Wassail, Wasail!

It is the New Year in a few minutes and as it is a Christmastime (end of Christmas season to be precise) tradition on this blog, I am uploading the Gloucestershire Wassail. I will welcome the new year and do an unofficial wassail with a glass of Griffon rousse.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6...

L'année 2014 se termine bientôt et donc par conséquent les vacances des Fêtes aussi. Je ne suis déjà plus dans l'ambiance de Noël lors la veille du Jour de l'An. Je célèbre considérablement moins, par conséquent. Mais donc, l'année achève et je me dois quand même le souligner sur ce blogue. Ce billet a le titre d'un compte à rebours, parce que le 31 décembre est toujours un compte à rebours: derniers achats avant un congé férié, revues de l'année à la télé, revue de l'année à la radio, partys, etc. Que faites-vous pour le compte à rebours cette année? Moi, je ne sais pas trop. J'ai toujours trouvé les partys du Jour de l'An plates, qu'ils soient en famille ou entre amis. Sortir est aussi pire. Alors d'habitude je fais l'ermite et je regarde la télévision.

The St-Viateur Experience

Today, my wife and I went to St-Viateur Bagel on Mont-Royal Avenue for lunch. It was packed with people. And I do mean packed: there was a very large queue that ended at the entrance of the restaurant. And this was not counting the people coming to buy bagels at the counter. I don't remember ever being there when it was that busy, even though St-Viateur is one of the most popular café/restaurant on the Plateau. So we waited. I wouldn't have wanted to eat anywhere else. Not today, not any day. When I crave bagels, I cannot consider eating anything else. Anyway, we didn't have to wait long: it certainly rolls fast At St-Viateur. The service is both efficient and friendly, as they always are. So I had the usual: the traditional bagel with smoked salmon, capers and so on. With a soup on the side (beef and barley). Unfortunately I forgot to ask for the bagel to be toasted, but it was delicious nevertheless. The clientèle was mainly French speaking, among them French persons, with a few English speakers, including the odd Brit (brought there by me). This was, in sum, the St-Viateur experience.

C'est l'hiver à Chicoutimi

Je suis en ce moment et depuis hier à Montréal, où il n'y a pratiquement pas de neige. C'est la désolation complète. Lire: c'est gris comme le mois de novembre. À Chicoutimi, d'où je reviens, c'était différent: il a neigé assez pour dire qu'on a eu un Noël blanc. Ca avait plus l'air de mars et la neige était assez rare et dans un sale état, mais c'était tout de même blanc. Le redoux ne l'a pas achevée. Alors la veille de notre retour à Montréal, surprise: il s'est mis à reneiger pour vrai. À un point tel que la gratte a passé (voir photo). Morale de l'histoire: même de peines et de misères, c'est toujours l'hiver à Chicoutimi et au Saguenay.

This season's D&Dr game

This picture was taken from Dragon magazine, number 208. I chose it to illustrate this post because it fits the season: a knight on a snowy lanscape followed by hungry wolves. Nothing this dramatic happened to me, but yesterday my brothers and I played Dungeons & Dragons. It is a Christmas tradition and one of my favourite. Yesterday was special: we finished the campaign we had started decades earlier. I mean by this that we didn't only finish a particular mission, but the whole story arch that kept us and our characters going for a long while has been done. It was dramatic, suspenseful, gripping even, now it is over. So that's it. There are a few lose ends that may need to be tied up, some things that we can explore further if we play our characters again, but overall, evil has been vanquished, at least for now, we won and so on. I am happy this is done and our quest is finally over, nevertheless I feel a bit of melancholia. As if I had just finished a novel I particularly loved. I know I can read it again, but I will never have the same excitement.

Question existentielle (249)

Une question existentielle qui a déjà son importance:

-Quand commence la mélancolie d'après Noël?

Good King Wenceslas looked out...

As it is a tradition on Vraie Fiction to avoid this consumerist day that is Boxing Day, I am uploading Good King Wenceslas again. We are, after all, on the Feast of Stephen. One of my favorite Christmas carols, a tale in a song, as efficient as it is atmospheric. I also discovered last year another take on the story I really enjoyed, in a poem form by Carol Ann Duffy. You can read it here. Ladt year I bought the poem for myself, beautifully illustrated by Stuart Kolakovic. I could not find a version of the song I really loved, but this one will do.

Quoi faire près de l'Arbre de Noël

Je n'ai pas vraiment de raison de publier une nouvelle photo de l'arbre, sauf que j'en suis vraiment fier. Et que c'est l'une des joies de Noël ici. Je fais beaucoup de choses près de l'arbre: c'est un lieu de réunion pour la famille, c'est là où l'on fait marcher le train électrique et j'y passe des heures entières à lire. Et vous, que faites-vous près du sapin?

Christmas Eve

As I am writing this, it is already Christmas in Europe, where I usually blog from. But here, there are a few hours to go still. To commemorate this moment and to wish an early Merry Christmas to all my readers, I thought I would addthis little piece of poetry from Calvin and Hobbes. I find it a beautiful evocation of the season and it perfectly captures the moment. I read many Christmas stories, I even read a few Christmas poems, but this single comic strip is maybe my favourite. So here it is.

Quelle est cette odeur agréable?

Il reste encore quelques heures au 24 décembre, dernier jour de l'Avent. Mais ici, sur ce blogue, qui est à l'heure anglaise, l'arrivée de Noël est imminente. Alors enfin bref, je souligne avec un nouveau billet, une photo de notre Crèche que nous avons quétainisé un peu avec des sapins de Noël (!). Et pour souligner encore plus, un autre cantique de Noël, l'une des meilleures interprétations que je connaisse de Quelle est cette odeur agréable? L'athée impénitent que je suis aime bien les vieux cantiques de Noël.

Troll the ancient Yuletide carol

I know I uploaded Deck the Halls before, and this very decoration we bought in Sweden.But I love the carol because of its Pagan imagery and this is one of my favourite Christmas tree decorations. I find the decoration and the song mixing well together, even though the carol is originally from Wales. For me, all I can see when I hear it is Vikings cutting wood and decoration their halls with mistletoe, and drinking and eating in excess. I tried to find a good version on YouTube, I don't think I was nearly as lucky as last time. But here it is anyway, because it is time to troll the ancient Yuletide carol.

L'Arbre de Noël

Bon ben c'est pas pour dire, mais on sait comment faire de vrais arbres de Noël dans la famille.

Family traits and traditions

My parents were watching pictures of me taken recently in the UK and said that I looked very much "like an Archibald" (my mother's fmaily name). We kept talking about family resemblance and after a while, my mother asked me, in a vaguely suspicious tone: "Guillaume, do you use hair coloring?" I don't and wondered why she asked me such a thing. "Because when I was your age, my hair was already very white." Ouch! Just for the shock it created, remembering me of my age, it deserves to be a great unknown line. Little anecdote: my grandfather was secretly using hair coloring to hide his greying hair. We only learned about it years after his death, when my grandmother spilled the beans. I know my mother used some, with more moderation (thus hiding less), from her thirties onward. For the record, I never did and don't intend to ever do. But I find it strange that she thought I was following a secret family tradition.

Patapan

"Guillô, pran ton tamborin;
Toi, pran tai fleúte, Rôbin!
Au son de cé instruman,
Turelurelu, patapatapan,
Au son de cé instruman
Je diron Noei gaiman"

C'est un cantique de Noël moins connu, mais que j'aime beaucoup. Il s'appelle Patapan, ou Guillô (Guillaume) prends ton tambourin. C'est donc une chanson qui mentionne mon nom. Quand j'étais enfant catholique vivant dans l'Âge des Ténèbres, j'en aurais été ému, bien que j'étais alors joueur de flûte, pas de tambourin. Mais bon, j'aime cette chanson parce qu'elle a du rythme.

James Bond for Christmas

As Christmas is getting closer and closer, I am suggesting to my readership both a novel and a movie on your list of Christmas entertainments.I am talking about On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which is set during Christmastime. I already plugged the novel two years ago and recent developments regarding the next Bond movie made me revisit the novel. In other words, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Bond's nemesis and primary antagonist in both novel and movie may be featured in Spectre. Rereading parts of the novel, I am more and more convinced that this will be the case.

So why is the novel such a great Christmas read? Partially because of the setting, of course: snowy Switzerland. Because of its key element of violence, which illustrates the darker aspects of the holiday. Blofeld may seem like a benevolent aristocrat, a Santa Claus of sorts, he harvests in fact a very sinister plan. Christmastime is not only about the Nativity, it is also about the murder of the Innocents, triggered by the paranoia of King Herod, about troubled times bringing up an uncertain future. Traditionally, it is also a time of Pagan excesses and gluttony, something that is illustrated again in Blofeld's scheme: he wants to destroy livestocks through biological warfare (his first "victim" in the novels is the production of British turkeys). Through a very modern, even contemporary theme, you have in fact expression of centuries old symbols. Anyway, it is a great read, and if you don't have time to start it now, give yourself an evening to watch the movie adaptation. Here is a scene from it, when Blofeld reveals his plan to Bond.

Un Noël sous la flotte?

Photo prise à Montréal, en 2008, une fontaine dans un centre d'achat quelconque, je sais plus lequel, décoré pour les Fêtes. Ça illustre mon propos. Je viens de lire cette nouvelle. Je le savais un peu déjà, mais elle est assez déprimante, merci. Ironique: je viens au Québec notamment pour vivre un vrai Noël hivernal, et je me retrouve avec sans doute un Noël dans la sloshe. Au moins, j'aurai marché dans la neige. Et il me reste le vrai sapin, la famille, les amis, la dinde, enfin tout le reste.

The accents from home

A little bit of news from me: I am spending the Christmas at home in Chicoutimi, as you might know from my previous post. Within 48 hours, I travelled from the UK to the city where I grow up, in the Northern part of Québec. And it is funny, but as I was getting closer and closer to Québec, from the gate in Heathrow, I could hear Québec accents. It is one of the little pleasures of coming back home: familiar voices, then full on familiar environment. And from the morning in Montreal to the journey up North (although we don't say we go up to Chicoutimi or the Saguenay region, we say we go down the river, but I digress), I could hear more and more accents from the Saguenay region. It felt good. And I think even my own accent got stronger.

À l'heure chicoutimienne

Si vous avez remarqué qu'il y a eu un hiatus dans la tenue de Vraie Fiction, c'est parce que j'étais récemment en déplacement. J'ai voyagé depuis deux jours pour les vacances de Noël. J'écris donc à partir de la maison familiale à Chicoutimi. J'écris donc à l'heure chicoutimienne.

Frosty England

This picture was taken a few days by a local resident for the Facebook page of the town where I live. I saved it, as usual shamelessly, so I could share it on this blog. you see a frosty pathway by the Thames. The temperature was quite cold at the beginning of the week, for England anyway. I thought it was a beautiful picture, of a typical frosty English winter morning.

Du vin chaud pour Noël?

 Depuis que j'ai redécouvert le vin chaud cette année, je me demande si je ne devrais pas en faire moi même pour Noël cette année. Bon, c'est pas comme si on ne prenait pas beaucoup d'alcool et si on n'en avait pas déjà en masse, mais c'est une petite tradition de Noël qui est fort agréable, surtout pratiquée dans les pays froids.On en a déjà fait une fois durant les Fêtes, c'était je crois mon idée, mais je ne sais pas pourquoi, on ne l'a jamais répété. Peut-être que le résultat n'a pas été très convaincant. Il faudrait tout de même réessayer.