Hodge Podge No. 15: A Perfect Swiss Day!

erfect day!

A long long time ago, I posted about my perfect Montreal day.

I could proably update that in many ways!

Instead, today, in my latest hodge podge (hodge podge no. 14 was back in June!) I'm going to dream about my perfect Best Little Village (our nickname for our village) day. I said I could update my earlier post, but I confess that my ideal breakfast has not changed!

9 am
Rise with the sunshine coming in the window. A table has been miraculously laid with almond croissants, eclairs, a steaming pot of coffee and a latte in a bowl, maple syrup, sliced fruits of the season, buttered toast and an egg and cheese sandwich on a Montreal bagel, plus at least four newspapers, including ones from the UK and The New York Times, which have miraculously arrived free of charge.

This was our New Year's Eve dessert!

Tasty local cheeses!

Homemade cake!

12 pm
All those newspapers and magazines and crossword puzzles, not to mention the coffee, would take a while.

Noontime is a nice time for a walk, either in the neighbourhood or, better still, along one of the rivers nearby, leading up into the nature reserve. Or we might drive up into the mountains and walk in the woods. It's a warm late-summer day, ideally, and the air is fresh and clean.

A completely different ideal is a long boat ride or swim in the lake, followed by a long rest on the beach.

View of the vineyards!

 

2 pm

Time for some activities! During or after a lunch in a local auberge...

Madeleine L'Engle on living in the moment

The last Tolkien Society pub quiz was in December -- I got to third place, my highest ever score!

Now, some philosophy... Here's Waugh on a Sense of the Past. It takes a long time and many years of school and reading and living to develop this sense. He's making fun of it a bit here, but this was written in 1930, when possibly the Sense of the Past was common to the people of his class. Nowadays this Sense seems to vary more widely.

Here's Auden's syllabus for the university course he taught in 1941 titled "Fate and the Individual in European Literature". The full syllabus is available here.

The ones I’ve read:

Augustine – Confessions

Shakespeare – Hamlet

Shakespeare – The Tempest

Blake – Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Baudelaire – Journals

Ibsen – Peer Gynt

Rimbaud – A Season in Hell

Melville – Moby Dick

Kafka – The Castle

TS Eliot – Family Reunion

The Allegory of Love – C.S. Lewis

 

The ones I hope to read (I’ve read other Dostoyevsky but not this one!):

Dante – The Divine Comedy

Sophocles – Antigone (tr. Dudley Fitts or Fitzgerald)

Horace – Odes

Shakespeare – Othello

Goethe – Faust, Part I

Kierkegaard – Fear and Trembling

Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov

Rilke – The Journal of My Other Self

the opera libretti

From the South Seas – Margaret Mead

Epic and Romance – W.P. Ker

Here's some other reading...and some gorgeous Susan Mitchell images!

Knitting! Or art -- this was a photography exhibition at the United Nations: The World in Faces by Alexander Khimushin

A finished puzzle from Christmastime!

Attending an event... This was the Remembrance Day ceremony in 2021 at the Permanent Mission of Canada

Bagpipes!

War time chocolate cake (rationing ingredients)

Or find a bookstore! This is wallpaper designed for Shakespeare and Company by Chez Gertrude

5 pm
It's not dinner time yet, not according to European hours. Instead, if it's still summertime, perhaps an apero (pre-dinner drinks) on the balcony?

7 pm
Now, a table (to the table!) If it's winter, it must be fondue!

Bon appetit!

What elements make up your perfect day?