A West Coast Canadian New Year’s Eve
Snapshots from the past two days ...
--a large house, complete with wood-burning stove, located in a very small town on Vancouver Island … dark, wet, and chilly outside
--before the champagne (below) but after a Caesar and a wee drop or two o’ red wine, an hour spent watching the first episode of Star Trek: New Voyages and laughing our heads off at how perfectly this labour of love incorporates every single visual, textual, and musical cliché from TOS. Unable to decide whether or not that’s intentional.
--a $100 bottle of champagne carefully, reverently divided among 6 people, with many dire warnings “not to spill a drop”
--10 adults and 2 older children seated around two large tables pulled together, with lasagne al forno for the main course, followed by a heated discussion of Canadian politics
--for those who couldn’t stay ‘til midnight, a cheap-and-cheerful bottle of bubbly to which our host takes a cleaver (not having a champagne sabre to hand) and slices off the cork-end (known as “beheading”), creating a perfect 45º angle for pouring. It’s a wonderful party-trick-and according to purists, the only way to open champagne.
--locally made chocolate cake and Clodhoppers for dessert
--Dick Clark on the TV, which we use for the countdown even though we are 3 hours behind
--outside in the drizzle: much banging of pots and pans and waving of extra-long sparklers
--more bubbly, though this one not beheaded (3rd bottle and not exactly counting, but bottles always split among at least 6 people, so doesn’t really matter)
--we old farts start dancing to 1970s music (such as the Doobey Brothers “Long Train Running”). Youngest neighbour’s child, a Hilary Duff fangirl, regards old farts with unabashed mix of amusement and disgust. Said child outlasts almost all of us; has to be dragged home by flagging parent sometime after 1 a.m.
--lateish the next morning-fresh lattes and new homemade cinnamon buns bursting out of a large blue bowl. A few streaks of sunlight. Two of us undertaking an earnest discussion of PDAs and making several unsuccessful attempts to “beam” files to each other. Two others, fed up to the teeth with techno-geekism, asserting their rights by shouting out cryptic crossword clues. I stress that everyone’s sober by now.
--a freak windstorm, causing a large tree to crash down onto the main road outside the house. Our host, who wielded a cleaver the night before, takes a chainsaw to it with great gusto (free firewood). My husband and I leave as he’s happily cutting up the last few branches.
--a large house, complete with wood-burning stove, located in a very small town on Vancouver Island … dark, wet, and chilly outside
--before the champagne (below) but after a Caesar and a wee drop or two o’ red wine, an hour spent watching the first episode of Star Trek: New Voyages and laughing our heads off at how perfectly this labour of love incorporates every single visual, textual, and musical cliché from TOS. Unable to decide whether or not that’s intentional.
--a $100 bottle of champagne carefully, reverently divided among 6 people, with many dire warnings “not to spill a drop”
--10 adults and 2 older children seated around two large tables pulled together, with lasagne al forno for the main course, followed by a heated discussion of Canadian politics
--for those who couldn’t stay ‘til midnight, a cheap-and-cheerful bottle of bubbly to which our host takes a cleaver (not having a champagne sabre to hand) and slices off the cork-end (known as “beheading”), creating a perfect 45º angle for pouring. It’s a wonderful party-trick-and according to purists, the only way to open champagne.
--locally made chocolate cake and Clodhoppers for dessert
--Dick Clark on the TV, which we use for the countdown even though we are 3 hours behind
--outside in the drizzle: much banging of pots and pans and waving of extra-long sparklers
--more bubbly, though this one not beheaded (3rd bottle and not exactly counting, but bottles always split among at least 6 people, so doesn’t really matter)
--we old farts start dancing to 1970s music (such as the Doobey Brothers “Long Train Running”). Youngest neighbour’s child, a Hilary Duff fangirl, regards old farts with unabashed mix of amusement and disgust. Said child outlasts almost all of us; has to be dragged home by flagging parent sometime after 1 a.m.
--lateish the next morning-fresh lattes and new homemade cinnamon buns bursting out of a large blue bowl. A few streaks of sunlight. Two of us undertaking an earnest discussion of PDAs and making several unsuccessful attempts to “beam” files to each other. Two others, fed up to the teeth with techno-geekism, asserting their rights by shouting out cryptic crossword clues. I stress that everyone’s sober by now.
--a freak windstorm, causing a large tree to crash down onto the main road outside the house. Our host, who wielded a cleaver the night before, takes a chainsaw to it with great gusto (free firewood). My husband and I leave as he’s happily cutting up the last few branches.