Foggy days and nights

I long for snow, I wish there was some, but so far no snow has fallen on this part of England. That said, I was lucky in other ways, as since yesterday, but especially today, the fog has fallen over this bit of land like a thick pea soup. And I love a foggy day. I barely read on the train today because I spent time looking outside, everything is so beautiful and eerie. I took this picture of the pub by the train station tonight. Not a very good one (compared to, say, this one), but it gives a good idea of the thickness of it. Walking through the fog today and tonight, in the cool English winter air was really enjoyable. I had to be careful though, especially at rush hour, as one could barely see two meters away in some places and I was wearing a black coat. But what a beautiful sight. There are not many places as beautiful as this town on a foggy day. Or a foggy night.

Les décorations de Noël mignonnes

J'ai blogué il y a deux jours sur les décorations quétaines pour l'arbre de Noël, ce soir je blogue sur les décorations mignonnes. C'est l'Avent, il faut bien que je blogue sur le sujet. Cette décoration-ci a à peu près mon âge, je ne me rappelle pas une année sans qu'il y en ait comme celle-ci. Des souris, des pandas, des écureuils, des koalas, des ours, tous portant les couleurs de Noël. L'un tenant une canne à sucre, un bas de Noël, ou comme cette souris portant le bonnet du Père Noël et tenant une chandelle à la main. Je ne sais pas ou mon père les a trouvées, mais elles sont là depuis très longtemps. Des décorations mignonnes qui étaient mes préférées enfant. Je ne sais pas trop pourquoi, j'ai pris cette photo l'année dernière. Moi qui déteste les rongeurs, j'aime tout de même bien cette souris.

Tyr's Day

We are Tuesday today, which means, of course, Tyr's Day. The day of the Norse god Tyr. I have blogged about the god Tyr, this too little known Viking god here and here. I have decided to celebrate the almost forgotten Aesir (the name of the Viking gods) again, because I like him a lot. Therefore I have downloaded again a picture from Gods & Heroes from Viking Mythology. Drawn of course by the admirable Giovanni Caselli. It is from the story of Fenrir being chained, when Tyr had to give his hand as guarantee to the demonic wolf. An admirable act of courage and sacrifice by Tyr, as he knew he was sacrificing his hand for the greater good. The image is in fact the second half of this one. You see Tyr with his freshly chopped off hand, Odin behind him and other gods, looking very carefree in spite of the gravity of the moment. So yes, Tyr is my favourite Viking god because of his courage and this is an example why. It may not be as impressive as fighting a giant, but it is much more admirable.

Quand la rivière Saguenay brûle

Je lis assez peu les nouvelles régionales d'habitude, pas parce que j'oublie mes racines, mais parce que je les trouve souvent un tantinet déprimantes. Mais bon, j'essaie de me tenir au courant malgré tout, de faire un effort pour me garder au fait de ce qui se passe au Saguenay. Et puis il arrive quelque chose qui te frappe soudainement: j'apprends aujourd'hui que le pont Dubuc qui lie Chicoutimi de Chicoutimi-Nord, a été touché par les flammes d'un bateau embrasé qui passait en dessous. Le cégep de Chicoutimi est fermé et la ville est dans un certain état d'urgence. Ca n'a pas la même ampleur que le Déluge, mais je ne peux m'empêcher d'y penser un peu. Je pense un peu plus au séisme de 1988, arrivé à peu près dans la même période. Deux évènements que j'ai vécus. Aujourd'hui, je me sens loin de chez moi.

A pheasant for Christmas

No, no, I don't mean as the main course of the Christmas dinner! I meant as a decoration for the Christmas tree. This picture was taken last year at my parents' place and it is of one of the birds decorations we have in the Christmas tree there. We have a whole lot: partridges, robins, blue jays, among other birds. And pheasants. Like this one. I think it is a pheasant anyway, I might be wrong. If there are amateur ornithologist among you, or even specialists, please do not hesitate to correct me. I thought about blogging about it because, until in relatively recent years, I had never seen a live pheasant. Now I notice them on my commute, by the train station. In the wild, no less. But for years, the only ones I had seen were in the branches of our Christmas tree.

Les décorations de Noël quétaines

Bon, bien, il faut bien l'admettre: le Temps des Fêtes en est aussi un de mauvais goût. Pas toujours, pas tout le temps, néanmoins c'est le temps du clinquant, des sapins roses, des cantiques repris par des artistes sans talent, voire sans voix, des arrangements poches et bien entendu des décorations cheaps et horribles. Enfin bref, Noël c'est souvent quétaine, surtout dans ses décorations. On n'y échappe pas: même l'arbre familial à Chicoutimi, pourtant superbement décoré et tout ce qu'il y a de plus magnifique et d'exemplaire comme arbre, a quelques trucs laids ici et là. Notamment des espèces de fenêtres/vitraux en plastique, hérités je crois de ma grand-mère. Ceux-là, on les cache dans un coin peu visible. et puis il y a ce truc-là, que vous voyez sur la photo de gauche. Il venait d'un centre de table (ma mère achète toujours un nouveau centre de table aux Fêtes, on recycle les décorations pour le sapin le Noël d'après). Mon petit frère l'a surnommé 'le Père Noël heureux d'avoir une barre dans le c..."Parce qu'en effet, il tient à cause d'une barre bien ancrée dans le postérieur, laquelle sert d'ailleurs à l'attacher à l'arbre, et parce qu'il a les joues rosies de bonheur et a l'air de sourire sous sa barbe. En fait, de le voir tendre les bras comme ça, il faut bien admettre qu'il semble enthousiaste. Ne soyons pas crus, mais il a l'air un peu de ça. Et c'est peut-être la décoration la plus quétaine à être dans l'arbre de Noël familial, mais rien qu'à cause du mauvais goût, affiché et involontaire, on la garde.

Nothing Lasts Forever

As I mentioned on this post, tis the season to be reading, so I this post is plugging a book for your Christmas reads. If you have plenty of time to give to it during the holidays, I suggest you spend one day to read it through, in one sitting or almost. The novel is Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp. I do not have the luxury of time, so I am "only" nearly halfway through it. I am making it last, so to speak, hopefully until Christmas day. In short, the story is about a private investigator, Joe Leland, stuck in a corporate building on Christmas eve as terrorists took over the place.

If it sounds very much like the plot of Die Hard, it is because it IS the plot of Die Hard. Or rather, Die Hard took the plot of the novel and adapted it to well, an 80s action flick (as you probably knew as it says it right on the front cover at your right). It gave birth to a very successful (if often dumb) movie franchise and a whole action movie sub-genre with countless clones. I always enjoyed Die Hard, I loved the premise, but I never found the movie as brilliant as people seems to believe it is. Too much of a conservative libertarian fantasy for my taste. Joe Leland very different from his movie equivalent: he is a bitter, divorced and widower, a father and grandfather, so he is no longer in his prime. He is also a sobered alcoholic, haunted by many, many demons. It is not his family he is visiting, but his estranged daughter. The movie was a fantasy, the novel is a gritty, violent, uncompromising piece of crime fiction. I mentioned before that there is a darker side to Christmas. Well, if you do enjoy this dark side, do read Nothing Lasts Forever.

Le temps des pâtés à la viande

Mon petit frère PJ a fait des pâtés à la viande. Vous trouverez la recette sur son blogue, ici. C'est de loin son billet le plus populaire. Il me vient parfois, relativement souvent, une rage de pâtés à la viande, la dernière en date homologuée sur ce blogue était en avril. Lors de mon dernier passage au Québec, les réserves de ma famille étaient à sec, alors je n'en ai pas mangé. Bon, je ne suis pas mort de faim, mais ça veut dire que je n'en ai pas mangé depuis Noël dernier. Je vais peut-être finir par me discipliner et en faire moi-même. Parce que c'est vraiment idéal pour les Fêtes. En Angleterre, ce qui accompagne le souper de Noël (et pas du réveillon parce qu'ils ne fêtent pas le réveillon), ce sont des saucisses enrobées dans le bacon (ce qu'ils appellent pigs in blankets). C'est plutôt bien, mais l'expatrié que je suis préfèrerais des pâtés à la viande. Alors ce serait bien que j'importe ce pâté, ou cette variété québécoise du pork pie, en sol britannique. Et si je n'en fais (toujours) pas cette année, j'invite mon lectorat à utiliser la recette sur le blogue de mon petit frère.

Find the turtle doves

I am longing for snow, so I calm my longing by looking at pictures my father sent me of my very wintery home town of Chicoutimi. Here is one I particularly love, of the family's snowy garden. Can you find and count the turtle doves? The garden is full of birds all year round, various species of birds, but in the last few years there are many and mostly turtle doves. My father loves them and gets protective of them. They are particularly fitting during winter, and I guess even more so during Christmastime, because of this song. Here they camouflage fairly well in the snow, but you can still see them.

Les affres du samedi

Parfois, le samedi prend des airs de calvaire, ou à tout le moins de purgatoire. Lorsque je me suis réveillé ce matin il y avait un concert de marteaux qui venait de je ne sais pas où. Ce n'était pas particulièrement bruyant, mais le matin quand on se réveille, ce n'est pas harmonieux comme le chant des oiseaux. J'ai pu voir par la suite qu'il y a des rénovateurs qui travaillent sur le toit du garage du bloc. Et aujourd'hui, je dois faire mon magasinage pour les Fêtes, faire le ménage ici et enfin bref, ce sera un samedi occupé jusqu'à ce soir.

Reindeer!

Today is Saint Nick's Day, which I was reminded of by a German colleague. It is widely celebrated in many parts of Europe. For me, it is this legend/song and the day was this awful movie my brother PJ offered me one Christmas. But since I already blogged about it in French tonight, I thought I would blog about the modern Santa Claus, or rather the reindeer that carry Santa around the world. I took this picture at the Christmas fayre yesterday. They often have reindeer in such fayres. I have seen reindeer in captivity like this fairly often, and at least once... on the table. It was during a family holiday in Sweden, our hosts, the family of the foreign exchange student who had lived with ours for a year (our Swedish sister as my bros and I call her) had prepared this very unique roast. Delicious, I have to confess. Of course, I had reindeer meat, which we call caribou in Québec, on other occasions, but it was in a tourtière, so I did not distinctly remember the taste until I had this experience in Sweden. I associated the animal a lot with this country, maybe as much as I associate it with Santa Claus. And I have to say, seeing them so close yesterday made me feel guilty about eating their meat.

La légende de Saint Nicolas

"Ils étaient trois petits enfants
Qui s'en allaient glaner aux champs."

Nous sommes la Saint-Nicolas, la fête du Saint qui nous a donné le Père Noël. On oublie souvent qu'il y avait à l'origine du personnage jovial un autre qui, sans être sinistre lui-même, vivait dans un monde beaucoup plus sombre et beaucoup plus cruel. Il était le héros de bien des histoires terrifiantes, vous pouvez en lire certaines ici. Mais préférée est celle qui a inspiré cette chanson, sur laquelle j'ai développé une obsession. J'ai déjà blogué sur celle-ci. Je souligne la fête en téléchargeant une version de la chanson. On oublie souvent que Noël a un côté sinistre. Je souligne ça aussi, avec cette légende.

Mulled wine

Tonight, there was a Christmas fayre in town, one of those outdoors markets that sell lots of charity things and plenty of food and drink, including mulled wine. An elderly man at one of the stands offered me a cup, I politely refused explaining: "I had plenty yesterday and woke up with a nasty headache." He replied, undeterred: "You may have had a worse wake up without it." This made me laugh, and I decided to make it our new great unknown line, the first of December and of Advent. A perfect one for this Christmas-related post and to its seasonal topic.

So yes, mulled wine. Yesterday, I drank this glass of mulled wine, in the company of Odin's owners. It was as an apéritif before one of the best restaurant dinners (suppers really as it was late) I had in ages, but I digress. I will blog about the food another time. Now, the wine. It was absolutely to die for, the best mulled wine I had in life. It was just warm enough, just spicy enough, with a nice tang to it, powerful in a soft way. Perfect for the cold winter night we had yesterday. I came to mulled as of late, one year in my twenties my parents and I made some to make Christmas a bit British, I think we used the recipe on Wikipedia. It had been good, but not like that one. I do drink it from time to time, but not very often as I am more of a beer drinker and I have had good ones, enjoyable ones, but it didn't strike me until last night on how good it can be. So I think it will become a Christmas tradition for me. My liver may suffer for it, but so what?

Le temps des beignes

Petit billet de l'Avent pour ceux qui ont une dent sucrée. Alors que Noël s'en vient, je me sens de plus en plus envie de manger des desserts familiaux. Je ne sais pas si c'est le cas dans les autres familles québécoises, mais Noël, ou à tout le moins l'hiver, est le temps de manger des beignes faits maison. Je l'ai notamment mentionné l'année dernière. Lorsque ma famille en fait, elle en fait en quantité industrielle, voir la photo à votre gauche. Mais ils sont faciles à manger, un soir d'hiver froid, après s'être gelés dehors. Je ne crois pas que j'aie l'équipement, encore moins l'espace, pour en faire ici. C'est dommage.

Liana Macellari Burgess, In Memoriam

A friend of mine reminded me today on Facebook that Liana Macellari Burgess died this day, 3rd of December 2007. She was of course the second wife and the widow of Anthony Burgess. My favourite writer. You can read her obituary in The Guardian here. I had the privilege to meet her during a symposium on her husband a few months before her death, when I was living in Liverpool. An amazing and important moment of my life. I blogged about it here. I cannot add more to it than I already did then. I will only add that I thought a lot about her today and about this meeting, when she spoke to me in French and I tried to speak as much as I could in Italian. And that I can witness that she was a great lady.

La cuvée Ciné-cadeau 2013?

Je cherchais Ciné-cadeau sur Google. J'ai vu que la page web n'avait pas été renouvelée depuis l'année dernière. Sur la programmation des Fêtes 2013-2014 de Télé-Québec, on retrouve un document PDF comme grille-horaire, asses rébarbatif. Y a-t-il un site pour Ciné-cadeau cette année? Suis-je allé voir trop tôt? J'ai comme un peu de misère à m'y retrouver dans le document PDF... enfin je veux dire, l'horaire. Cela dit, une fois que je m'y fais... Je me rends compte que je ne suis plus un enfant: il y a des titres qui je le remarquent reviennent depuis quelques années déjà et je ne les connais pas. Enfin je ne les ai jamais vus. Enfin bref, que pensez-vous de la cuvée Ciné-cadeau cette année?

A good deed for Advent

As we are the second day of Advent, I thought my readership might like to read a Christmas story. So here is a little true life Christmastime story, so it is totally original and exclusive to this blog, that happened to me two days ago, just before Advent. It is a good deed I did, which made me quite happy. Not only Christians are good for goodness's sake, if I can say so myself, Godless men can be too. A little foreword before I start telling it: I do buy Advent calendar sometimes. Not every year, it is not a tradition I follow religiously (ha, ha, ha), but I do enjoy one small chocolate a day. In school, we had those paper advent calendar with a moralistic story on every day, instead of chocolate. It always ended with a Nativity Scene on the 24. In a way, this is my own, secular feel-good story. But it is not really moralistic.

So this year, I had in mind to buy one. Last year I had a very old-fashioned one from Marks & Spencer, with a Nativity Scene on it. This year, I had in mind to buy it from the local sweet shop. There was a beautiful one, with a lush old-fashioned image on the cover, very Victorian, with a jolly Santa Claus delivering the presents in a luxurious salon. There was a huge Christmas tree too. The cover was so beautiful, one would be reluctant to break it by opening holes on it. There was one left when I arrived at the sweet shop, a few minutes before closing time. I took it, was about to pay for it, when a girl of about eight and her mother walked in the shop and eagerly went where the calendars were. I suddenly heard a big cry: "Oh no, it is GONE!". I then saw the girl looking at the empty space on the shelf where the calendar had been. Her mother was telling her gently that there were others with a different image (but let's face it, the others looked pretty lame) and that she should have bought it earlier... And then of course I turned around and said: "I am the one who took it, but here it is, take it." The girl took it, looked at it a long while, as if she was not sure it was real, her mum had to tell her to thank me before she said a word. So that was my good deed of the day and my first Christmas good deed of the season. And I don't have an Advent calendar this year, but cannot care less.

Le sorbier enneigé

Voici une autre photo envoyée par mon père, du sorbier sous la neige. Je la publie pour plusieurs raisons. Parce que je m'ennuie de la neige d'abord (air connu) et je commence à espérer qu'il en tombe ici. À défaut d'en avoir de la vraie, je vais donner à Vraie Fiction une apparence hivernale. Je la publie aussi parce que j'associe souvent le sorbier à l'automne. Alors je trouvais ça intéressant de le montrer sous un jour plus hivernal.

The Medieval Christmas

Today is the first day of Advent, so this is the official countdown to Christmas. Which means a seasonal change in my readings habits. Tis the season to be reading, and so on. I have recently found in Waterstone's The Medieval Christmas by a certain Sophie Jackson. I don't know how well researched it is, I am not sure if I will find anything I don't know already and the front cover is somewhat nauseating, but all the same, it is on my current Christmas read and I know I will enjoy it. Like this book on Christmas traditions I bought for mum years ago, and ended up reading myself. I have other books too, which I will blog about later this month. Regarding The Medieval Christmas, I know I will love it because I associate Christmas with medieval times, but also Pagan-influenced traditions and imagery. And also because it is one of those books that will calm my melancholia of missing Dungeons & Dragons (because I associate the holiday to the game, see this post, among others, that explains why). In any cases, it should be an easy, pleasant, seasonal read.

L'Avent

Je blogue tardivement aujourd'hui, mais je tenais tout de même à souligner que c'est le premier jour de l'Avent. Dans le calendrier liturgique, ça veut dire la période de temps avant Noël. Dans le calendrier moins liturgique, on est tout de même plus ou moins dans le Temps des Fêtes. Afin de le souligner, je télécharge ici une photo de l'hiver chicoutimien, avec les premières décorations apparues sur le terrain familial. Et je commence aussi la saison, pour ainsi dire, avec un vieux cantique assez peu connu hors du monde francophone. Mais je ne crois pas avoir besoin de préciser lequel, je pense. Je vois laisse deviner pourquoi celui-ci en particulier pour le début de l'Avent.