Fish & Chips for Good Friday

Can one wish a happy Good Friday? I love Good Friday, sometimes just as much as Easter. Because it's a bank holiday, at least in this country. And because every year I commemorate by "fasting". And by fasting, I mean I eat fish and chips.It has become a tradition since I live in England. We spent last year's Good Friday in York.It was our last night in the city. I bought these fish and chips in the nearest chippy. It tasted absolutely perfect, even though it stank up the place. I'm not sure where I will eat my next Fish and chips from.

Fish & Chips for Good Friday

Today is Good Friday. I always loved Good Friday: it's a holiday, it's generally a relaxing day and it means that I can, ahem, fast. By fasting, I mean stuffing my face with fish and chips. Since I live in England, it's not Good Friday without fish and chips. I often enjoy more the Good Friday meal than what we have at Easter. I had these ones last year in Belfast, at the hotel restaurant.

Fish & Chips for Good Friday

I took this picture at Billy Winters in Dorset. Iam sharing the picture today because it is Good Friday and as it is tradition for me and many others I had fish and chips tonight. Not as nice as these ones, sadly, as I bought them in the supermarket. That said, the fish and chips at Billy Winters did not impress me all that much. They tasted all right, but knd of gentrified, if that makes sense. The chips were more like French fries. The local chip shop make better ones. Cheaper too. I should have bought it from there tonight. Oh well, at least I had fish and chips.

Mozart for Good Friday

It is becoming a tradition for Good Friday (and also Easter) on this blog to put something of Mozart. His music makes most of my Easter playlist. I have shared the Kyrie from his Great Mass in C Minor time and again, but it fits this day so well, I have to do it again. Here it is sung by French soprano Julie Fuchs, who makes her débuts on Vraie Fiction (ha, ha!). She is also really cool as a person, check her on social media, she reallly is fun. Anywya, now onto more solemn matters, enjoy this great piece of music.

Fish and Chips for Good Friday

First I want to wish a happy Good Friday to my readers. Even though it is meant to be an austere day. It is not austere to me, in any case. As it is Good Friday, I am going to have fish and chips today. You know, because fasting and all that. I don't know where I will buy the fish and chips. I had the ones on that picture in a pub of Sandown on the Isle of Wight. Not sure if I can find a cod as good as the one we can find on an island, but there's plenty of decent chippy shops round here. And I haven't eaten fish and chips in months, so it is long overdue.

Jeudredi Saint

Hier en après-midi, le ciel s'est soudainement couvert de nuages noirs. Nous avons ensuite entendu un coup de tonnerre. Il s'est ensuite mis à grêler. La photo que j'ai prise ne lui rend pas justice, ça tombait comme des billes de glace. J'adore les orages, tant que je suis au sec à l'intérieur. J'ai simplement trouvé ça étrange que ça arrive un Jeudi saint et non pas un Vendredi saint, ça aurait été plus circonstanciel. Alors nous avons eu un Jeudredi saint.

Fish & Chips for Good Friday

So this year again, because it's Good Friday, we had fish and chips from the local chips shop for dinner. Although when I say "we", I mean only me. My wife being vegetarian, she halloumi and Wolfie being Wolfie, even though he likes fish sticks, he had a cheeseburger. What can I say? My son is a heathen and does not care one bit about fasting. Which is so easy with the right food. Anyway, it was not completely unhealthy: some of the batter got stuck on the paper and I had mushy peas with it.

Mozart for Good Friday

I made myself a full playlist of Easter music and I want to share some of it with you. For the same occasion last year, I had shared a Kyrie from my favourite composer, just not this specific Kyrie. It may be a bit cliché, but Mozart's Requiem is a perfect fit for Good Friday, so here is its beginning.

Fish & Chips for Good Friday

I haven't had them in ages, not since 2019 if I'm not mistaken (scary how this pandemic postponed things), but this is what I had for this year's Good Friday: fish and chips. A personal tradition since I have been living in this country. Ordered from the local chips shop, the best around here, via an app. The app is of course used for safety reasons due to the pandemic, otherwise we'd ordered them directly at the till. There were many more chips, which I shared with my vegetarian wife. She had hers with a veggie burger, my boy had a fishcake, but I had the real deal. I am a very happy man, even though right now I'm stinking of grease and cod.

Kyrie for Good Friday

For Good Friday, I thought I would put some circumstancial music. To be precise, the Kyrie from the Great Mass in C Minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Fitting music, by a fitting composer with a fitting name ("Amadeus"). Come Easter, I always listen to Mozart, sacred or not, but this mass is the best to listen to I think. Sang beautifully here by Swedish soprano Miah Persson. I challenge you not to feel shivers alll over your body.

Alex the Antichrist

As this is Good Friday, I thought I would give you film suggestion for the day: A Clockwork Orange, my favourite. I'm not kidding. It is fitting for Easter, if only for this scene (warning: there is not only violence but also nudity in it). Is A Clockwork Orange a Christian film you may ask? Well, the YouTube video below makes a pretty good argument for it. I found I don't agree with everything the YouTuber says (and he falls for too many myths about both Anthony Burgess and the genesis of A Clockwork Orange, mostly invented by Burgess himself), but I do agree that Alex is an Antichrist figure. Quite literally, in fact. You can read my own opinion on the subject in 2016. Anyway, so there you have it: it does not take much to add A Clockwork Orange to your list of Easter movies.

The Fish & Chips of Good Friday

Well, it is (and soon it was) Good Friday, and since I could not get proper Montreal bagels to go with smoked salmon, I had to go for the best local aquatic delicacy: fish and chips. Old traditions must make way to "new" ones. That said, I am very lucky when it comes to fish and chips: we have a local chip shop that makes great fish and chips. So this is what I had tonight (I decided to share the picture to create a food porn moment). The cod was large size. I was afraid to grow hungry otherwise. Fish and chips really put the good in Good Friday.

Sparky the Easter Dragon?

It is Good Friday today and that means Easter is almost here and that means we are preparing the day... By buying lots and lots of chocolate. I found this Easter chocolate figure in Morrisons, which I found strange. I guess they have all sorts of things for Easter chocolates nowadays, all sorts of animals and things that are not animals. I did not always go for the traditional rabbit and often went for squirrels, bears, owls, but I never went for critters such as... a dragon. Yet I bought Sparky the Dragon. Because he is very cute and I thought it would be fun for the family to eat it. So it had been added to our stocks of Easter chocolate.

Les corneilles du Vendredi saint

Je cherchais une photo pour souligner le Vendredi saint, j'ai pensé que celle-ci ferait l'affaire. Ce n'est même pas une photo prise aujourd'hui. Ma femme était sortie avec notre petit loup et a vu ces corneilles perchées sur un arbre. Elle les a prises en photo pour moi, sachant que j'aime les corvidés et ce genre de tableau que la nature nous offre. Des corneilles sur un arbre, je trouve que ça a un côté vaguement sinistre et forcément mortuaire, donc c'est parfait pour aujourd'hui. Un Vendredi saint qui se respecte se doit d'être sombre.

Fish & Chips for Good Friday?

In a week time, it will be Good Friday, which for me became a day nearly as much celebrated as Easter in a way. I mean that I usually stuff myself with something delicious. As like last year I don't have proper bagels, I think this year I will have fish and chips. I have been craving them again and last time I ate some was in February. But from where? I took this picture in a local pub, one of the many posh gastropubs this town has. It was a bit too fancy: the chips were not really proper chips, more like barely fried potatoes and the fish was a bit small. It tasted a bit too healthy for a proper fish and chips and worse, it left me hungry, which for me is a cardinal sin when you have fish and chips. So I will try to convince my wife to go to the local chip shop, or go to another pub where they serve the real deal.

This Good Friday feast that I will not have

As a tradition, this is what I usually have on Good Friday: bagels from St-Viateur, the very best in the world. (Yes they are, read this if you don't know why.) With smoked salmon, soft cheese, onions, capers, tomatoes. Taken one by one, separately as you see it on the top right picture, it may look like nothing, but as a whole, it is a true feast and a most sacred meal.

For years and years when I was living in Montreal, this has been my most sacred meal. I had started doing it here in the UK too, until I got tired of the cardboard donuts they call bagels and stopped... To start again when I brought back proper bagels from home. Well, sadly this year as I have been away from Montreal for a very long time we are out of bagels from St-Viateur. And it's just pointless buying any bagel here. So I have no idea what I will have tonight, but it will not be my Good Friday feast. It is sad, but I made a promise to myself that this will not always be the case.

Allons tous à Jérusalem...

Bon, c'est Vendredi saint, il me faut le souligner, alors on commence par un air sacré, tiré de La fin du monde est à sept heures. Un vrai de vrai, d'une insipidité ahurissante comme on en chantait du temps de mon enfance catholique.

Tonight's meal for Good Friday

It is Good Friday and, more than any other Friday in the year, it means to me fish Friday. I will have tonight my traditional Good Friday meal: bagels from St-Viateur, which I saved from my last trip to Montreal, capers, raw onions, a slice of tomatoes and of course smoked salmon. I know, I have a rather strange way of fasting. But for me, any excuse is good enough to eat a traditional bagels meal. And I have been practicing this tradition since my first Good Fridays in Montreal. So this reminds me of home.

Vendredi saint

Photo prise en Bretagne en 2008. Le crucifix de village, presque omniprésent sur les routes de cette région, m'avait beaucoup étonné. Nous sommes aujourd'hui Vendredi saint et j'ai pensé que la photo était de circonstances. Quand j'étais un enfant catholique vivant dans la Grande Noirceur, le Vendredi saint était... Était notre première journée de vacances, alors je l'aimais beaucoup. Mes frères et moi écoutions Jésus de Nazareth ou un autre film biblique s'il n'y avait pas Jésus à la télé et on se préparait pour Pâques. C'était supposé être une journée sombre de la Semaine sainte, moi je l'ai toujours trouvée sympathique.

Bagels and salmon for Good Friday

The bagel on these pictures comes from St-Viateur. Well of course, I am not the kind of expat who eats a bagel from anywhere else. Because bagels here and outside Montreal are a joke. Anyway, today is Good Friday, which means that I will eat fish. Out of tradition rather than devotion. I think putting fish on the menu on Friday is a perfect reason in itself to eat more fish, which is maybe the healthiest type of meat, and what more pleasant way to eat fish than as smoked salmon in a authentic, proper bagel that comes from Montreal. I don't fast often, but when I do, it is in a decadent way.

When I was in Montreal, this is what I would have at every Good Friday and in many "ordinary" Fridays too, as a treat. I cannot remember when I started doing it, I think it was Easter 1997, but once I did, I never stopped: I bought my bagels and salmon at St-Viateur on the day, then had them for dinner. Sometimes lunch too. In England, I tried to follow it, but the bagels here are so vile that I abandoned the tradition quickly. Instead I had fish and chips or some other fish. When I went back to Montreal, I resumed the tradition with bagels and smoked salmon. This year, as I have some stock of proper bagels, I will resume it. Feasting and fasting sometimes go hand in hand.