Lighting a candle for Penny

It's the First Sunday in Advent and the wait is over. Winter arrived this week, not violently, quietly for a change. On Tuesday, the temperature was at freezing and it was raining. This year we missed the ice by a hundred miles or so. The lakes froze and got a quick down blanket. It is below zero (-18C) outside as I write at midday.

This morning the fishermen were back out along Stony Bar casting their nets under the ice into South Lida looking for the elusive tullibee. My father and I used to net under the ice. I do not have fond memories of it. The netters remind me that the time is now, while the ice is fresh and untested, before it starts to expand and contract, wrinkle and moan. The tullibee is waiting just below, dreaming of the warmth of the smokehouse and the smile on the face of the fisherman's wife as she peels the flesh back from the oily skin and licks her fingers afterwards. The netting season ends next Sunday on Lida.

This week I needed to dig back in the archives to remind myself that it's been three years since Penny drove off Stony Bar and was trapped under the fresh ice. Family and friends stopped by on Thursday to light a candle for her.

Candles are appropriate for the darkness of the coming weeks. Turn off the lights, light a candle, tune your computer to BBC3 and listen to today's Advent Carol Service from Chapel of St. John's College, Cambridge. It's a tradition around my house (instead of netting tullibees) and my Christmas card to you.

If I think of it and see the netters come back out there this afternoon before dark tending their nets, perhaps I'll run out and see what they caught.