Another mishmash

Since our holiday it seems another load of juxtapositions has been piling up in a chaotic manner.

Last Saturday was the Flying Club's volunteer appreciation event, Chris winning a trophy for coming first in the Spot Landing contest, and participating in the flour-bombing contest with PTN's passenger door removed. He didn't come anywhere near winning that one because his bomber, Pete, entangled in the headphones that blew off his ears in the slipstream, had dropped not only the "bomb" but also his glasses, causing a bit of a distraction. Bill radioed up to ask if they could fly over and drop another pair of glasses to help with the search for the first pair (eventually retrieved unharmed from a taxiway).

Straight after this came our volunteers' annual Cricket Match during which I was out for a duck, same as last year; I redeemed myself by bowling someone out in the second innings and had I done it again during the last over, our team would have won, but their last man "in" managed to score the winning run off my bowling. The vast majority of the other participants had never played cricket in their lives before, but appreciated their initiation. Chris was groundsman, instructor, umpire, scorer and commentator, and now I'm commissioning him to be our sports reporter as well, since he is the only person who has any idea of who was playing or of what was happening and we need a report in the next edition of our Crosswinds magazine.

After the sun had set and all the cake gone, we lingered outside the clubhouse to look through the telescopes some amateur astronomers had brought along to observe the moon's craters and four of the moons of Jupiter.

We flew to the St Lawrence again the next day, to the closest part, at Iroquois. Knowing that there's a bathing beach at the eastern end of that meadow-like airfield (the surfaced part of the runway only 23 feet wide) I'd brought a swimsuit with me, which meant that after lunch seven of my friends had to wait around on the shore while I indulged myself by swimming back and forth in river water nicely warmed by the sun. Well, they should have brought their own swimsuits along.

Back to our music-making this week, Chris and I have been working on Borodin's cross-rhythms in an arrangement for clarinet and piano of the Notturno from his 2nd string quartet; we've also been singing/playing renaissance duets and the usual Schubert and Schumann song cycles.

To celebrate Indonesia's Independence Day I attended a reception on the Indonesian Ambassador's lawn (on a hilltop in Rockcliffe overlooking the Ottawa River). The young children of the Embassy, dressed in traditional, regional costumes, came forward in ones and twos and made a solemn bow to the distinguished guests and Excellencies present, having sung the Canadian and Indonesian national anthems in chorus.

This afternoon Chris and I took an interest in The Greeks, visiting the exhibition of this name at Gatineau's Museum of Civilisation (or Civilisations, plural, as it is called in French and ought to be called in English). Having read several books about the history of the eastern Roman empire, Chris was particularly interested in the Grecian-Byzantine artifacts and the information given about Greece's four hundred years under Islamic jurisdiction.