CHRISTMAS NO. 7 2019 - IT'S NEW YEAR'S EVE 2019

And so we say goodbye to 2019. 

Christmas is over.

Our Christmas tree angel is now a Squinty Angel.

We remember past New Year's Eve.  Here are Sandy and I exactly 13 years ago.  Peter K had all the neighbours for dinner.  We all awaited the arrival of Mairi and John's first baby. 

who is now 13 years old...          and celebrating with her friends today at our local pizzeria.


Brian and Maggie came for dinner this evening.  Iain made soup and also a lamb casserole.  Delicious!

We brought in the New Year together after a very pleasant evening chatting - they have a new grandchild - and enjoying some fun with pub quiz questions.

Maggie and I enjoy a good red wine which I bought at Hillfoot garage this evening. Gin ... I don't really drink it but I just love this label! (I took the photo recently in a local coffee shop.

CHRISTMAS 2019 NO. 6 - THE QUEEN'S SPEECH

As is my habit I asked if I could possibly hear the Queen's Christmas Message which comes on the TV at 3 pm Christmas Day.  

As a child growing up in Canada in the 1950s I have memories of everything stopping at 3 pm because we all sat down and listened on the radio to the Queen's Speech.  Like so many habits and practices you just did it.  It never entered my head to object (just like it never entered my head to talk back to the teacher, for example!)

My mother's parents came from England; my father's from England and Scotland (but he was never interested in 'The Old Country' as it was called).  Not so my mother and basically, Christmastime was whatever she did for it (which is basically the way things work in our household too).

The Canadian Flag pre-1965.

In an immigrant culture; there were no long established traditions; everyone  came from somewhere else and if they choose to do so, they practiced what they brought with them.  (And, of course, as the years go on, new traditions emerged.)

This Christmas here in Scotland we all gathered at Mairi and John's for presents and, later, dinner. The day was planned so that Margaret and I could sit down in peace and quiet at 3 pm in front of the TV.  Margaret told me she was in the habit of doing this also so I gave the children a pep-talk saying that the 2 of us (note: no one else) wanted to have 'Quiet Time' for 8 minutes to hear the Queen's Christmas Message.

And we did ... all 8 minutes of it ... in full ... and uninterrupted.  Harriet joined us and was as good as gold.

It was a wish fulfilled; a record established!  Really? What's the Big Deal? Well... as banal as it sounds I can categorically state that after 52 years of marriage anytime I put forward any request to do with listening to or watching a royal event it simply never happened. 

  

I live with someone who can't be bothered with the Royal family in all its various forms.  Fine.  I live in Scotland where many... most?... people feel the same.  That's fine too.  I happen to be a transplanted Colonial and come carrying all that baggage from one far outpost in the days when Britain had an Empire.  Over the years have I taken a (fairly casual) interest in who's doing what in the Queen's activities. The problem is that it invariably means that folk around me feel the need to bull-doze their way through the 'moment' because they think it is all so much bloody rubbish!

For example: recently when I was looking at some old photos (below) I recalled the time when I wanted to listen on a radio set to the Investiture of Prince Charles.  It was July 1st, 1969.

We were in the Mealy Mountains in Labrador on a mountaineering expedition.  Our friend Jim Messer organised the trip where we flew in on a (much loved) Beaver sea-plane (known affectionately as 'JAT' after its call-sign) with his pal Eric Henry who was based at the Goose Bay RCAF base.

We set up camp with our tents and spent about a week there exploring the unnamed mountains.  Below is [L-R] Jim and Barb in front with Iain and Eric behind.

I recall standing in the door of a tent with a headphone to my ear. The signal was good and I was able to hear the programme. 

At this point my companions who really thought this was the stupidest thing imaginable simply decided this was time for great hilarity and larked around me the whole time making sure that I couldn't hear.

And I didn't.

CHRISTMAS 2019 NO 5 - FAMILY PHOTO ROUND-UP

Recent photos of everyone...

Melanie and Alastair 

Indy

John and Mairi

Ishbel (12) and Granny Margaret

 Santa and Ellie (4)

 Santa and Harriet (6)

Alastair (11)

Mairi and Santa

Le Tout Ensemble

CHRISTMAS PREPARATIONS NO 4 - FOOD (complete with HICCUPS)

'Twas the night before Christmas...

All the work is done; now it is time to sit in front of the fire with a dram*...

This is a selection of Scottish cheeses bought for tomorrow. Crowdie a dry curd cheese; think cottage cheese without the moisture and with a much smaller curd.

This is cheese I bought in a delicatessen, The Brig Larder, in Kirkwall, Orkney.  I brought a selection home in September which we consumed over the ensuing weeks ... with the exception of this one.  Last week when I was making a big batch of macaroni and cheese I ran short of cheese and decided to cut into this one which was still in its waxed coat with the red label around it.

Well... what a shock I got!  This cheese looks like a piece of coal but it is soft enough to cut, and ... yes, it tastes like cheddar.

The label says it is 'Flaming - the first all black cheddar cheese'.  Looking on the internet I found "This truly unique cheese is made with charcoal from the Featherstone mines in Yorkshire."

But to quote from Harriet: "Eugghghgh... that's disgusting!"  Now I am a person who can and does eat anything; I have a cast iron stomach.  But I want to declare this is (but does not taste) absolutely revolting!  I mean who would eat this?!  I didn't even know you could make cheese of that colour!

Not one to waste food, I eat a little bit every day with a piece of excellent fully flavoursome 'Fenland Traditional' Cambridgeshire celery (from Waitrose) and it is fine; no ill effects ... but Thank You... never again!

Now that the run up to Christmas is over I can shine a light on 'the backroom helper'.  This is Iain, to whom all Christmas is "Bah Humbug', at work in the kitchen.

* * * * * * * * * AND FINALLY * * * * * * * * * 

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care ...

The children have hung up their stockings on the Kedddy fireplace in their living room.  Tomorrow we are going to join them and Granny Margaret for Christmas dinner after the Queen's Speech.

My lovely Norwegian Christmas stocking knitted by Ragna some years ago.

Shut down the computer ...

Ragna's stockings - mini version, again bought at the Norwegian Julefest over the years.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

* Small crisis... backing out of my garage mid-afternoon I became aware that I had a flat tyre.  My car is now sitting out on the street not because we couldn't sort out the tyre (which hasn't been sorted) but because it has been drawn to my attention that the paperwork for my vehicle tax is not right and until I get it right I cannot get help from the lovely AA people to sort the tyre.  (There is no spare; it's a repair kit only as is the way these days.)

So ....

At the moment I have the same feeling of helplessness as when the boat goes aground; there is absolutely nothing you can do about it until the tide comes in ..... so ... it is now time to put the fire on and have a dram ... and deal with it when things get operational again!

CHRISTMAS PREPARATIONS NO 3 - SHOPPING

I do all the shopping for presents and, on the whole, am quite happy to do this.  Most of the time I bump into people that I know.  Never one to be backward about coming forward I will often fall into conversation with someone and no more so that Glasgow wifies sitting on the train or flicking through the clothing rail in, say, Marks and Spencers.

The covered shopping mall in Buchanan Galleries is once of my usual haunts.  At this time of year I reckon the whole of the city should have a glass roof over it!

Lots of sparkles in the mall.

And Princes Square had this big tree in the middle of the central well.  I remember when our children's orchestra played there.  The shop owners on various levels situated around the open well really didn't like it at all... "too much noise"!

On the very top floor of Waterstone's, Sauchiehall Street, Bookstore is this piano in their coffee bar. It's for the public to play.

And this is the stool that was with it.  It is certainly very colourful!

I loved the funky signs at the Milngavie British Rail Station platform coffee kiosk.  I said to the chap serving the coffee that there was a wonderful smell of frying sausages coming from his van.  "It's just my after-shave!"  says he!

I came across an outdoor clothing store on Crow Road called Cotswolds.  It was like walking into one of the stores on 4th Avenue in Vancouver!  This brand of outdoor clothing caught my eye 'Arcteryx' which is made in North Vancouver.  I bought a jacket there when Alastair took us to the store some years ago...still have it.

Finally this photo illustrates one of the many headaches when it comes to parking around Glasgow.  Just about everywhere is now organised such that you have to pay at a machine for a parking ticket.  That's fair enough; what irritates me is that often the machines don't work, or in the case of the photo above, you can't find it!  Finally I asked a passer-by and she pointed to the hedge where it was very cleverly concealed.

CHRISTMAS PREPARATIONS NO 2 - BAKING

Ishbel, aged 12 but who will be 13 years on Hogmanny, has been taught at school how to make a Swiss Roll.

She made one a week ago in my kitchen with a bit of help (to turn it out) from me but this week she did it all herself.  Also she now knows her way around our cupboards so it's progress on all fronts!

It was a huge success - right from cracking eggs in the bowl (and no broken eggs nor mess) to the final product as seen below.

John took this picture recently of our Star Baker walking in the hills north of Glasgow.

* * * * * * *  AND COMING UP FROM BEHIND * * * * * * * * 

Ellie, nearly 5 years old, has been in the kitchen too. Here she is using bread dough that I prepared earlier to make little balls that sit on the pizza plate and have a dish of gooey cheese in the middle.  It all gets baked together.

Using an egg cup she used it as a 'cookie press' for each ball giving it a rather novel Chinese Hat sort of appearance... all good stuff!

Happiness is having your fingers squidging the dough (while getting flour everywhere)!

And here she is in a recent photo having some toast that she butters herself.  She is left-handed so teaching her use her knife so as not to scrape great dollops of butter from the butter dish is challenging!

CHRISTMAS PREPARATIONS NO 1: GETTING IN THE CHRISTMAS TREE

I was confessing to Ellie (4) this week that I just love Christmas!  We listed all the things that she and I like:   Santa Claus and Jingle Bell Rock music and singing Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, the school nativity play, baking cut-out cookies, sending off cards and presents and so on.

So to start things off with the many photos I have now gathered of all these activities, here is Ishbel getting our Christmas tree several weeks ago.

She and I drove to IKEA and headed for the big fenced off area in the car park. It was pouring rain so we dived into the tent for cover and were greeted with the wonderful smell of coniferous trees.

We headed straight back to our house... actually we didn't; we had a quick trip to Waterstone's book shop in the Braehead Mall before we returned home and she got out all the decorations of many, many years to put on the tree.

This is a photo of Don aged about 10 years old where he and Billy Kalke were bringing in the Christmas tree which, I think, my father would have obtained in one of his trips to haul trees to the coast.  The year would be about 1955.

This is a photo of one of my father's trucks hauling a load of ... what I thought was Christmas trees, but I see written on the back of this photo:

1947 Fargo 3 ton with load of [Karl] Maard posts

The aspect of this photo is interesting.  The truck is parked on the edge of the Trans-Canada Highway where we lived at the top of Tank Hill near Broadview Road in Salmon Arm.  Mt Ida is in the far distance. Across the road is Don Ruth's orchard.

* * * * * * * POST SCRIPT * * * * * * * * *

Ishbel found these Christmas stockings which I have made over the years starting in Christmas 1966 when I made one for Iain (and his 3 other house-mates at that time).  

Harriet and Ellie discovered them stuck on the bookshelf like this and were really upset that there wasn't one for them.   The next generation has taken over both Auntie Ish's stocking and Uncle Alastair's.  It was hard for them to get their head around the fact that these were made long before they were even thought of!

SADDLE SHOES

I was reading a book review in the TLS (No. 6067) in July. The book is The Sports Shoe, A History from Field to Fashion by Thomas Turner and published by Bloomsbury. This image was placed next to the article.

It's a photo of saddle shoes on the LIFE magazine cover June 7, 1937. Apparently it is a photo of college girls but the point of interest for the cover is the shoes. And that is what caught my eye.

Meanwhile this is the cover of the current book.  

The book blurb says that it is about

"The story of the sneaker's rise from the first Victorian tennis shoes to the Nike Air Max and beyond 

Moving from the athletic field to the shopping mall, Thomas Turner tells a fresh story of the evolution of the sports shoe against the changing landscape of society, sport, fashion, industry, and technology. The Sports Shoe takes us on a journey from the first Victorian tennis shoes to the adidas Superstar and the innovative technologies of Nike Air Max. ... [It features] common perceptions of this hugely desirable product, this book is a must-have for any sneaker collector, historian of popular culture, or anyone interested in the place of athletic footwear in our lives today."

A review states:

"This book places sports shoes within their wider social context so we can all truly appreciate their significance.” –  Rebecca Shawcross, author of 'Shoes: An Illustrated History', and Senior Shoe Curator, Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, UK"

Ironically, the image they have used is actually not a sports shoe but what I fondly remember as saddle shoes. They are really an 'Oxford' type of shoe (not a 'sneaker' which are rubber based).

And here I am with my much loved pair in about 1958 or 1959. I would be about 16 years old and that is my bike. Behind is the front of our house (facing the Trans-Canada Highway at Broadview Corner).

And this is simply a close-up for the record.