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Tag Archives: Thomas Merritt

Singing, Penguins and Chocolate Torte

A week ago, just 15 of us gathered at the Eco Park to sing Cornish Christmas carols in a safe and socially distanced way. Enjoy listening to us. For this who wanted to know, I’m right at the end singing “Thy beloved name!”  I’m elsewhere too so you can watch again from the start if you like, even perhaps contribute to one of our charities. Nadelik Lowen is Happy Christmas in Cornish.

Photographer Tobias Baumgaertner captured this image of two widowed fairy penguins looking over the Melbourne skyline. It has won an award in Oceanographic magazine’s Ocean Photography Awards 2020.
The backstory is so heartwarming. The lighter penguin is an elderly female whose partner died this year. The darker one is a younger male who lost his partner two years ago. Biologists have followed them as they meet every night to comfort each other. They stand for hours together watching the city lights.

I made our Chocolate Amaretti Torte this afternoon, one for us and one for our daughter who is visiting for an outdoor pasty lunch tomorrow, looking forward to eating it soon!

Mixing the cream and the chocolate mixture

P.S.  We saw the Great Conjunction tonight for a  few moments when the clouds parted!

 

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Special Message, Decorations and Thomas Merritt

1   Sorting the bookshelves today, this precious piece of paper fell out. It is a beautiful note given to us as we left the village of Mapoch where we had been volunteering in 2007.

Message from Thabang

Message from Thabang

2   We used to keep in touch with the village through Voluntours, getting beaded decorations to sell each Christmas to help raise funds for the village. Very sadly, we have lost both Marnie of Voluntours and Pastor Peter to cancer in the last 15 months. They were each instrumental in making our time there a success and both must be sorely missed by the village. Now we have no contact, these are my last three decorations for sale.

Beaded decorations made by the Gogos of the village

Beaded decorations made by the Gogos of the village

3   At singing tonight, we learned a new Thomas Merritt carol, in one session! It is a wonderful one with the various parts coming in at intervals and sounding like peals of bells. I’ll try to get a recording of it to add here.

 

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