On the Feast of Stephen

I have celebrated Christmas by catching a cold. I resent this all the more because I did the same thing last time we were away from home, in New England. It isn't a fun thing to have yourself, and it can't be a fun thing to have in a guest, and I wish it would go away. I had an early night last night and a long hot shower this morning, and feel better, but still snivelling.

valydiarosada cooked a turkey, and while it was in the oven we drank champagne and opened our presents, which were many and very acceptable. Then valydiarosada grappled the roast potatoes while I dealt with the sprouts and the parsnips. Neither D. nor valydiarosada likes parsnips, but there were two in the vegetable box, and durham_rambler regards them as God's own vegetable, and I like them fine from time to time, and these were particularly good parsnips.

All of which adds up to a very traditional Christmas dinner. We accompanied it with two bottles of Château Musar, one 2007, the other 2005. (Since I didn't diary last year's two bottles of Château Musar, we have been unable to recall their dates, but I won't repeat that mistake.) Neither of them had that overcooked fruit flavour which I had started to find, and not like, in Château Musar: the 2007 was full, fruity and spicy, the 2005 almost unctuous in its richness, with just enough spice at the finished to stop it being over-rich. We had enough of it left after the main course to feel that a little cheese was in order (especially as some cheese and crackers had been discovered under the tree), and when the decanter was empty we moved on the the Mission port which durham_rambler and I had bought at the vineyard in Amador County: not port, without the complexity of port, but sweet and smooth and almost creamy. All these rich fruit flavours had satisfied any craving anyone might have had for Christmas pudding, so we agreed to save that for another day, and retired to the sofa with coffee and chocolate and television.

Doctor Who was actually better than I expected: my heart sank when I heard that it would have Father Christmas, but he wasn't too painful, and I enjoyed his elves. There was a twist towards the end which I thought was emotionally exploitative, ran counter to the logic of the episode and spotlighted an aspect of the Doctor / companion set-up which it might be better not to look at to closely, but I won't spoiler the story by saying more.

The only other news is that in the few days we have been here in Ely I appear to have become more frightning to the cats. On our first evening, Amber actually deigned to walk across my lap on her way somewhere. Now they both scatter at the sight of me. Since one of their preferred nesting places is the rug outside the bathroom, they do quite a lot of scattering.

Captain Scoresby's snowflakes

The big Gothic exhibition at the British Library overshadows all else, but there is also, tucked away in the foyer, a small exhibition called Lines in the Ice: Seeking the Northwest Passage, which we visited while we were in London. It is a little random: the blurb promises to explore and examine various themes, which I would describe it rather as mentioning and illustrating - but it did tell me some things I hadn't known, and I enjoyed some of those illustrations very much.

The first section, in a side-room, is accompanied by an unexplained soundscape of groans and gurgling, as if the Library itself had indigestion. It looks at the early years of exploration, and mentions, almost in passing, the belief that the open sea does not freeze. I dont know the origin of this conviction (other than ignorance) but it does explain why people were so confident that there would be a navigable route to the north and west of all that known, frozen, territory. There was a volume of Hakluyt, open at an illustration of the crew on foot breaking a passage in the ice for their ship, observed by a very unimpressed polar bear. I would like to know more about Martin Frobisher; anyone who can label a geographical feature "the Mistaken Straightes" is worth investigating. There was a map of Thule (which doesn't seem to have made it into the BL's online gallery, though an image search turns up a variety of detailed maps of this entirely imaginary island). There were also some Inuit stick maps, wooden rods carved into a tactile representation of the coastline (these may not have been as old as their inclusion in this section sugests, but still, wonderful things).

The second section of the exhibition brought us into the nineteenth century, and inevitably to Sir John Franklin. The bee in my bonnet on this subject is always the treatment of John Rae, and on this occasion whoever wrote the captions has done him justice in describing his discovery of the fate of Franklin's exhibition, and the shabbiness of his treatment thereafter. They haven't, though, found either pictures or books to represent him in the exhibition itself (with the exception of one book, which may have been McClure's account, on whose title page his name appears, though smaller than those of the author and of Franklin). The Bookhunter's interesting and enthusiastic account of the exhibition manages to overlook Rae altogether, though it does include an image of my favourite thing from this section, William Scoresby's careful drawings of snowflakes (what is the BL thinking not offering this for purchase as a Christmas card? But they have precisely nothing available from this exhibition.) There was also a listening post, with audio from Martin Carthy, Stan Rogers and some Inuit players of a throat-singing game.

The bearded seals under the ice were in the next section, as was a map showing Inuit place names, and some material about Amundsen, but I found it a little incoherent. Blame my memory, since, as I said, no supporting material, no flyers to bring home...

Nonetheless, good exhibition, free entry, do look in if you're passing.