Drinking the Polar Icecaps

It was a Newfie friend's birthday, so I took an abortive nap after school and headed into the frigid evening to his place. It is roughly -30C, give or take. (That's -22F for those still living in the Bronze Age) Cold enough that footsteps in snow stop going "fwup, fwup" and start going "Squee squee." Cold enough that when it snows, the flakes are so tiny it's like talcum powder is being poured down.

I brought my guitar, as I haven't been playing much since the fall, and my callouses have softened and disappeared. I was given some Screech (a Newfie brand of Jamaican rum) with some ice that was shipped to my buddy from his dad in a block that came from a huge, supposedly 10 000 year old ice berg that is floating near harbour. 10 000 year old ice in my drink. He gave me far too much Screech, so I nursed it relatively cautiously. There was an embarrassingly decadent spread of vol-de-vants, ordeuves and stuff. Nanaimo bars. Coconut pineapple balls. Spiced meatballs. Fancy dip for chips. These things that were like if you put a chewy marshmallow filling inside a chocolate doughnut hole, and then sectioned it into slices. Many other things I ate without knowing what they were.

The guitars came out and much music was played. Three acoustics and an electric bass. Also, an ugly stick. An ugly stick, in Newf parlance, was in this case an upside-down hockey stick stuck securely and permanently into a boot/moccasin full of stuffing, with a tambourine nailed to the other end, and nails all over it strung with beer caps to add further percussive tambourine jingle to it while the boot end of it is "stomped" on the floor while the musician, in the case of my newfie buddy, also beats it with a drum stick all the while dancing a reel and singing lively Newfie-not-Irish songs about ships, pretty girls, pubs and sailors who don't come home from the sea.

I sang a lot. I sang my voice a bit rough, and my feelings got pretty nicely purged out. Some intimidatingly large women bustled out into the middle of the living room periodically, "woo!-ed" and shook their bellies to music we did that met their approval, and a cute woman kissed me on both cheeks and praised my voice.