There are more quotations about rain on this page if you wish to dwell on the subject, which I don't. The weather co-operated well enough to give George and Jonathan a thoroughly white Christmas, but the last few days' weather have been frustrating.
It's a good thing that plenty of people have been around to distract us from the greyness and the damp.
At the beginning of the weekend, Friday evening, Francine, Roger, Bill, Mickie, Elva, Laurie, Carol and Don—bringing his father Bob—all came round for supper and a chat and to hear some music played on our various instruments. The plan for Saturday was for a dozen of us to meet for lunch at the jockstrap place (Jacques' Trap, a sports bar in Carlsbad Springs, as mentioned in a previous blog post) on our way to go skating at Bourget. However, the venue turned out to be CLOSED and For Sale, and the ice on the pond at our destination wasn't thick enough. As Bob and Tracy didn't want all their guests to get their feet wet or disappear beneath the surface, the skating party is now postponed until February 2nd. No matter! Fifteen people were still invited to fill their country house on Saturday afternoon, some of us taking advantage of the opportunity to snow-shoe through the fir trees outside before darkness fell, while the remaining guests bombarded us with snowballs from the balcony, scaring away the downy woodpeckers. Neighbours' snow-mobiles zipped across the field the other side of the brook. I was on my cross-country skis, over which I have very little control when I come to any kind of downhill bend and without my realising what he was up to, George captured on video the very moment at which I fell flat on my face in a bank of snow, prefaced by my pathetic shuffle over the bump, to the tune of "Oh-dear-oh-dear-oh-dear, I can't do this, I'm going to fall over!"
Back indoors, we could cool off with a glass of wine or bottle of beer under the cathedral ceiling to watch the end of The Game being broadcast from the Czech Republic: Canada's Junior Hockey team beating the Swedes, the winning goal scored in the very last minute under a heap of bodies red and white or blue and yellow, the Swedish goalkeeper face down on the ice to hide his tears of despair and the Canadian boys dancing, leaping, hugging and kissing one another like maniacs. (Being neither a man nor an indigenous Canadian, I find this sort of thing far more interesting to watch than the actual game.) Then in the kitchen we helped ourselves to the chilli beef plentifully provided by Carol together with some of Elva's freshly made cornbread, while Tracy kept conjuring up colourful plates of vegetables to dip.
We drove home through a light flurry.
On Sunday I cooked for ten, preparing a beef roast, or Sunday joint, as we used to call it before we became aware that Canadians don't "share a joint" in quite the same way and seem startled when invited to do this with us. Our guests Alan, Sue, Liz and David, all British ex-pats, would have known what we meant; only Karen and Aran might have been taken aback.
The rain having begun, we sat round our log fire after the meal and let it fall on Jonathan and George, out for a walk. In the evening the four from our house drove to the evening concert at John R's house, a fund raiser for CAMMAC, where we heard a fine performance from a couple of university musicians Frédéric Lacroix (piano) and Paul Marleyn (cello), the programme being
Dvorak's Silent Woods for 'cello and piano
Mendelssohn's Variations Sérieuses for piano
Gaspar Cassado's 'Cello Suite
Frank Bridge's exciting 'Cello Sonata
Piazzolla's Le Grand Tango
As an encore we heard Dance of the Blessed Spirits, from Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice, in a transcription for 'cello and piano. The performers didn't announce this one and left to guess I couldn't remember how I knew the mystery piece so well; once I had the title I remembered how I used to accompany Emma as she learned to play it on the flute fifteen years ago, in Wales.
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