I’m going to take advantage of this downtime and start posting to this blog once more. A quick perusal of my Net queries, mailing lists, inbox, and other correspondences show that there has been much ado in the Sherlockian world, and so I’ll endeavour to cover as much of it as I can. Without my library, you’ll have to forgive me if the visuals are rare for the next little while, and my references aren’t quite as exact as I like. If you spot a mistake, please don’t hestitate to let me know, and if you’ve heard of something that you think is worth mentioning, please fill me in on the details. (My contact form is in the menu above.) A goodly number of postings here come from readers like you, and I appreciate every email I receive.

Oh, it’s nice to be home.