Blog Jam

Sunset on the Bay, taken by me


10 LOVES

(1) I love the way my dog does a stately paddle in the sea every night. Just for the sheer joy of it. Head thrown back and this grin on her face. She lets the hair of her belly just touch the water and she lifts her paws high, throwing me an eager eyeball: try it oh two footed one, just try it!
(2) I love the way we all left the community hall after cards last night. It was after ten. We stopped suddenly, as one, and looked at the remains of the maroon sunset striking the still water like a paintbrush below us. My, said Myra who is 91, isn't it grand to be alive? Grand indeed.
(3) I love the way the conductor of a fabulous youth choir Shallaway was spontaneously invited into an Ireland-Newfoundland meeting I was at today and cried as she talked of how her dream became reality and her choir now tours the world.
(4) I love how I rush about tidying up and rectifying really bad areas of my house before the cleaning lady gets here tomorrow.
(5) I love watching the boat building across the bay and how they water tested this large vessel they were working on this evening with all these other little boats running around it. Like a mother duck with ducklings.
(6) I love the smell of the fresh mown grass and the forget-me-nots that are everywhere around the house.
(7) I love how my value has risen in the village because I now have a potato trench with actual potato plants pushing up through it.
(8) I love how certain friends 'get me' as I 'get them'. It is so easy to talk to them. Like shorthand for soulmates.
(9) I love how I'm beginning to tell tomorrow's weather by the colour and condition of the water in the bay tonight.
(10) I love the feeling of this old book that arrived today from the states. Thanks to Abe Books.
It is called "Newfoundland and its Untrodden Ways", a 1907 tome by J.G. Millais that I have wanted for a long, long time. It is bound in red leather and comes from Stanford University Library. Gorgeous doesn't do it justice. It has many old, old photographs and maps and drawings, some worth framing if I can get good copies.
I quote from one paragraph near the beginning:

"St. John's is a quiet old-world place, something between a Canadian town and a Norwegian fishing village. On one side of the beautiful harbour are endless codflakes and a few sealing vessels, and on the other is the main town, built on the side of a steep hill, where electric trams and lights add the one jarring note; but the whole atmosphere of the place is charming and without noise. They discourage the American spirit there, and the man who wants to hustle soon breaks his heart. Business men stroll down to their offices at ten o'clock, and have always time for a cigar and a chat."

I am looking forward to tucking into the rest of it. The interior of Newfoundland, the vast unknown, has always intrigued me.