Crunching snow underfoot

We are about to celebrate the arrival of 2007, and I am back where I celebrated the arrival of 2006, in Montréal, where the temperatures are below zero and the snow is falling softly.

I don’t normally like to revisit places that I have travelled to before. After all, it’s largely a waste of money and resources that could be spent travelling to a new place that I haven’t seen before. But with Montréal I am prepared to make an exception. Seconds after a near perfect landing at Trudeau Airport on Thursday evening, I felt strangely ‘at home’. When I left the city (last September) after a year of working and living in this enigmatic and frequently infuriating place, I felt sad but content to be closing a chapter on my life. It is very strange to return here, to a place that I know so well, so quickly after a grand and ‘final’ departure.

Everything is deeply familiar - so deep that as I spent this morning reading and preparing for an essay in the Bibliotèque Nationale, the subconscious sound of the elevator chime and the familiar sight of snow falling on the bus station across the street began to alight strangely embedded memories. I have been here before, and not only do I remember and know it, I am re-living it in a strange hyper-reality. Like a dream, I am floating through something very real, yet very surreal.

Snow has a wonderful effect on the city. On our first day here, I retraced many remembered paths and walked for many kilometers with a friend who is new to the city. The sky was clear and the temperature was perfect for pacing the city streets - at least minus twelve at midday. Today, we woke to gentle snow fall, which continued as I left the apartment to walk to the library. The city of Montréal is very quiet in its centre: even if it were not Saturday, most offices and businesses are closed for a merged Christmas and New Year vacation. The residential streets of the Plateau are especially tranquil: and the fresh snow was serving a considerate civic purpose, softening the sounds of car tyres as people drove through the city streets. The snow was falling at the perfect volume and temperature to remain soft and nearly fluffy on the icy pavements. Whereas yesterday we waddled like penguins over the remaining treacherous patches of ice, today I was able to walk confidently on soft, crunching snow.

From snowy Montréal, to wherever you may be, I send you my best wishes for 2007. I promise to snap out of my Canadaphilia soon, and I’ll be back in Sheffield in two weeks time.

James Brown is dead

Early this morning, my most famous namesake died in an Atlanta hospital. At 73, James Brown was suffering from acute pneumonia. He was arguably one of the most famous soul singers that America has ever produced, and a man who’s career I could not help but pay interest to, since I’d been given the same name as him. To clarify a few frequently asked questions: no, my parents had not heard of him before I was christened (although soon after I was born they did record the Blues Brothers off the television onto VHS, and that tape was preserved and enjoyed many times in out household). And no, I can’t sing. And no, I’m not black. But yes, I do enjoy his music a lot.

As anyone out there who has the misfortune to be called Margaret Thatcher, Bradley Pitt or Robin Williams will tell you, it’s not such a great deal sharing a name with someone who’s already made your name for themselves. Ordering things over the telephone is the most difficult: no matter how polite the ticket agent will be, there is always (at the very least) a controlled smirk when I give the name on my credit card. Travelling also reminds me of my soulful ‘brother’. Airline check-in staff and passport control officers also take two glances, but the amusing one-liners never seem to travel from their brains to their mouths fast enough. An malcoordinated chuckle and raised eyebrow is all that is usually managed. The kindest responce I ever got was from a African-American ticket conductor on board the New York City - New Orleans train (the Crescent, which passes through my namesake’s home city of Atlanta) who called up the coach to his colleague: “hey Barbara… guess who we got on the train today…”

So maybe 2007 will be the year I can start to escape the comparisons to a man who (unlike me) could sing and dance. Maybe. Probably not. But it’s a good excuse to find that old tape of the Blues Brothers one more time.

From a secluded corner of Norfolk, I wish you a merry Christmas, and a peaceful holiday, and I hope you get the chance to find some small way to celebrate the life of a generous, talented and hard working man who made my life just a little more interesting.

Snapshot: shopping trolleys

Christmas shopping necessitates a ‘large capacity’ model with handlebar-mounted shopping list clipboard. Bull bars optional, but effective at clearing toddlers and pensioners from your path.

Back in the old country: part two

An early morning walk in the village, along icy streets and past scenes that belong in monochrome episodes of The Avengers.

The mercury dropped below -5 celsius last night (colder than Montréal apparently, where I’ll be a week tomorrow). Not quite cold enough to freeze the stream, but frosty enough to dust the countryside with a delicate glaze of ice.

I walked down from the village into the river valley, and then up the other side, escaping the thick fog and walking along hedgerows that were slowly starting to thaw. Facing one way everything remained white and icy, but turning around (see above) the sun light was beginning to warm and melt with an orange glow.

Back in the old country: part one

“This must be the coldest place on earth,” says the businessman in the heavy and expensive looking duffel coat. He is stirring sugar into his cup of coffee at the small platform counter of the L.A. Wild Bean coffee shop at Ely railway station.

I attempt to engage in some polite and mildly witty conversation, suggesting that actually the coldest place on earth is about two metres to his right, where I’m sitting on a steel and wicker garden chair, optimistically provided by the café management for al fresco caffeine consumption in comfort. But the businessman does not hear me. The pretty young woman of non-descript Eastern European origin who is making his coffee hads evidently distracted him, although somewhat pleasingly, he isn’t having any luck starting a conversation with her either.

Ely, and its famous cathedral, is built on a small hill in the middle of the Cambridgeshire fens, once a vast area of marsh and coastal inlets that has been reclaimed over the course of a few centuries. Ely railway station sits on the edge of this low protrusion from the fins, and from the platform waiting passengers peer out into the vast landscape of intensively cultivated fields. Not only is it very cold today (barely above zero celius at midday), but there is thick fog blanketing the countryside for miles around us. It appears increasingly unlikely that the sun will burn it away before descending beneath the horizon again. On the island platform across the tracks from me, lonely passengers wait for trains to London King’s Cross and Stansted Airport against a pitch white backdrop of white. To my left, at one end of the station, a busy road passes underneath the northbound railway lines. A strip of tall, bare trees line on side of this road as it stretches away from us into the mist. Each tree is markedly less visible than the one before it: half an avenue vanishes into the fog.

The road passes under a low bridge, so any vehicle taller than a Transit van has to climb a sharp incline parallel to the road and cross the railway lines via a level crossing next to the bridge. Unfortunately for the long line of trucks, lorries and vans, Ely is a relatively important junction between north-south and east-west railway lines, and the gates of the crossing sometimes stay down for fifteen minutes or more, as successive freight and passenger trains pass by. In this jolly country of the privatised railway, every identical three car diesel sprinter that comes by has been dressed up in a different set of colours for a different commercial operator. One green and white train belongs to the singularly mis-named and uncapitalised ‘one railway’, as does another which has yet to be re-liveried from the colours of ‘Anglia Railways’. A green train belonging to ‘Central’ rumbles in, burbles for a few minutes, and then rumbles off again, back in the same direction that it came from. Then a sleek and mildly whining red, white and blue train glides in, carrying passengers on a fast service to London.

Two noisy freight trains pass in quick succession, and finally the level crossing gates go up. A flurry of heavy goods vehicles shoot across the line, knowing that they could be help up for another quarter of an hour if they’re not quick about it.

My toes are cold, and my train is still fifteen minutes away.