Last sailing trip of the season; keeping warm; it's Beaujolais o'clock

The Beaujolais Nouveau 2017

The third Thursday in November is Beaujolais Nouveau day, and so the stores had their big displays out this past week.  The big name of course is Georges Duboeuf, largely credited with globally commercialising what had been a local tradition of a celebratory harvest wine in the Beaujolais region, but there are also other producers, and GB Carrefour and Delhaize have their own bottles.  As you can see in the picture above the prices are quite affordable.  There's no point in buying lots of them though as the wine has a very simple character and is not meant for cellaring, but rather is meant to be drunk right away.  The back verandah of our house is sitting at around 10 degrees Celsius right now, so it's a perfect "walk-out" refrigerator for this type of wine.

It's been colder here but still relatively dry, not too much rain.  On Friday I had a great 11km run in the Foret de Soignes, on my own, as Lawrence is still nursing a calf injury and Tiffany was staying in with their youngest child who was down with a cold.  The colours of the forest are really magical this time of year.  I was running a well-known route and was well-rested, so managed a quite fast 5:26 minutes per kilometre average pace.

Duncan and Maggie and I are getting used to being three instead of four, and after having unexpected accumulations of leftovers in the fridge I am trying hard to reduce my food shopping by a quarter.  Certain foods (apples, peanuts, oatmeal) are mainstays of Malcolm's regular diet, but not eaten much by the rest of us, so that has altered my shopping list a bit.  He hasn't been here for a couple of weeks now.  We have received a few reports that things are going well, and he shared a couple of photos of his guitar-making progress, but for the most part he seems to be happily chugging away on his own.

guitar top with bracing installed

shaving the ends of the bracing

Duncan and I have resumed our group reading of the Hobbit in the evenings, him with the facsimile first edition and me with the Folio society edition.  It's great to read books together out loud; I don't know if that is something that the Belgian students do in class.  Certainly when I was an primary school student we read aloud together, taking turns and following along with our own copies of the text.  It was a great way to learn the pronunciation of a word that you might not have heard before, and for teachers I am sure it is a useful tool to identify the different abilities of students.  Most primary students have a much higher level of oral comprehension than reading comprehension, something that according to reading guru Jim Trelease doesn't change until somewhere around the eighth grade, or the age of thirteen or fourteen.  Duncan is in the equivalent of the ninth grade, but of course all of his instruction has been in French with some Flemish since he started school, so it's not clear what his reading level in English is.  Reading English books together is undoubtedly to his benefit.  It's also a nice way to spend time in the evening that doesn't involve a glowing screen.

This past Saturday evening Gediminas and I drove up to Zeebrugge and went for an evening run along the coast for 6km, and then prepared for a final sail of the season on Tyfoon with our friend Frank, the skipper.  He's going to be taking the sails down this week, and making the boat tidy for the winter.  There is a chance that the boat will be sold, so this might be our last sail on Tyfoon.  As well Gediminas will be moving on to another ambassadorial appointment soon, so it is not clear when we will next have a chance to get out on the sea again.

We had an early departure on Sunday morning and made very good time to Oostende for lunch, averaging around 7 knots on the way there and getting up above 8 knots on the way back.  The skies were fortunately free of rain but the wind was cold and I was glad to get home and warm up again.

Today it's more singing of the Mendelssohn Paulus.  My first rehearsal is this weekend, and while it is only a short recitative rehearsal I want it to go well.

I hope that my next report will be a good one that includes a successful fireplace installation.  We are still waiting on the Bulex people to come and repair/replace our bathroom hot water boiler, and I haven't heard anything more from the roofing guy.  Now our clothes washer has just bit the dust.  If it's not one thing it's another!

Fortunately there is a Krëfel store here in Wavre; they will not only deliver and install a large appliance free of charge but will also remove and dispose of the old one.  So unless I can find a really good deal on two-year old washing machines on the for sale websites today, I'll be ordering one from Krëfel...