Christmas

Yuletide Carols wrote:

I made another one!

Good King Wenceslas - Traditional - Lyrics

by The Christmas Spirit of Yuletide Carols

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Gath'ring winter fuel

"Hither, page, and stand by me
If thou know'st it, telling
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?"
"Sire, he lives a good league hence
Underneath the mountain
Right against the forest fence
By Saint Agnes' fountain."

"Bring me flesh and bring me wine
Bring me pine logs hither
Thou and I will see him dine
When we bear him thither."
Page and monarch forth they went
Forth they went together
Through the rude wind's wild lament
And the bitter weather

"Sire, the night is darker now
And the wind blows stronger
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer."
"Mark my footsteps, my good page
Tread thou in them boldly
Thou shalt find the winter's rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly."

In his master's steps he trod
Where the snow lay dinted
Heat was in the very sod
Which the Saint had printed
Therefore, Christian men, be sure
Wealth or rank possessing
Ye who now will bless the poor
Shall yourselves find blessing.

Read factbook

It's lovely. Beautifully written. My favourite X-mas carol is, well, everybody's favourite too. Carol of the bells. IMO it catches the magic of Christmas perfectly.
I had the privilege of going to a British school here where I hail from, when I was a teen. The same educstion institution my father went to before me. (My father was a young Anglophile during the War. And I mean WW II.)
We lived a few streets away from the UK embassy when I was born. I remember the caroling at British school. And I'll never forget it.
Our caroling here is called Janeiras, meaning songs of January, literally which means we live Christmas throughout, from the late November Christmas creep (I have a hate-love relationship with it) to Christmas Eve supper and Mass. We don't have Boxing Day. And then the caroling until Epiphany.
Possibly the longest Christmas in the Western World.

Hello Isandland and welcome to the region :)

Please help yourself to some homemade regional sprouts and pull up a chair to the hearth.

What brings you to our wintry shores?

Officially the While By My Sheep of I Watched At Night! :D

Saint-Roque wrote:

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And I'd love to tell some old sea stories.
All sailors have them. The thing is, "land people" find them sometimes too extraordinary. Not only hard to be believed at all, but to be listened to in the first place because they never been there. It's hard to believe people's stories about places we don't know. There is security in common, shared experience, if you know what I mean.
Such a different world. Things work different. We live under quarter schedules and tight rules 24 hours a day, and a hierarchy in close quarters, you must show respect to the cook otherwise you'll pay for it, the ship's plumbing and wiring have colour codes different than those you find on land.

I have seen things in reality that for others are sea tales from an odd uncle who been to the Spice Islands, as it were. Things the land people see on maps and, well, most of times they never really try and get the chance to actually go there.
Maybe they go to, say, the Iririki Island Resort.
They will. But...as tourists and then they'll have photo albums to show. When they go back to Wellington or Brisbane.

Never saw the Kraken. Or the 5-head Shark.
Sy-fy is great to amaze and scare people that way.
No Moby-Dick either. Sorry.

I did see unexplainable phenomena. And I wasn't alone. Thousands of crewmen and women and passengers alike saw it in the South Seas when I was there.

It was huge and brought a sense of awe. From my knowledge of naval architecture, what I saw is. ..it certainly out of this world.
Can describe it, if I want. What I saw.
The Captain put a lid on it.

There is more, but I won't bother you.
Especially the tragic incident with the MV Scandinavian Star in the wee hours of the morning of April 7th 1990.

I may talk about the transvestite prostitutes in the Port of Genoa, Italy. I may mention the five days and nights when Poseidon himself, I can't stop wondering what we did to him, unleashed Hell between Bordeaux and The Azores.

I can even say that I smoked a joint at Singapore Airport. Stupidest risk I've ever taken, could have gone to jail for 15 years for a stupid funny cigarette.

But I won't talk about happenened from Oslo to Frederikshavn that night.

One thing I tell you. When you're the bridge politeness is customary. All men are addressed as Mr., regardless of rank.

And the absolutely brilliant feeling of leaving Lisbon Harbour and sail into to the ever unexpected blue water, like my forefathers did before me.
They built an Empire. Well, I felt I could do something too. Took a photo diary.

I wanted to go back and respond to this post that was sort of forgotten and overshadowed by the raid which occurred a couple weeks back.

I definitely get what you mean about "security in shared experience" and the inability for others outside of that experience to quite understand what it's like. I will never truly understand what life on the sea is like, and others will never know what it's like to have lived my own.

Of course, I do love trying to understand that sea life :) Mainly through old romantic adventure novels. I am especially partial to the works of Joseph Conrad, as his books are not only full of high adventure, but also possess extreme literary merit. The main was a genius.

"I did see unexplainable phenomena. And I wasn't alone. Thousands of crewmen and women and passengers alike saw it in the South Seas when I was there."

That's pretty fascinating-sounding. Although, also terrifying...the feeling of vulnerability when out on the sea must be very real.

I remember someone telling me a story, once, that whenever they meet a sea captain or otherwise life-long sailor, they always make sure to ask them what was the strangest thing they ever saw out on the sea. And they almost always have something to tell. It's a great big world out there in the ocean, and we only know a fraction of it.

"One thing I tell you. When you're the bridge politeness is customary. All men are addressed as Mr., regardless of rank."

Oh, I wasn't aware of that. Sounds quite nice. And classy.

Thank you, Mr. Saint-Roque, for sharing your sea stories with us. I greatly enjoyed reading them. I bet that photo diary is a pretty amazing thing to pour through.

"I did see unexplainable phenomena. And I wasn't alone. Thousands of crewmen and women and passengers alike saw it in the South Seas when I was there."

That's pretty fascinating-sounding. Although, also terrifying...the feeling of vulnerability when out on the sea must be very real.

It was baffling.
I was a rather young Ordinary Seaman based in Sydney, Australia. Running a cruise ship, the TSS Fairstar (TSS :turbine steam ship.I'm a deck hand, but I know a thing or two about the Engine Room).
It was a day like any other day. As a junior sailor I had the stupidest, simplest, filthiest job abord. (I was the most handsome guy who ever sailed, but I don't like to brag about it. Imagine what those nervous house wives from New South Wales were looking for..
Flatter yourself. No one else is gonna do it for you.)
Long story short, it was a clear day. And all of a sudden it appeared.
It was huge. Massive. Immense.
It was clearly a structure. Three square-shaped structures. Three, in order of size. Brown-coloured.The colour of rust.
And it was really huge. Larger than the TSS Fairstar. It was just there, on the horizon. Considering the horizon is about 20 miles (nautical miles) and the size of the thing...
I may live to a hundred, but I'll never explain it.