Happy New Year!
How people find the time and energy to make New Year's Resolutions, let alone try to keep them, beats me. Our week has been crowded with people. After Chris had taken Jenny flying over the Gatineau Park last Monday, with three landings at Gatineau, each a touch-and-go, Jennie (correct spelling, different woman!), her husband Bill and Christine came round for supper and to sing some belated Christmas carols with us. Christine, Bill's daughter, is the one who accompanied our son George to Alice Springs last year. Last Christmas she had a go on George's 'cello and this time round she had a go on Jenny's flute. Bill, once a telecomm colleague of Chris' and thereafter a science teacher at a Ashbury College, is now VP of Technology at Iogen Corporation, a company that's making cellulosic ethanol, i.e. fuel from straw, something that sounds like a very promising occupation.
The following day, Tuesday, we went to Barbara's house, with live candles on the tree in the German tradition, for a buffet lunch, meeting her son and daughter (Mark and Lara), Andrew and Claudia (Claudia is a travel agent from Peru) and a Political Science prof. —Achim—with his wife Julia and their baby daughter, Eva. Mark and Andrew are financial wizards in Miami and Toronto respectively and Lara is studying to be a translator and perhaps an interpreter, presently at Ottawa University.
New Year's Eve being a bright day, we took Jenny to Ski-Vorlage so that she could enjoy herself on the slopes, meeting her again in the bar at the "day lodge" afterwards and taking her to lunch at Chamberlin's Lookout above the General Store at Wakefield with its lovely view of the (snow-white) Gatineau River. It has a glass floor, so that you also get a view of the shop beneath your table. In the evening our flying gang, Roger and Francine, John (CEO of Air Navigation Data), Jill and Bronwyn (John's daughter who has previously worked in racing stables around the world but is now studying modern languages at Toronto), Elva and Laurie, Carol and Don all arrived, with various contributions for supper, to see the New Year in at our house. For the sake of brevity I won't list all their contributions, but what a feast! We did make a bit of a mistake with my mulled wine that needed more sugar and with Jill's three bottles of champagne that we left out of doors in the snow for rather too long a time, so that the contents of the first bottle slurped out like slushy in a semi-solid state, Don manfully trying to thaw out the other two under a warm tap before we reached the stroke of midnight. Other amusing distractions from the remorseless passing of time were Chris' annual Predictions Quiz, as mentioned in this blog a year ago, and a game of Charades. Chris and Laurie, for example, made us guess The Dam Busters with Laurie enacting the part of the Lancaster bombers and Chris the bouncing bomb. As illustrated in the picture above, we wrapped ourselves up at the end of the evening to venture out in search of the advertised fireworks display, but couldn't see much of this from the park, whereupon we hurried back into the warmth where we'd been singing / playing Auld Lang Syne in three parts arranged by me. Which reminds me that I should have apologised to our neighbours for the probable disturbance.
On New Year's Day, after lunch here with Elva and Laurie, Elva, Jenny and I walked into town to meet Varvara (Elva's administrative assistant, from Russia) at the National Arts Centre for a traditional Viennese concert in Southam Hall, enhanced with six Viennese ballet dancers, two ballroom dancers and a soprano and tenor soloist, the accompanying Ottawa Symphony Orchestra conducted by Niels Muus. You wouldn't enjoy this if you don't like music by J Strauss and Léhar, but take it in the right spirit and it's great fun. The ladies' dresses were spectacular, the soprano wearing a stupendous bright yellow décolleté gown with long black gloves for the first half of the concert and a purple dress shimmering and decorated like a peacock's tail for the second half. Laurie taxied Elva and Varvara back to our house for tea and cakes afterwards and Chris brought Jenny and me home to join them. Dropping Varvara at her place after that the rest of us repaired to the Buchans' for supper by candlelight with Carol, Don, Kathryn, Andrew and Lilian, Chris and Andrew sparring in philosophical debate and several of us having a go at the Wii sports games the family had acquired for Christmas.
More snow fell yesterday but Chris took Jenny skating on the canal (on Carol's skates) all the same. We met at Piccolo Grande for lunch. While I shopped for supper ingredients the other two then explored the Aviation Museum. In the evening, Elizabeth, David and Carola, plus Charlie the dog, came round to share our meal with us and sit around the fire for a very pleasant and relaxing conversation.
It was Jenny's last day with us today and all she had time for was a session in the flight simulator at the Flying Club with Chris and a walk into town and back for lunch before we reluctantly said goodbye to her at the airport. She has to be back at her teaching post in Birmingham the day after tomorrow. This evening Chris and I are on our own. How strange that suddenly seems, and, we must admit, how peaceful.
1 comment:
Quiet then!
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