It's cool in Canada

Our yard in winter

December 4th 2010. Freezing rain today in the UK. And as I slip around on the black ice, my thoughts stray to another place, a few thousand miles away  where we had a continual slide throughout the long winters.

So we think it's cold here in the UK? There's cold and there's cold, and when you've lived for ten years in Canada, boy you know what cold is. You sure do. It's life in the freezer cold…and then some…..

Would the car start in the morning? No it wouldn't and that was only at the very beginning of the long winter. So I got myself an engine heating block. My boyfriend fitted it on the car engine and then plugged  the car into a wall socket in the garage, so the engine didn't freeze up overnight. 

So far so good. But in the thick of winter, getting from the house into the car was a nightmare. A very cold recurring one. So I was told by my boyfriend that I needed a "command start". He said it was an absolute must if I was not to die of frost bite getting from the  front door to the car.

With this wondrous little gadget that fitted  onto my keyring, I could switch on the car engine, turn the car heating on and then unlock the car door, all from the warmth of the kitchen. And then came the inevitable and necessary 'dash for it' before I developed frost bite on my exposed nose and other extremities as I made my way into the garage and, hopefully sat in a warm car ready to start the day.

I was told that if you inhaled freezing air for too long, the ice particles would get into your lungs and after a while your body temperature would not be able to counteract the effects……

I was also told that if you spit (yes, spit) (yuk) the spittle would freeze before it hit the ground. (Yuk again). Don't know. A bit too much information! Never met anyone who had tried it - though I'm sure some had!

Our usual watering hole was The Royal Canadian Legion - Branch 59, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan to be exact, and on the days we called in for a beer (and sometimes a Gin and Tonic in my case) or just a soft drink if one of us was driving, we would leave the car engine running whilst we were in there, otherwise it would not start when we came out. It would be completely frozen up. Okay,  it did nothing to help combat global warming or help the environment in general, but that's how you had to do it if you wanted a few hours of socialising and be sure to get home safely.

And then there was the Snow Blower. Oh my golly what fun we had with the snow blower. Holy Moly. The first time I tried it I had it turned the wrong way and managed to cover myself with about twelve inches of snow. To say it defeated the object is to put it mildly. I had turned into a very animated snow person. And it was always dry powdery snow. Not like the wet heavy stuff that you get in the UK but thin powdery snow that blows around easily, even in a moderate breeze, and so you can have a blizzard when in fact it is not snowing. "Blowing snow"........

The first winter I spent in Canada, I discovered that supermarket parking lots are not cleared along with the main highways and Main Streets. Therefore the snow becomes impacted  and  Voila!…very soon what you have is a mighty fine skating rink. My first attempts at manoeuvring my way from car to supermarket entrance was tricky to say the least. I only managed it by desperately holding onto each car as I inched my way towards the doors, terrified of ending up with broken bones. Although I never did break any bones, I sure went down on my derriere quite a few times. Painful….The embarrassment too…All the local people just skated across……..What I wimp I must have looked......

One of the beautiful and wondrous phenomena caused by temperatures that went down as low as -50C, was the awesome spectacle of the Solar Halo or Perihelion. A huge ring around the sun, and at right, left, top and bottom -  a mini sun, sometimes in the form of a cross, other times just a mini rainbow sun. Locals call them "Sun Dogs"  -  the sun was taking the dogs for a walk? A charming feat of imagination….

The Sun Dog phenomena is created by ice crystals in the atmosphere, and in the morning sunshine these crystals were visible, shimmering like a thousand tiny diamonds scattered in the air. An amazing sight in itself.

One of the Sun Dogs

And yet we were very rarely "snowed in". We always managed to get out. No schools of work places where ever closed.

I remember the year in the early hours of  New Years Day 2003, there was a huge fire in Downtown Moose Jaw. If I remember correctly, three department stores were burned to the ground. Thing was, as the fire hoses were putting out the fire, the water was  immediately freezing again on the exposed pipes and on the walls of the surrounding buildings, even as the fire was raging, making weird "ice sculptures" which remained throughout the long winter, until the first warmth of Spring came along and melted them.

Another year, Elks and Deer came in from the open Prairies searching for food. It was not unusual to open the blinds in the morning and come face to face with an Elk, standing right there looking in the window at you. 

Happy times.

"Ice sculptures" left after water from fire hoses froze
Moose Jaw fire New Years Day 2003

Great Mince Pie Recipe

With the festive season almost upon us, here's one of the best recipes for Mince Pies I know. (Curtesy of Tesco's Supermarkets)

Mince Pies

275g flour (9 3/4 oz)

40g castor sugar (1 1/2oz)

Zest of an orange

1/2 tsp salt

140g butter

2 egg yolks

2 tbsp cold water

1 egg

2 x jars mincemeat (home made if possible).

1. Put flour, sugar, orange zest and salt into a bowl or food processor. Add chopped cold butter. Either rub with fingers of pulse in the food processor. Do this until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Whip both egg yolks and water together. Add them to the flour mixture. Keep mixing them until it all blends together.

2. Turn onto a floured surface and form a ball. Wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for 10 minutes.

3. Heat the oven to 190C Gas 5, Roll out the pastry to 3-4 mm. Select two pastry cutters - one small for the tops. One larger for the bottoms. Grease a fairy case tin and place a pastry round in each hole. Press gently into place. Add a teaspoonful of mince meat to each. Damp the edges of the pastry and put the small round of pastry on top as a cover. Press the edges together. Make a small hole in the top to allow the steam to escape. Brush with beaten egg.

4. Bake for 20 minutes until golden. Dust with icing sugar and serve.

* * *

Snow, ice and the wind of lost souls

Snow came to Newquay during the night in the early hours of Saturday the 27th of November 2010. On Saturday morning, I awoke and looked at my sloping loft apartment window and there it was covering almost half of the window. Snow. Fluffy white stuff. A rare sight in Newquay.

And following the snow there came the icy, biting wind. Blowing in from the Atlantic ocean, freezing to the bone everyone with whom it came into contact. And it did not go about it's icy business quietly. No. It howled and screeched as it wove it's path around the rooftops and chimneys. Slinking around the narrow alleyways, and roaring up the roads from the harbour and the beaches.

And so here I am in the middle of it all. I sit here at my laptop. The wind whistles all around me.

The last few days have been some of the coldest on record with sub-zero temperatures in Newquay made all the more freezing by the arctic blast blowing in from the sea.

Yesterday I went to my art group and that day too was a sub-zero day. As I walked back home and reached the harbour and the exposed sea at the top of North Quay Hill, I could have sworn my cheeks and nose had frozen solid. I seemed to be having a hard time moving the lower part of my face! Well, having lived in Canada for ten years I should be used to that, but I was still chilled to the bone….

There seems to be no let up from the icy, howling wind……always the wind……..pushing, pulling, knocking…the air never still…..

* * *

A few years ago, I lived in Yorkshire, in Haworth, the home of the Bronte sisters. High in the beautiful but often bleak Pennines. When the wind howled and moaned around the hillsides and the moors, the local people used to say it was the ghosts of Charlotte and Emily Bronte, their moans echoing over the moors and the rolling hills of West Yorkshire. Haunting, desperate cries that compliment the wild bleakness of the moors around Higher Wuthens. Lonely, desolate cries reminiscent of eternal torment and terror carried forever on the wind……Cathy and Heathcliffe; Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester all rolled into one cry of pent up misery….Lost souls searching for one-another, an eternal call for help, for warmth, for comfort. A call for a help that is long overdue and will be ever thus.

So the tale goes……

* * *

And so now, as night falls, I sit here in the warmth of my loft apartment at the other end of the country in Newquay, and I hear the wind howling outside. It screeches. It moans. It reminds me of the legendary cry of Banshees, harbingers of Death. Whistling and thudding, banging and rattling the tiles on my apartment roof, making a huge din in general. Sometimes I think the whole shebang is about to collapse on my head. Really…living up in the roof can be quite scary at times.

Newquay itself has no shortage of ghost stories. Spooky tales that tap into the very essence of the wild, untamed scene that unfolds even more dramatically during the Winter months in Cornwall.

One such story belongs to the Gannel, an estuary very near to where I live. Yes, it is said to be haunted, but not by a human; but by a bird. A crake to be exact.

This feathered spirit is never seen, but it is certainly heard.

There are tales of men who work in the Gannel, men who keep down the weeds and grass, just going about their business....... and then suddenly being terrified by an "unearthly noise". Apparently, in bygone days, when horses were used to carry people around the town; the working men's horses heard it too. Heard the terrible cry rising from the very depths of the earth below the Gannel. And the horses also "took fright and bolted over the beach".

Numerous theories have been put forward as to what this terrible cry, (bone chilling in itself), can be attributed to. Some say that it is caused by the inrush of water through nearby caverns. Others say it is the wind…….

I look outside. Was that a large seagull that just flew past my window?…or could it be…..?

And that's not all. Even today there exists a belief that Vampires are living among us here in the West Country, and as recently as 1978 these nocturnal spectres paid a visit to Newquay Zoo. That year, the geese, swans and two wallabies were found slaughtered and their bodies drained of blood. Yet no blood was found around them or in the ground beneath them.

I shudder...…I look out my window again…..was that a black bin liner I just saw floating over the rooftops…….or could it have been……..?