Up-hair

This Christmas I will be in Rennes with a friend of mine (Maëlle) and her family. We are staying at her Aunt's house the 24th and 25th. Then, on the 28th I'm leaving for Chambéry in the French Alps to do some skiing! I haven't been skiing for quite some time so I am really looking forward to it.

On a different note, I fear that there are some who have not yet seen the glory of Craig's beard. This saddens me, so I have decided to post a picture on my blog:



...glorious. This picture has inspired me to write a sonnet entitled "Craig's Beard: an apologia"

Behold the man, a bushy bearded one,
who dares to wear his pride upon his chin,
with towering hair atop expressly done
so as to imitate a dorsal fin.
After this change some see him as a brute
and mothers come accost him in the square
"thou fiend, thou villain, man of ill repute!
What devilry hide you beneath such hair?"
O how much ridicule has this man borne
by those who see as folly facial hair?
would he be less a man if fairly shorn?
a man of lesser force his chin laid bare?
Ah! surely not for strength comes from within
nevertheless a beard is not a sin.


Merry Christmas!
Joyeux Noël!

Pictures

Maëlle sent me some pictures from the big family gathering last Sunday, so I decided to post a few:


This is during the aperatif. I am reaching for one of several helpings of pistachios. Man! do I like pistachios!


I guess there were five children. Plus the baby who isn't in the picture (I told you they don't stop moving!)


And here's the baby. In this picture he is enjoying a cube of cheese.

Sunday

Alas! I am so ashamed. It's been almost a week since my last post, so in order to make it up to you I am going to make this one extraordinarily long and wordy:

Two days ago, Maëlle's family invited me to a big family dinner in Nantes. I was, of course, very happy to accept this invitation. Everybody arrived at the Trévedy residence around twelve or twelve-thirty: aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, etc. In all there were fourteen adults and several children (I wasn't able to count the children; they are constantly moving, which inhibits my calculatory faculties). The dinner started with an aperatif; everybody had a drink and there was paté, pastachios, and other savoury snacks. Then we moved on to the entrée: two kinds of fish with white wine. When we got to the main dish I was already well on my way to being full (to be honest I had been eating a lot of really good bread, which had come with every course thus far). the main dish was chicken with fried balls of mashed potatoes and red wine. The cheese came next. In anticipation of dessert, I had wisely decided to take only a very small portion of swiss, but then I was taken in again by bread! arrg! Then we arrived at the dessert, which consisted of a variety of cakes and sparkeling wine . I had a modest slice of chocolate cake. Finally we had coffee at around six in the evening. Afterward, everybody went on a walk except me. I promptly went upstairs and took an hour-long nap.