No snow, poppies and england shaped bacon!

After all the fun of Halloween we now move into November. Strangely the weather here has actually warmed up and is now hovering at around 2-3degrees during the day. That means that with the lack of snow on the ground, it is actually nicer here than being snowed on like a lot of areas in the UK are getting at the moment. I have actually put away my gloves for now as it’s too warm to merit wearing them all the time.

As for me and Buffy, well we really enjoyed the Halloween showing of Dracula and Frankenstein. It was really strange watching two films with an intermission in the middle!! The movies themselves were great – Made in 1931 they both generated a subtle atmosphere as we watched them in a modern cinema. They didn’t have any atmospheric music to generate feelings in the audience, so relied on acting and lighting to make you feel part of the story. This in turn means that it felt like watching a play rather than a movie. Particularly during Dracula, Bela Lugosi spent ages staring crazily at the camera, when he was playing the Count. In Frankenstein, the Dr himself was awesome as he exclaimed ‘It’s alive.... ALIVE!!’. Like I say, it was amazing to see such an old set of classic movies in a cinema, where we are used to being blown away by special effects and mind blowing sound. So to sit through 15 or 20 seconds of silence and noting happening on the screen, which we did a couple of times during these films felt weird and like an awkward silence. But the movies themselves were great and rightfully received a round of applause from the crowd at the end of the showing.

The rest of the week for us was a quiet one, less a party in Friday night at Buffy’s friend Andrea’s house. A gathering of about 25 people sat around the lovely little house, chatting, drinking and generally having a good time, in order to celebrate Andrea’s birthday and her engagement to Matt. It was a really good night and a chance to make new friends – which we did!

Intermission!!

On Saturday we were supposed to be going to the Theatre, but when we looked at the tickets we realised they were for the Friday night play. A quick phone call and the theatre swapped out tickets for the Saturday night performance, which we made it to and really enjoyed a play called Red.

Shit....its already Saturday!!

On Sunday I spent the day cooking Breakfast and dinner –

In the morning I made bacon and eggs on toast, using a new egg poacher that I had bought earlier – Buffy had never had poached eggs! The only problem was the bacon. I couldn’t get back-bacon this week and made do with Canadian bacon. I had about 10 slices of bacon, which are 90% rind and fat. Neither if us like the fat on the bacon and after cutting it off, we ended up with 10 times as much fat as we had meat, but it still went down well with the eggs and toast! In the afternoon I had decided to make my first ever Toad-in-the-hole and it turned out pretty well. I did also discover a new way to eat mashed potato and onion gravy though – what you do is fill your plate, drop your mobile phone into the mashed potato and then lick the potato and gravy off the face off your mobile phone. At least that’s what I had to do when I somehow did exactly that! I still have no idea how my phone ended up in my dinner!

In the oven...

Being eaten!

It’s now November 5^th and I kind of wish I was I in UK looking forward to a big bonfire tonight. Obviously they don’t celebrate bonfire night over here and in fact, now Halloween is over its full on toward Christmas. I went shopping this morning after walking to work with Buffy and saw that where there were aisles full of Witches and Pumpkins last week, there are now aisles full of Christmas trees and baubles. I know it has to start sometime, but I still think it should be at the start of December, not November! I wonder if they will have Easter eggs out on Boxing Day like I saw in Tesco Windsor a few years ago!! 

Christmas....?

Already??

There was good news in the shop though as I stumbled upon proper England shaped bacon!! Big wide pieces of meat with a little bit of rind! Lovely – I obviously bought some and we are planning on having a big bacon butty morning on Thursday. We picked Thursday as Buffy has the day off work. She has taken the day off because we are going out to the midnight showing of the new James Bond movie. It actually starts at 7 minutes past midnight -- or if you write it down it starts at 0.07. Cool!!

This week is also the week leading up to November 11^th- Remembrance Day. We are obviously planning on attending one of the Remembrance Day events this coming Sunday. Before then though as in UK there is a large amount of people wearing Poppies. In Canada it is a pretty big thing as in the UK with every person on TV wearing them and you can get poppies in every store. The poppies are slightly different from the ones in UK though. They are actually really nice - plastic and furry compared to the paper ones in UK. I have included a photo f two side by side so that you can see the difference. Whatever you are doing this week, don’t forget to put a couple of pennies in a box somewhere and wear your poppy with pride. 

Canadian and British poppies

Once again that’s it for now. I’m off to plan for my next trip away. I leave Winnipeg for just 10 days on December 3^rd. I’m not going to tell you too much about it yet, but I have two very exciting places and at least four more states to visit!! Keep watching this space!!

After more than 6 months... I found real ENGLISH type bacon!!