Shhhhhhhhh

You might just hear the snow falling......

We had protracted, but easily solved, problems with the car.  Despite leaving it to charge all night, it still refused to start. So Michel took the battery out for us and ran us up to Marcel at SOS Mechanique.  The battery was beyond repair :-(.  So now we have a new one and instructions to disconnect it when we're not here.  And the car runs.

There are no great projects presenting themselves at the moment. The house is remarkably complete.  Ali has sewn and read - she hopes to join book-club in the UK by Skype next week.  I have painted a little, and am trying to paint figures, never my strong suit!

I have begun to establish the snow-shoe trail, but it's hard work and I haven't yet reached the turn off the main trail.  More today.

And we need to go shopping; our food supplies are getting limited, although we could easily, albeit rather boringly, survive two or three days lock down.  But the weather forecast is OK, rising temperatures, albeit still below freezing, but relatively little snow.

Huh! despite the forecast at 6.00 am when I wrote the first part of this entry, it actually snowed all morning!

We were just getting ready to leave the house when this fellow marched into the middle of the meadow and started to peck around after the seeds the blue-Jays had dropped from the feeder! 


The longer feeder has to be 18 inches - almost 1/2 a metre - long.  He's a big lad!


Ali's new camera caught him.











In fact, Ali's camera caught all of the images on the blog today!

Beautiful!

We've made the first trail.

A Looong day!

So, we caught the Megabus from Toronto.  It was cold leaving the hotel, but we had a good stay there; it was a great way to be able to deal with our time-lag without holding the house to ransom!  And G's kindness in driving us to and fro made everything work really well.

But it was a tough trudge at minus something or other quite cold along snowy side-walks up to the Metro station.  From there, until we emerged at St Patrick Station, no less than four people offered to help us with our bags.  Probably a sign of our apparent decrepitude, but also a token of the generosity of welcome that we always feel in this country. 

I'm sure the same would have happened in Bristol!

Here's the Megabus - some of you will have received emails from there via its wi-fi!

So eventually across Montreal in a taxi (we learnt from last time!) to be met at Labelle by Michel. 

And home at about 9.45.


 




Breadmaker on at 9.30 this morning and then the adventure of trying to get the car to start - it's been in Michel's garage; dry but cold.  Eventually, we rang Marcel at SOS Mechanique who advises leaving it on charge and trying in the morning!

So, here we are.  Nice and snug, glorious view from the front door, what more could you want?

Moving on

Apparently, young Lila slept until a quarter to nine this morning!

After which we went to church for Gospel Service (!) with much eponymous music and a cracking sermon on Romans 8.  Then we went on to the Science Centre for a day of wonder and delights.

And now we're tired, off to packing and bed and then away to 107 tomorrow.

Hooray!  We've had a great time but now we need a rest!

Coooold!

Yesterday we woke to new snow-fall overnight and took breakfast in the conservatory again; and very good breakfast it is too!

Then we went in to Toronto for the day.  It was VERY cold, and the wind-chill  was high high which made me think that the bridge of my spectacles would stick to my nose!

Every time we came to a road junction, we had to move back from the road edge to stay in the lee of the buildings until the lights changed....

However, we are now proud "Distant members" of the AGO - the Art Gallery of Ontario.

It is such a good gallery, and we seem to visit at least twice a year, so that it was a real saving to join!  As well as all our favourites, the current exhibition is called "The great upheaval", 1910 to 1918.

Today, Saturday, G, J & L collected us after breakfast and we went in to bits of town before spending much of the day resting up for the Burns' Night supper this evening. We had a great time; it was a bit restrained by previous standards - no dancing to speak of although Ali and I managed a rather solitary "Gay Gordons" by the bar - but a very high quality of entertainment with pipers and dancers and song and all the expected toasts.

Mind, the amount of alcohol consumed was remarkably restrained (for Scots), probably helped by the staggering bar-prices!

Lila was absolutely captivated by the dance, and the live musicians; she lasted all the way to 10.30 with no fuss at all!

And here we are!

Night for now.

Here we are again.......

...happy as can be!

A long but smooth flight on the very back row of a full 747 from Amsterdam.  I think that there was a large low-pressure area sitting over the UK and we flew all the way up the North Sea, over the Shetland Isles and in a really high arc over Greenland and Iceland, eventually coming In almost over Hudson's Bay!

Of course, we were just about the last off the plane and it's a long way from the terminal to immigration - where we drew the random "lucky card" and were sent to further immigration control (where a charming official asked us to justify our 35day stay in Canada) and then on to customs where an equally charming official asked us to show her all the family presents, and the duty free. Of course, both of them let us in to the secret that we were the session's quality control subjects!

Anywhere else in the world it might have been a pain, or even frightening.  Here in Canada it was just slow!

So we were late getting to the hotel (oh, it was -17 degrees outside!) and only had time for a very quick shower before joining G, J and L for supper in the restaurant. Tell me how good is it to eat in a conservatory, nicely warm, with a foot of snow outside?

Bed, shattered, at 8pm Canadian, 1 in the morning UK.