Bum-Bum and chicken cooked in wine

Of course, he then came on after the song and said he was busily warding off calls from Haligonians, that she was indeed from Halifax, that she was lovely and that he recently had her on a show in Toronto. Cullen is very funny, if you have a twisted sense of humour. He is a native of Peterborough. People up here seem to either love him or hate him – me, I find him hilarious. (And Jill Barber moved to Halifax from Ontario.)

So that got the New Year underway. The members of the family who were around sipped Bailey's Irish Cream as midnight came and went; earlier we had had an elegant dinner of Tom's Chicken Bourguignon, which you make by frying up onions and garlic, browning chicken pieces then sprinkling flour over them, putting in a cup of chicken stock and a cup of good white wine, tossing in strips of peppers and laying sliced potatoes over the top, adding some salt, pepper, parsley and thyme, and then letting the whole thing simmer for an hour and a half.

The youngest member of the family, a little girl who's 22 months old, loves anything cooked in wine and just shoveled it in (the alcohol has evaporated by the time it is cooked, in case you were reaching for a telephone to call the authorities). While we were trying to decide whether to be called Grandpa and Grandma or Grandad or Grammie she decided to call us, jointly, Bum-Bum. Thus it was that she would sit on the carpet and yell "Bum-Bum, sit," commanding me to join her and help her play with her Matchbox cars, or "milk, Bum-Bum," so that Sheila would pour her a glass of milk.

Early in the morning, while everyone else is asleep, she helps me make a fire (which she calls a "wa-wa") in the sunroom, and when others come in, she explains to them that "Bum-Bum make a wa-wa." No one knows where the name Bum-Bum came from. I thought at first it was Boom-Boom, at which my daughter said, good try, but the name is Bum-Bum. Everyone else gets called by their names.

It was a Christmas full of books, both in the giving and receiving. We wanted to get to Lane's Snug Harbour Books and to Well's Books, but there was such a rush before Christmas that our trip to Liverpool failed to materialize. Instead, we spent much of our Christmas present money at Sagors Books, in Bridgewater. We knew Bob and Clare Sagor when they first opened the store many years ago, and we know the present proprietors, Ron Topp and Sue Goodwin.

It is such a good experience to shop in an independent bookstore, run by people who know books. A trip there is like a trip to a village café, with lots of good conversation, and the only thing missing is the coffee. As well, the book selection is excellent. Somebody shopping there found me a copy of Joan Dawson's The Mapmaker's Legacy, which is a look at Nova Scotia in the 1800s, through old maps. It is fascinating, with dozens of historic maps and information about the people who created them. Among the maps is one of the Port of Liverpool, made in 1818 by Anthony Lockwood, who was a naval hydrographer.

I also received the newest edition of the Nova Scotia Atlas, which is pretty well indispensable for anyone living in this province and possessing an ounce of curiosity about his or her surroundings. The book divides the province up into 90 squares, each of which is a map showing highways and roads, national and provincial parks, protected areas, provincial beaches, hiking trails, rivers and lakes, islands, counties and almost 15,000 place names.

For us, every previous version of this atlas has become tattered and dog-eared, and we hate to go anywhere without it.

And then, for fiction, someone was kind enough to give me the newest book by the author of the Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini. That was an excellent read, now made into a film. The new book is called A Thousand Splendid Suns.

- Tom Sheppard can be reached at twsheppard@gmail.com