About Big Ben

 Here is a bit of very English news which I read recently: Big Ben is being renovated and the refurbishing works revealed an old St George's flag. Now, Big Ben has always fascinated me, since I became an Anglohpile. The tower, the clock, the chimes of Big Ben especially, I always thought they were as cool as they were impressive. True story: my parents' doorbell has the same tune as Big Ben, except slightly out of tune for some reason. I only discovered this during our first visit to London back when I was eleven, the first time I ever heard Big Ben. So yes, long story short, Big Ben is one cool bell.

I missed Darwin Day

With all the flooding drama these days, I missed an important day to commemorate yesterday: Darwin Day, the birthday of Charles Darwin. Say what you will about my country of adoption, about how backwards some of its institutions are (yes I am thinking about this one), this country remains in many ways the birthplace of modernity and progress, and we owe it a lot to Darwin. He did not only revolutionize science, but the way mankind looks at itself. It is a shameful thing that some schools here and elsewhere in the Western world still teach creationism. But anyway, every time I see his face on a £10 bill, I remember why I admire England.

Hamlet and me

Here is an anecdote that was both heart warming and flattering. One of my former teachers from cégep told me on Facebook that he is having his students read Hamlet, incidentally my favorite of Shakespeare's plays.  He said that he can hear my voice. It was flattering but obscure: I did a bit of acting schtick under his supervision, but I never played Hamlet. He explained to me today that it was because of my love for England. Okay, so it had little or maybe even nothing to do with acting. Still, it is nice to know that I am remembered like this, after all those years.

Suis-je en train de devenir un Anglais?

Je me pose cette question parfois. J'en ferai peut-être un jour une question existentielle (lisez la dernière, en passant), mais il faut pour cela que ça ait une portée un peu plus universelle. Enfin, l'un des commentateurs sur le blogue de Prof Solitaire m'a fait la remarque récemment, dans un des billets du Prof. Il paraît que je m'exprime à l'anglaise lorsque je commente, avec des phrases brèves et flegmatiques. Je pensais que c'était une fausse perception et puis ce matin alors que je mangeais mon déjeuner, je me suis rendu compte que c'était un déjeuner caricarturalement anglais: toasts avec confiture (Wilkin & Sons pour demeurer dans la caricature) et thé... Au moins, je bois le thé sans lait et il a été acheté en Bretagne. Mais sinon, qu'est-ce que je suis caricaturalement anglais aujourd'hui. Je pourrais jouer Monsieur Smith dans cette pièce et il serait très facile de me mettre dans la peau du personnage.

Je me demande bien si, lorsqu'on aime une culture, on ne risque pas d'aimer plutôt ses clichés... Ce qui est pire, c'est lorsqu'on les intègre, les intériorise.

Observations on tea

My wife bought me this teapot for my birthday, which you can see on the picture on your right, a nice little modern artifact to keep an old tradition alive and kicking.

The idea of England being a nation of tea drinkers has been a bit of a cliché, and in our modern time an inaccurate one. My wife, for instance, dislikes tea and only drinks coffee. Ian Fleming hated tea, and so did his iconic character. They both considered it mud. Maybe it is because I'm Anglophile and therefore more sensitive to old clichés, but I have been (re)discovering tea in recent years and am drinking more and more of it. I started drinking it during my first trip to the UK, then I stopped for years, until late in teenage when got into it again. I discovered Twinings, more particularly but not exclusively Russian Caravan which I drank in my first years Montreal. It is the variety that I used for my first cup from the teapot.

I am not a connoisseur, in fact I am pretty much of a philistine about tea, like for many other things. I know close to nothing about its history, here or elsewhere, I don't know at all how to infuse it perfectly, I know nothing about all the varieties and their differences, my drinking preferences (more on that below) would certainly be seen as barbarous for any long-time tea drinker. Still, I love it. I find tea far superior to coffee in any way: its taste is smoother, its colour is nicer, it is softer on the stomach, it is a drink that has been developed and refined by ancient civilisations.

Talking about those civilisations, there are other nations of tea lovers, and they are aficionados from much longer: China, Japan, Iran, among others, but one associates tea with England. Maybe because it is the Western nation where the drink became most successful. An unfair association in a way, typical of our Westerner attitude, but it illustrates how England integrated tea as part of its culture, even though it is seemingly so foreign: leaves in hot water, in a country that developed the culture of beer? There are reasons for its popularity here: tea cools you down on a hot summer (as a former housemate once told me), it also keeps you warm on a cold rainy day (and there are many of those here), it tastes lovely with a cake or a biscuit and like wine for a main meal, it enhances the taste of the food, it is as I said before soothing, it is also revigorating, etc. Tea has only virtues.

I don't put milk or sugar in my tea, as I think it gets in the way of the flavour (especially sugar). I have it strong, maybe too much (Marjane Satrapi thinks that too strong tea spoils the flavour). As I said, I am a philistine. I try to have one in the morning when I have time, I usually have one late in the afternoon and when I don't have to wake up early the next morning I have one in the evening, with or without dessert. My mum thinks I am turning into an Englishman. I doubt I could pass as a Chinese or an Iranian. But I think I am just carrying on an old tradition, that might become a fashion one day. I have seen signs of this: a growing number of tea rooms in Montreal, which have aseptised look selling tea while promoting healthy properties. There are also, in some independent cafés, more and more tea varieties. We might see the beginning of a drinking revolution. I would certainly welcome it, being a tea drinker.

Scotland Yard

Before I became a complete geek and started playing RPGs, when I was still a young and innocent child, I used to be into board games, something I only play during the holidays now. One of my favourite was Scotland Yard (you can find a few reviews here and a Youtube one here). I think it was triggered by my Anglophilia, which I had even then, even if I hadn't been in England yet. My first perception of London was through the map that served as the board for the game.

Other than my love and fascination for British culture (yes, I love British culture), the game appealed to me for many reasons. So, apart from the particular and pretty nice English feel to the game (the name Scotland Yard has almost mythical associations), it has that adventure element (pursuing a criminal in London is more dynamic and exciting than say investigating in Cluedo), it has a clever little game system that makes you use strategy and cooperation, it also has a bit of a dramatic background.

I discovered an advert for the game on Youtube. I loved watching it as a child, even though I could not understand a word of English. It was like watching the trailer of a movie in which I had a role. Now I wonder: why would Metropolitan Police detectives have American accents? I understand for Mister X, he could be of any nationality, but the police officers themselves?

L'anniversaire de la modernité

C'est l'anniversaire de Charles Darwin aujourd'hui. Je me devais de le souligner aujourd'hui, non seulement en anglais, mais en français aussi. C'est un autre des grands esprits anglais qui me font aimer ce pays malgré tout ce que je peux en dire parfois. Il représente ce qu'il y a de plus admirable chez ce peuple: l'intelligence, le pragmatisme, la faculté d'observation. Un homme qui a révolutionné la pensée humaine et l'a fait entrer dans la modernité. Hélas, l'obscurantisme nous menace encore aujourd'hui comme il y a 200 ans. Je ne m'étonne pas qu'il y ait des obscurantistes dans la Bible Belt américaine, mais ça me désole toujours d'en voir ici en Angleterre. Cela dit, on ne peut pas faire de leçons aux Anglais, les Québécois ayant aussi leur lot d'obscurantistes. Vous pourrez trouver une brillante chronique de Foglia sur Darwin et le fléau du créationisme ici, un dossier sur Darwin dans cyberpresse là.

Nostalgie, imaginaire et la menace des mères poules

Je cherchais un sujet pour mon prochain billet, cette chronique m'en a donné un. Je lis assez peu François Cardinal, mais sa chronique d'aujourd'hui est fort intéressante, car il fait un lien de causalité entre la surprotection parentale et l'apathie des enfants qui passent leur temps devant leur ordinateur et leur télévision (comme moi ces temps-ci, hélas) et donc n'ont plus de rapports avec le mond eextérieur, que ce soit la nature ou la société. Il mélange peut-être un peu tout, mais sur le fond il a raison. Je ne suis pas passéiste, mais les enfants aujourd'hui sont surprotégés. On ne veut plus qu'ils lisent/se racontent des histoires effrayantes ou violentes, on essaie de les tenir à l'écart du monde extérieur, etc. Or je crois qu'un imaginaire développé, y compris par des trucs horribles, est essentiel au développement de l'enfant. Quand j'étais jeune, nos jeux étaient très élaborés: je faisais des personnages récurrents, appartenant à différents milieux (monde de l'espionnage, de la police, etc.), les jeux que l'on jouait tenaient autant de l'activité physique que créative. Les deux allaient de pair. La cour arrière pouvait être le château de Dracula (un classique, avant même de lire le roman j'étais fasciné par le personnage), une planète étrangère, une forêt hantée (j'aimais aussi beaucoup les histoires de fantômes), le lieu d'un crime. Mon amour de l'Angleterre est né de ces jeux, car je faisais d'à peu près tous mes personnages des Anglais (comme James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, je croyais que l'Angleterre était la patrie des héros). Si j'avais passé mon temps à l'intérieur, ou si on avait censuré mes lectures (ou les films que je regardais), je ne serais sans doute pas ici.