Happy Christmas from Lunenburg

Just to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas from Lunenburg. I put this photo onto my Facebook and have to admit it isn’t my house.

It seems that even here in Nova Scotia, people suffer from the North American ‘tacky light syndrome’.

Lunenburg has more tasteful lights, with the little sponsored trees at the bandstand.

And the decorated  fishing boats at the harbour.

They make for a very pleasant walk along the front.

It has snowed here this morning and this is the view from our window into the garden.

We should have a white Christmas.

Jeff took this photo!!! It’s a bit out of focus! – but might make a nice painting.

Have a wonderful Christmas, and I’ll see what I have to report in the New Year.

A Snowy New Year from Lunenburg

We had a fall of snow here in Lunenburg before Christmas and then it rained, so that we had just a slightly snowy Christmas.  We looked on while most of Northern Europe was being hit by severe snowfalls, and wished for enough snow to go skiing.

Yesterday, 1st January 2010, the snow started gently in the afternoon and by 5 pm Jeff and I decided to walk to Louise and Cameron’s for dinner, rather than drive. It snowed all evening and we had a tiring walk home through deep snow.

This morning, we woke to the best (or worst) snow we’ve had since last winter. We decided to walk into Lunenburg and take some photos. It was an interesting walk over Hospital Hill, where we looked out over the harbour.

The old buildings in the town looked good with their coverings of snow and icicles.

Many houses  still had their Christmas door decorations and the shop displays looked very pretty.

The  snowplough was trying to keep the streets clear, but the snow fell quickly.

When we moved here to Lunenburg, the orange building ( a great tratoria) was one of the brightest in the town. Over this past year the buildings on either side have been renovated and painted in very contrasting colours.

There has been a lot of discussion in the town regarding these colours. People seem to either love them or hate them. I wasn’t too sure about the green, but quite liked the raspberry building.

They have attracted visitors and there are always tourists photographing them. One thing is certain, these historic  buildings have been preserved, rather than being allowed to fall into disrepair.

The dark grey, white and red building is also owned by the same owner and sits on the corner across from the raspberry building. Its colours are more traditional and perhaps more acceptable to the majority.

Jeff went off to the Hardware store while I was taking photos and the snow continued.

We walked home, back over the hill along a very snowy main road!

We’d had an exciting walk and some exercise after all we’d eaten over Christmas.

Tonight the snow seems to be turning to rain. I hope all this snow hasn’t gone by morning!

A King’s Christmas at Lunenburg

On Friday night Jeff and I attended the King’s Christmas concert at St John’s Church in Lunenburg. Last year we were at the Concert of 100 Candles. The setting of St John’s Anglican Church is just magnificent and makes any concert a delight.

The  Chapel Choir of the University of King’s College in Halifax comprises of 20 choristers selected through annual auditions.  They entered the concert from behind us and sang Angelus Ad Virginem as they walked down the aisle.

The carols were interspersed with readings and poems.

A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas is one of my favourites and Christmas is never Christmas without listening to it.

Suzie LeBlanc, the renowned Canadian soprano, entertained us with some solos.

Then an amusing reading of The Twelve Days of Christmas, A Correspondence, by John Julius Norwich.  A different slant on the old Twelve Days of Christmas we all know.

25th December

My dearest darling
That partridge, in that lovely little pear tree! What an enchanting, romantic, poetic present!

Bless you and thank you.

Your deeply loving Emily

26th December

Mr dearest darling Edward
The two turtle doves arrived this morning and are cooing
away in the pear tree as I write.

I’m so touched and grateful.
With undying love, as always, Emily

27th December

My darling Edward

You do thinks of the most original presents:

whoever thought of sending anybody three French hens?

Do they really come all the way from France?

It’s a pity that we have no chicken coops, but I expect we’ll find some.

Thank you, anyway, they’re lovely.
Your loving Emily

28th December

Dearest Edward

What a surprise – four calling birds arrived this morning.
They are very sweet, even if they do call rather loudly –
they make telephoning impossible. BUT I expect they’ll calm
down when they get used to their new home.

Anyway, I’m very grateful – of course I am.
Love from Emily

29th December

Dearest Edward

The postman has just delivered five most beautiful gold
rings, one for each finger, and all fitting perfectly.

A really lovely present – lovelier in a way than birds, which do
take rather a lot of looking after.

The four that arrived yesterday are still making a terrible row, and I’m afraid
none of use got much sleep last night.

Mummy says she wants us to use the rings to ‘wring’ their necks – she’s only
joking, I think; though I know what she means. But I love the rings.

Bless you Love, Emily

30th December

Dear Edward

Whatever I expected to find when I opened the front door
this morning, it certainly wasn’t six socking great geese
laying eggs all over the doorstep.

Frankly, I rather hoped you had stopped sending me birds – we have no room for them
and they have already ruined the croquet lawn.

I know you meant well, but – let’s call a halt, shall we?
Love, Emily

31st December

Edward

I thought I said no more birds; but this morning I woke up
to find no less than seven swans all trying to get into our
tiny goldfish pond.

I’d rather not think what happened to the goldfish.

The whole house seems to be full of birds – to
say nothing of what they leave behind them.

Please, please STOP
Your Emily

1st January

Frankly, I think I prefer the birds.

What am I to do with eight milkmaids – AND their cows?

Is this some kind of a joke? If so, I’m afraid I don’t find it very amusing.
Emily

2nd January

Look here Edward, this has gone far enough. You say you’re
sending me nine ladies dancing; all I can say is that judging
from the way they dance, they’re certainly not ladies.

The village just isn’t accustomed to seeing a regiment of
shameless hussies with nothing on but their lipstick
cavorting round the green – and it’s Mummy and I who get
blamed.

If you value our friendship – which I do less and
less – kindly stop this ridiculous behaviour at once.

Emily

3rd January

As I write this letter, ten disgusting old men are
prancing abour all over what used to be the garden -before
the geese and the swans and the cows got at it; and several
of them, I notice, are taking inexcusable liberties with the
milkmaids.

Meanwhile the neighbours are trying to have us
evicted.

I shall never speak to you again.
Emily

4th January

This is the last straw. You know I detest bagpipes.

The place has now become something between a menagerie and a
madhouse and a man from the Council has just declared it
unfit for habitation.

At least Mummy has been spared this last outrage; they took her away yesterday afternoon in an
ambulance.

I hope you’re satisfied.

5th January

Sir
Our client, Miss Emily Wilbraham, instructs me to inform
you that with the arrival on her premises a half-past seven
this morning of the entire percussion section of the
Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and several of their friends
she has no course left open to her but to seek an injunction
to prevent your importuning her further.

I am making arrangements for the return of much assorted livestock.

I am, Sir, Yours faithfully,
G.CREEP
Solicitor-at-law

This was another top class concert held in our little town of Lunenburg. We are so lucky to have such wonderful facilities and entertainment.

We look forward to the next concert at St John’s.

Stuart McLean and ‘Dave Cooks the Turkey’

(Written by Jeff)

Hi Folks,

I thought today I would like to share with you one of the most important, if not critical, aspects of my life.

I have never taken anything very seriously, preferring to find an irreverent, facetious, quirky, exaggerated, or any other form of humorous take in any situation. Those who know me will have had to suffer their conversations being interrupted by some quip or seemingly funny remark. I offer no apologies for this, I cannot help it. As the Viennese trick cyclist would have us believe, it really is all the fault of my childhood.

I am sufficiently old to have grown up in the days when radio was king and the one eyed monster merely a dream of another obsessed Scotsman, John Logie Baird. The greatest magic as a child was to go to bed early, that being one of the few warm locations in those pre-central heating days, and listen in the dark to the radio. There was the thrill of Sherlock Holmes stories and the adventure of Dan Dare’s space exploits, but the greatest delight lay with; Round The Horne, Hancock’s Half Hour, The Glums, Whacko and of course, The Goon Show. It was the latter, with its anarchic take on life, and British society in particular with its snobbishly inflexible social structure, that appealed.

The onset of adult life did not result in a more adult view of it. The slow development of television gave us some comedy shows, but mainly of the crudely slapstick variety. Although living in an age of visual media I am stuck in the age of the word and for me it is that that is critical in humour. Eventually television produced some acceptable comedy with Not the Nine O’Clock News and Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, but not until the the BBC found the visual equivalent of the surreal take of the Goon Show in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, did it match its radio output. But with the passing of that series, comedy on television virtually died and radio all but abandoning the field, I am left yearning for the “good old days”, like any other sad old sod.

Happily, some ten or so years ago I discovered an hilarious series of books by an American called Garrison Keillor. It transpired that he was a radio comedian in Minnesota, and all of his books are based on his broadcasts. During the broadcast of, A Prairie Home Companion, he describes a “town that time forgot and decades cannot improve, where the women are strong, the men good looking and all the children above average.” He, like all good comedians, is an acute observer of life as many of his tales clearly indicate. One of his stories describes a very old couple, married sixty odd years and the wife has to go to the hospital. Living some forty miles away means that they have to drive themselves there. Halfway to town they stop at a diner for coffee and a piece of pie, after which the husband goes to the rest room. When he comes out of the rest room, he exits the diner and drives home, wondering why his wife isn’t in the house. In his book, ‘A Radio Romance’, a radio show is taken on a road trip of small towns, the cast traveling in a bus. The toilet is no more than a closed in space that has a seat and a hole down onto the road. When a new member of the cast uses this facility, the driver steers onto the gravel verge of the road, sending a shower of stones into the posterior of the greenhorn.

Apparently Garrison Keillor is still doing his weekly radio show and although I now live on the edge of the American continent here in Atlantic Canada, we unfortunately cannot pick up that station’s signal.

However, last year, not long after we arrived in Nova Scotia, we had driven out one cold, snowy, December day and treated ourselves to a picnic in the car at some lonely shoreside location. The radio was switched on in the hope of catching some lunchtime concert to accompany the tuna sandwiches. Instead we listened to this very funny seasonal tale. Just recently my little apple blossom has researched extensively and discovered that this story was called, Dave Cooks the Turkey, by Stuart McLean.

Stuart McLean is a Canadian version of Garrison Keillor with his roots firmly in radio. His Radio show, ‘The Vinyl Cafe’ features stories of Dave, owner of a second hand record shop and his wife and family. It is the family that is the focus of his humour, often highlighting situations that will be all too familiar to many of us. The link below is to this riotous Christmas episode and is our gift to all of those who will receive nothing else from us.

This ‘link’ does not seem to work so to open this present simply cut and paste the address below into the destination bar. And for those of you who, like me, are challenged by the cutting and pasting bit, simply search for Stuart McLean and Dave Cooks the Turkey. Otherwise you will have to buy the CD from Amazon.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=stuart+mclean+dave+cooks+the+turkey&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari

Please note that you will need about 20 minutes to listen to this tale, but it is well worth it.

Wishing everyone a very merry holiday season, Jeff and Jackie.