What better time for holiday leftovers?

A good time, this lull between Christmas and New Year’s, to tidy up the old email inbox, phone messages, and court summonses and find out what’s on your minds.

First of all, best of the season to all. And, in the spirit of inclusion, I urge this wish with equal feeling upon all my fellow beings, be ye Regular, Oily or Dry and Damaged. I know. That’s large-minded of me but I’ve always been the kind who sees beyond the shampoo category to the human being inside. Oh, here, take my hanky.

Second, thanks to every one of you who has read this column over the past year, even if only to find the secret coded messages that some believe are encrypted in it, possibly holding the answer to the European debt crisis as well as up-to-the-minute traffic updates and chess tips.

Several of you commented on last week’s column about Audrey Traini’s painting, for which I modelled as the Hatter figure in her tea party tableau. It hung in the Louvre in Paris for four days earlier in December.

Among the remarks, John Henley’s taught me something I never knew.

“Now here is the bone of contention,” writes John. “There is NO character called the Mad Hatter.

“Why do I know this? Because I had a company in the U.K. and I wanted to call it Mad Hatter Jokes and Tricks but didn’t want to run afoul of copyright laws so I actually went to an exhibition of Lewis Carroll books and was allowed to look through a first edition of Alice in Wonderland.

“There is the Hatter but absolutely NO Mad Hatter. People have spliced Mad as a Hatter or Mad March Hare onto the original name, but, as a character, the Hatter is just that, the Hatter. So, in the nicest possible way, please accept this email as an update.

“Other than that, Jeff, I love the picture.”

Some of you asked what you could do to help with Robin McKee’s building of a new roof for his friend Maurice Rondeau. I wrote about that in the fall and how Robin arranged the shingles on part of the roof to form a smile.

Well, the SAGE and Main programs at Strathcona School came through big time, donating roofing supplies to Robin and now the job is done. Maurice’s house is dry again.

Congratulations to Martin Hering. You may remember him as the fellow who so faithfully and beautifully restored the Hambly House, a classic example of Streamline Moderne architecture, in Westdale. I wrote about this in the spring. Since then he has received quite a bit of ink and Internet coverage, and in November the Hambly House won a 2011 Urban Design and Architecture Award.