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April 2018

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The universal language

April 28, 2018 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Image from Pixabay“Music is the universal language of mankind”.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

One of the fascinating aspects of life post-(semi)-retirement here in Victoria has been the unexpected number of music acts that we have seen – many of them British and a fair percentage that I had not seen live before (regardless of having had many opportunities so to do in the past in the UK).

I have previously waxed lyrical about seeing Ringo Starr’s All Star band and my joy at being able to experience Peter Gabriel in Canada – something that I had really not expected – was unconfined.

In but a couple of week’s time we will be in Vancouver to see Paul Simon on his retirement tour. He is another that I have never gotten around to seeing and am chuffed at the opportunity so to do before it is too late.

The Proclaimers will be in Victoria later in the year and we have tickets! I have not seen them before either and would not perhaps have thought so to do were it not that I recently saw a fascinating documentary about them (narrated by David Tennant) that filled me with admiration for their ethos and work ethic.

I have long been a Simple Minds fan but have as yet – you’ve guessed it – never seen them live. I was recently listening to one of their greatest hits compilations and decided to look them up online to see if they are still active. I quickly discovered that they have recently released a new CD and are touring Europe during the summer. Sampling the new tracks online I was delighted to find the band back in vintage form. I rapidly purchased the album – lamenting the while the fact that the band’s tour did not extend to North America.

The very next morning The Girl received an email notification (she is massively organised in such matters) that the Minds had extended their tour and would be closing it in Vancouver at the end of October!

No prizes for guessing who now has a ticket!

 

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A theory of relativity

April 26, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

As the drear dark days of winter finally pack their bags and grumble off to the southern hemisphere to bother somebody else, nature rubs its sleepy eyes, yawns and sticks its head outside for a quick recce. To its surprise and great delight there is no-one home! The adults are apparently all away and that mischievous little imp has the garden (yard) all to itself.

The results are pretty much in line with the description that the excellent Glaswegian comedian – Kevin Bridges – ascribes to the teenage gangs from his boyhood whenever one of their number discovered that he was the fortunate possessor of an ’empty’* for the weekend!

Mayhem ensues!

 

By the time the rain has drifted away, the temperature risen to an acceptable level and I get around to dragging my sorry behind out into the garden – it looks as though the rain-forest has dropped by and decided to stay for the duration. There follows a month (and more) of hard labour!

 

Now – this is where ‘relativity’ comes in.

I am – you must understand – not talking about Einstein here – nor Galileo nor Newton. I am referencing neither the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis nor meta-ethical morality (which turns out to be a good thing as my knowledge of either is limited to the world of Wikipedia!).

I refer to the fact that what appears during the height of the summer (I don’t venture out there at all in winter!) to be a perfectly sensibly-sized plot – just about large enough that the neighbours on either side don’t intrude in any way – metamorphoses in the inchoate springtime into a vast overgrown estate full of fiendish flora resembling nothing so much as Wyndham’s Triffids.

A whole bunch of seemingly endless hard work – in other words.

Worth it though, of course. Best get back to it…

* Parents away – house to themselves – party!!

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Like Topsy

April 23, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

Not much later this time last year I was (ab)using the pages of this ‘journal’ to elicit assistance with the wildness that flourishes but a few yards outside my window. In that instance I was trying to establish which of the abundant flora in my garden (yard) were plants that I should be encouraging (not, of course, that that would make any difference either way!) and which were weeds and other undesirables.

The answer was – naturally – that all the things that were doing particularly well were the weeds!

Anyway – here I am again – begging free gardening advice from those amongst you who are horticulturally inclined (or perhaps make a living from said pursuit).

This – I take to be a Yukka of some variety:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidAs you can see it is doing its damnedest to push everything else out of the bed in which it resides.

The question is – how on earth does one prune such a beast?

Answers on a postcard please (as the saying goes)…

Ithankyou!

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Marking time

April 19, 2018 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidBack in the UK I worked for a number of years either side of the millennium at a prestigious and venerable independent boys’ boarding school. It is the sort of school at which all of the pupils are obliged to board and only allowed to go home for a couple of weekends each term. There are twenty five boarding houses in total with around fifty pupils in each, under the close supervision of the Housemaster and the Dame (a sort of ‘Matron’).

These days the Housemasters receive considerable support from deputies, though this was not the case in even quite recent history. Since the Housemaster is responsible (in loco parentis) pretty much 24/7 you might imagine that the role can be a pretty exhausting one.

I was friends with several such fellows and used to tease them whenever they complained about what a hard life they led. I would point out that not only were they handsomely rewarded for their pains but that they also got to live entirely rent-free in really quite splendid residences – and to receive generous grants for decorating and furnishing the same.

At the end of each term the school (as indeed probably do all schools) would exhale a deep collective sigh as all the little treasures trekked off home in their parents’ plush automobiles, leaving the staff to relax abruptly and to try to get their lives back into some sort of sensible shape.

All except the Housemasters that is – who would at this point must needs write for each of their charges a detailed and considered report on their progress and well-being, such that the grateful parents would feel that they were truly getting their money’s worth. This task would keep these poor souls busy for another two or three days following the departure of the student body, whilst everyone else got on with the onerous burden of having fun and ‘chilling’!

What makes me think of this now? Well – I have spent much of the last three days marking homeworks, grading lab sessions, evaluating term projects and scoring the final examination papers of my recent students – who are doubtless all eager to know how they have done. I still have about half a day’s work to go and I am now really looking forward to the task being completed.

Strangely, I now feel considerable more sympathy for my former colleagues…

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End of term

April 15, 2018 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidWhen I wrote this piece back in June 2015 – on the occasion of the closing of the final term of my final academic year at the illustrious London boys’ school for which it was my privilege to have worked for getting on for a decade immediately prior to retirement – I certainly did not expect that I would find myself almost three years later experiencing yet another term-end.

Neither – of course – did I envisage myself ever working again. This post was to have signaled a final farewell to all that!

‘Never‘ (according to the wisdom of American football coach Jon Gruden) ‘say never to nothing!’. A swift perusal of the InterWebNet reveals that he is far from alone in offering this opinion.

So – my first term back at work finished last Friday, with just the final exam to come tomorrow (Monday). I then have some marking and course development to attend to before my term contract expires at the end of April. I have already been approached several times about doing some further teaching in the autumn (fall!) – which would actually suit me rather well. Indeed, I was asked if I would care to go full time – at which I happily drew the line.

My current thinking is to try for a contract for the autumn term and then see if I can also get one for the spring term of next year (the which Canadians somewhat pessimistically call the ‘winter’ term – though perhaps in other parts of Canada that is more apt!). By that time my state pension will have kicked in and I will probably feel that enough is enough…

But as the man says – “Never…!”

I have found myself enjoying this experience to an unexpected degree. I have always taken pleasure from teaching and with post-secondary students there are few issues of discipline or motivation. I only work two days a week and even then they are not consecutive. I am left very much to my own devices and have been pleasantly surprised by just how much knowledge I seem to have accumulated over the decades – even if I were not consciously trying so to do at the time. On top of everything, being in a unionised post (and I find myself almost accidentally in a union for the first time in my life) my qualifications and experience all count toward my remuneration – which is as a result not to be sniffed at.

Well – I will certainly not be doing any sniffing!

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A nonsense!

April 11, 2018 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidThe previous owner of of our beautiful peninsula home left us a number of unwanted gifts of the variety that keep on giving! Quite enough has already been said on the matter of sun-rooms, law suits and heart-stopping contractors’ invoices and I promise that no further mention will be made thereof. There is one other (very minor but most irritating none-the-less) ghost-like and continuing reminder of the past.

We did not actually ever meet the old lady (who shall remain nameless). All of our dealings went through her whack-job of a realtor. We do know that we she moved to Vancouver, but we know not where or even if she still inhabits that other place. She and her (deceased) husband clearly at some stage had a small bank account with the CIBC. We know this because we still receive – through the post –  monthly statements addressed to the departed owners.

Now – I am a patient soul and quite capable of playing the long game. For the last two and a half years I have been marking the envelopes “Return to Sender” and popping them back in the post box. Towards the end of last year, however, I finally got a bit fed up with this rigmarole.

I called CIBC…

As seems so prevalent these days with customer service departments the world across the conversation did not go well and, sad to report, satisfaction was not to be had. Apparently the only way of stopping these statements is for the account holders themselves to write to the CIBC to request such. I enquired of the young man who was not helping me what might be the outcome should the elderly person concerned have expired in the meantime. He was no help with that query either.

I have no means of contacting the vendor and am certainly not prepared to go to any great length trying so to do. I returned instead to my previous course of action. Then – a couple of weeks  ago – one of the envelopes that I had inscribed reappeared in our post box. Unimpressed I added a further curt missive and pushed it back into the post box.

Two days later it was back again!

I visited the post office. They informed me (most politely) that had I just crossed through the address and written “Moved” upon the envelope they would have been obliged to return it to the sender. Clearly adding more invective gave them an excuse to abrogate their responsbilities

Now – this is all very irritating and one begins to marvel at the dogged determination that all concerned have shown in generating an entirely wasted sheet of paper, stuffing it in an envelope, paying postage to send it across Canada – only for it to be sent back via the same route presumably to be simply shredded (one hopes!) and thrown in the recycling back at the bank.

This sort of situation simply must arise all the time. I find it hard to believe that no remedy can be devised for such madness…

Bah – say I!

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The spring is sprung…

April 8, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid…the grass is riz.
I wonder where dem boidies is.
They say the boid is on the wing.
But that’s absoid.
The wing is on the boid!

Anon (as far as anyone knows!)

Three signs that spring is actually already here – however much the weather might be doing its very best to suggest otherwise.

 

First – the hummingbirds are back at the feeders again. The Kickass Canada Girl calls them ‘the diabetics‘ and observing just how much sugar nectar these tiny creatures tuck away I concede that she has a good point. Anyway – great to see them back again.

We did not have Christmas lights along the front of our house this year, since the upstairs was still in the hands of our contractors when the festive season rolled around. As a result there was no question of the lights being left up late – and thus no possibility of the hummingbirds using the strand again for their nesting ground as they did last year. Apparently hummingbirds like to stay pretty close to previous nest sites so we will see what they do this year.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidSecondly – the dogwood tree is in bloom. The Girl has apparently long hankered for a dogwood tree and we now have one. This makes her happy – and that makes me happy.

I read that dogwoods often suffer badly from lawnmower and trimmer cuts if they happen to be adjacent to lawns. If the bark is damaged at a low level the trees can become prone to infestation. Ours is a big tree as set so far back from the grass that it is actually in next door’s yard, so it is not in any such danger. If anything the reverse is the case. When the flowers drop on the lawn they do so in the form of hard husks which very rapidly take the edge off one’s mower blades!

Final sign of spring? The return of the Anacortes ferry! During the winter months of January, February and March the little green and white car ferry – a familiar presence during the rest of the year and regular viewing from our windows and deck – voyages no further than the San Juan Islands, eschewing the last leg of the trip into Sidney. There is always a little quiet celebration in downtown Sidney when it is back on its usual route.

Good to see that spring is here again. Now let’s have some sunshine!

 

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Wet coast

April 6, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidOne of the joys of living on the west coast of Canada – with its moderate oceanic climate and in what the World Wide Fund for Nature defines as the Pacific temperate rain forest ecoregion – is that we inhabit a verdant paradise of lush and abundant vegetation.

One of the drawbacks of living on the wet coast of Canada – with its moderate oceanic climate and in what the World Wide Fund for Nature defines as the Pacific temperate rain forest ecoregion – is that we inhabit a verdant paradise of lush and abundant vegetation!

Though the summers here on the tip of Vancouver Island tend to be dry and delightfully temperate, the winters incline to the aqueous. As I write this post I can gaze out of my studio window at a landscape that is undeniably ‘socked in’. I believe that the landscape is still there – but I cannot actually see any of it.

The result of all of this humectation is – naturally (see what I did there?) – that during the late winter and early spring all of that lush vegetation grows and grows and grows –  as though there were no tomorrow! It grows upwards – it grows outwards – and it presumably grows downwards as well!

Nature reveals itself to be the epitome of the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, with each species striving voraciously to overrun its neighbour in the ongoing quest for sunlight, water and nutrients. Left to its own devices the wonderful variety of plants in our delightful garden (yard!) would doubtless whittle itself down to just a couple of bigger, stronger brutes as all the weedy (there I go again!) specimens are trampled underfoot (I think I just stretched that particular metaphor a little too thin!).

The bottom boundary of our compact but decidedly highly-desirable estate is bounded with splendid trees and dense foliage. This latter is mostly – as far as I am aware – laurel of one type or another. Now, apparently the Schipka Cherry Laurel – which appears to form the bulk of this hedge – has the following qualities:

  • Hardy to minus 10 degrees
  • Fresh, glossy evergreen foliage attractive all year round
  • Easily grown even in difficult urban conditions
  • Can be clipped into hedges and screens
  • Drought and deer resistant

It also grows around 2 ft a year up to a height of 18 ft! As this boundary growth had not been pruned back for at least two and a half years – and most likely rather longer than that – it was in serious danger of taking over the smaller shrubs in the bed in front of it, not to mention cutting off our view of the sea whilst simultaneously advancing on my croquet lawn!

Fortunately it can also be pruned really hard. Apparently it simply shakes itself off and starts growing again.

I do now have a huge pile of clippings to be disposed of. Any takers?

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