Winter in Wareham

sigh....that's supposed to be the garage!

The Long and Winding Blog....

Because it’s been forever! (Since I blogged.)

I kept having things I wanted to say or pictures I wanted to post, (friends gave me a much larger memory card for the camera!) and life was just being too busy to do anything about it.

I’d had that smallish break around Christmas, after ‘Twas had opened at the theatre. But of course, in the middle of that was Christmas! Some visits to friends, some trips to visit his family, our anniversary, the strike for ‘Twas, dinner with other friends, New Years and the ‘come on over for a relaxed family dinner’ that turned out to be sit down dining for 24! And the 30+ lb roast of beast! Plus, in and around all of this, I was trying to test recipes for a cookbook that a friend is putting out. Ack!

[I thought I’d chosen wisely, and asked for the main dish section, thinking that dinner, at least, was a meal I was guaranteed to be contemplating. But then there were all the leftovers to contend with… I had managed to get a micro-turkey for Xmas dinner, but even a micro-turkey can go a fair ways. And my brother-in-law had done not only a turkey but a ham, and sent us home with a ton of tasty leftovers….] Anyway, I didn’t make it through all the testing, even when I coerced a friend into helping with the testing, and managed to serve up several at a party. Hopefully my comments were semi-useful enough to make up for that.

And January I worked on the school tour show, Night Light, which was a co-production with the Sudbury Theatre Centre, and while that was still going, switched gears to doing props for The Drawer Boy.

So, now I have a little gap to try and repair the chaos I’ve left in my path, and then it will be props again for Norm Foster’s The Long Weekend.

I’m not sure if I like props as much as costumes, though that may just be recent familiarity. I used to love doing props. Mind you, that was also at theatres where I was part of the props team, not where I AM the props team! There’s an aspect to tool-using about props that can be a bit daunting. I simply haven’t had to do much of that for a long while.

But there’s also a slightly less frenetic quality in working with props. No need to try and co-ordinate with the actors in quite the same way. There’s a list of things to find or make or buy, and you get on with it. Can be a bit more peaceful. Though I have a comfort level with textiles…

Anyway, where to start on bringing things up to date? How about:

How I spent My Weekend.

(Though this is the weekend at the end of January, so ages ago now.)

For years now, on the last weekend of January, we’ve celebrated Up-Hellya. Which, as far as we can determine, is probably a Victorian reinvention of some vaguely probable Norse celebration. (After all, all Northern cultures MUST have some kind of ‘go away winter, come back spring’ kind of party!)

We burn a boat. At its simplest level, perhaps we burn the funeral boat of the Winter King, to send him on his way.

Originally, back at the very beginning, it was a private send off for my husband’s best friend’s father, who’d made them promise to burn him on his beloved boat. Fortunately, being the depths of winter, and boat in dry-dock, there was no question of discovering what repercussions might follow if one tried this in Toronto Harbour! Instead a private ceremonial burning.

And then, the next year, another friend asked, were we doing this again, because HIS father had passed away…

By then, it was tradition.

Sometimes, often, some absent friend or relation is celebrated with the burning. Or perhaps a notable event. There have been divorce papers burned, and mortgage papers. There have often been offerings from successes, and remembrances of failures. Usually there are some gifts to any passing gods who might be interested in treating us kindly, even if only by sending spring our way.

And it’s always a warm gathering of friends. (Made especially warm when we try to cram them all into our house!) Over the years we’ve even had to be quite ruthless about who all we allow ourselves to invite, simply because of space considerations. (In spring, summer and fall we can spill outwards. Yea for spring, summer and fall! But winter in Ontario, in Grey County is not the time for that. )

And after the burning, and watching for omens in the fire, comes the feasting. It’s the one night in all the winter when we have no need of a fire in the stove. Where we all stay up later than is good for us.

This year it was a glorious burning, and perfect weather.

[Interesting thing was a note from a friend working on the Rockettes tour in the States, who said that seamstress they’d had in for a bit mentioned she’d heard of a couple of Viking Age re-enactors up in Ontario who burned a boat every year!]