Christmas spirit on the Cote d'Azur

Christmas is approaching… Not very obvious here in the warm south, on Saturday morning the sun was shining as usual, as I headed for my weekly sailing session. We had a really great day of sailing, in perfect conditions. As I said before, the sun was shining, which is always a nice thing. But additionally, the winds were more favourable than on previous weeks. As Marie (our patient instructor) had said, this should favour myself and Hannu, due to our, hrmm, body mass. And true enough, we even overtook some boats this time, probably a first one for us… So a great session then, altogether. Sadly, the winds subsided around 11, and we returned to port quite early…

Having unrigged (?) our boats, it was time for the sailing club Christmas lunch. My contribution was slightly more impressive than during our picnic a few weeks back (which isn’t really saying that much). In addition to my reindeer pate straight from Lapland, I had some quality salmon from Casino, as well as a Corsican bottle of white wine. Oh, and a baguette. Still, it felt less than impressive compared to the marinated BBQ meat, home-made pate, salads, tiramisus, etc. the other ones had prepared. Still, I enjoyed it, eating for 2 persons at least! Unfortunately the reindeer pate wasn’t a great success (actually it looked and tasted a bit like normal Finnish “maksamakkara”, so who can blame ‘em?), and neither was the white wine. But everybody had a good time; and we all got to know each others that little bit better. But with the sun shining and everybody in t-shirts (or maybe it was just me?) the xmas spirits seemed somehow far away. It was more like a BBQ during the Finnish summer, actually…

After some last minute (is there any other kind?) xmas shopping, I sped back home to prepare a dinner for my parents (a kind of farewell dinner, as they were heading back to Finland for xmas a few days later), who were coming over. For starters, I prepared some Mozzarella & Parma ham balls (which I had already prepared, with limited success, for my birthday party this year), whilst Mathilde concentrated on the lasagne. Predictably, the mozzarella & Parma ham balls turned out into a bit of a disaster, again (the Parma ham just wouldn’t stick to the mozzarella, dammit), whereas the lasagne was a stunning success. The fondant au chocolate, which I prepared the paste for, was a bit more successful (I suppose since it was one of those half-ready deserts which just required mixing a powder with eggs & melted butter). Except that it wasn’t really fondant, more like a muffin. But at least the taste was all right ;-) The meal itself was nice; with my parents entertaining us with their latest escapades (including their wine tasting trip to Provence). As often, we got the impression they have a busier social life than us ;-).

The next day, it was time for the 11th traditional Cagnes-sur-Mer Christmas swim, which I had foolishly promised myself to participate in. So there I was, at 10:45, wearing nothing but my swimming trunks and a Christmas hat at the beach at Cros de Cagnes (in fact, just by the sailing club where I’d had lunch just the day before), surrounded other fools (most of them considerably older than me). After various safety demonstrations (there were like 5 or 6 rescue boats, canoes and 6 rescue dogs for f**k’s sake) and speeches, we finally got underway. Much to my surprise, the water didn’t feel too cold at all (I heard it was 16.5 degrees Celsius). So it was actually a very pleasant swim in the end, especially when the sun revealed itself towards the end. Afterwards, we were rewarded with hot drinks and biscuits. And by a diploma, eventually… The organisers insisted on calling everybody up one-by-one (or at least family-by-family), and in alphabetical order, unfortunately… And of course they mispronounced my name about as much as one could (it sounded like Jeeby Turmellata or something along those lines) – but worst of all – they called me a Swede!

Well, all in all, it was a good laugh!