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August 2020

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The other stuff (1)…

August 29, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

In my last post I touched on the busy nature of life right now here on the west coast of Canada. Not complaining of course – many others are way more busy than are we… but then, we are supposed to be retired(ish!).

As is ever the way when one is busy, all sorts of other stuff – and sometimes stuff that has been brewing quietly for quite a while – suddenly takes off just at the least helpful point.

Somebody has a law about this… probably somebody named Murphy – though on reflection that is more about things going wrong. In this case everything is just happening at once. Buses maybe? That is apparently called ‘bus bunching’ – or ‘clumping’ or ‘ convoying’ or ‘piggybacking’ or even ‘ platooning’… Anyway – buses lead one to think too much about the (questionable) prime minister of the UK – and no-one wants to go there!

I digress…

Here are a couple of other things that are currently in progress after extended periods of not so being:

Back in the spring of 2017 our excellent contractor set our renovation project in motion by tearing off the old rotting deck and leaking (and superfluous) sunrooms at the back of our house, before building us – over a seven week period – the splendid new deck that I look out on from here in my studio. If you want to revisit the details of that project – including the many photos that I took at the time – please do navigate your way back in the archives to May/June 2017.

At the end of that first phase of our external and internal renovation our contractor looked at us and said:

“Now all you need to do is to repaint the outside of the house”

The astute reader has already figured where this is going. Yes – more than three years later we are finally about to get the outside of the house painted! We are paying a company to do this because – though I don’t at all mind painting – I do think I am a little old to be clambering up tall ladders on steeply sloping ground. A friend that I visited whilst back in the UK last year had – shortly before that trip – taken a tumble from a ladder in his garden and badly fractured a wrist. I decided that discretion is indeed the better part…

One thing that I did need to do in preparation for the painters’ visit was to remove a large pile of garden waste that had accumulated at one point against the outside basement wall of the house. I would normally have cleared this myself during the year, but the green waste sites were closed for a number of months as a result of the pandemic and I had not got around to catching up. As I also had some other general detritus to be hauled away The Girl kindly found me a local firm who provide just such a service.

The chaps who actually do the business quickly disposed of my general waste and then made a start on the greenery. They were rapidly brought up short by the discovery that a particularly obstreperous colony of wasps had set up home in my now composting pile. Clearance was thus halted for a week whilst I called out a local pest control concern to give the irritating insects their marching orders.

It feels good to be giving lots of work to local companies in these difficult times, but it is also rather annoying when things do not run smoothly, as will be demonstrated by my other example of things that have been much delayed.

For that – however – the gentle  reader must await part two of this post…

 

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Busy, busy, busy

August 25, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink

There is no Victoria Fringe Festival this year, for reasons which will require no further elucidation. Indeed, fringe festivals are – in this exceedingly difficult time – exceedingly thin on the ground.

In common, no doubt, with other similar organising companies Intrepid Theatre juggled for a while notions of alternative festival forms (online only – local companies in carefully socially isolated venues…) but in the end had to admit defeat. One of the major problems is that many small fringe companies can only make their festival visits work financially if they can hop from one such to another, filling their summers with a brief international tour of fringes. Economies of scale – dontcha know…

Well – no-one is doing international fringe tours this year – so that all went out of the window. Intrepid – like many small companies heavily reliant on grant income – is having to work hard just to survive, without taking on further major challenges. Kudos to them – say I – for keeping the ship afloat.

So – the gentle reader will doubtless be musing – at a time of year when things are normally pretty frenetic, the Immigrant must be able to kick-back and enjoy the dog days sitting on the deck, chilled white in hand, enjoying the late August sunshine.

Not a bit of it! I am busier than ever and cannot frankly imagine how my fringe duties might have been fitted in at all.

The chief source of such busyness is my rapidly upcoming computer literacy teaching. Term starts in a couple of weeks and, because the course is being taught entirely online, all of the course structures and materials must be re-designed and re-written accordingly. It is one thing in normal times for students to slumber gently for ninety minutes in a lecture theatre whilst I drone on about the good-old days of computing (after all, when I am done they can all head off to the cafeteria for cheap sustenance and the chance to ‘diss’ my efforts) but quite another being taught online. In the comforts (or otherwise) of their own homes not a one of them would put up with an hour and a half of a disembodied voice emanating from the equivalent of a Zoom session. They would more likely just go back to bed and do what students do best.

No – the canny lecturer just has to get a whole bunch more canny than ever in order to keep them engaged. I will report back as to how it all goes.

My other busyness is much more fun. Since The Chanteuse and I discovered how to record with each other safely at arms-length we have been rampaging our way through our back-catalog of as-yet unrecorded tracks – trying to complete them before she too has to go back to work in September. Though I say it myself, we have been doing some great work. There is much to do on the mixing and mastering fronts – not to mention all the other bits and pieces that go to make up a release – but we have an album’s worth of material and we aim to get something out into the big wide world this autumn.

Now – that is exciting! 

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Welcome back!

August 22, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

I am delighted to be able to wish a warm “welcome back” to English Premiership Rugby!

Hoorah!

When the 2019/20 season was so abruptly terminated back in March in the face of the pandemic there were still nine rounds to be played and it was by no means certain that the program would ever be completed.

Now here we are – in the dog days of the summer – watching (where that is possible) rugger again and with the prospect of a great deal more of it to come. The 2019/20 season is to be wrapped up by the end of October – at which point the 2020/21 season will start immediately. The remaining fixtures in the abandoned 2020 Six Nations Championship are also to be shoehorned in and there is talk of some additional autumn internationals – which all adds up to a mouth-watering prospect.

The games are – of course – being played in empty stadia, which does take some getting used to. When one watches TV coverage of any of the matches one is immediately aware of the presence of an artificial ‘stadium noise’ soundtrack. This is actually quite cleverly done – incorporating as it does peaks and troughs that go someway towards emulating an authentically live ambience. What I don’t know is if this soundtrack is added only to the TV coverage, or if the players can hear it in the stadia.

Anyway – when we left them back in March my team – Bath Rugby – were hovering in the exact middle of the Premiership table. They made a good start in the first game back last week – beating London Irish comfortably at The Rec for a bonus point win – and this week they went one better, trouncing old rivals Leicester away at Welford Road. Granted that is not the challenge that once it was, but it is nonetheless still no mean feat. Let us hope that this momentum can be maintained.

It is very good to see live rugby again; a return to at least some semblance of normality.

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WordPress update

August 20, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink

I thought it only fair that I should add quick addendum to my previous missive on the difficulties of turning out blog content using WordPress 5.5 (the latest update at the time of writing) – should one be wedded (as am I) to the ‘Classic’ editor rather than whatever it is that WordPress want us to adopt now.

My complaint (should you have missed that message) was that the ‘Classic’ editor (which WordPress is trying to phase out) ceased to work after the recent upgrade to WordPress 5.5.

After further research online I have ascertained that the problem actually lies elsewhere – probably with one or more third party plugins that get referenced by the editor.

OK – now this is going to get a tiny bit technical, but I promise to keep it as simple as possible.

These older plugins had continued to work across previous upgrades because the WordPress build itself used to include a library called Jquery.Migrate – the purpose of which was to provide a mechanism for out of date code to continue to operate even if using deprecated methods. WordPress have now removed that library – hence the pain.

Some good-hearted folk from the Open-Source community have kindly and generously provided a workaround in the shape of a new plugin – Jquery.Migrate.Helper. This gets tools such a the Classic Editor working again – albeit with a constant background cacophony of warning messages.

WordPress seems to be determined to be shot of the whole affair, however, which doesn’t bode well for future upgrades… regardless of the veritable howls of protest from around the community.

Now – what else does that remind you of?

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WordPress woes

August 15, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

I am not a happy bunny!

I consider myself to be a long-term user of WordPress – the platform on which this blog is constructed. I have used the software since establishing the blog in 2012, but have also built a number of websites on it and have cheerfully recommended the platform to others looking to establish any sort of web presence themselves.

I am – to put it mildly – a fan.

I am not – however – a fan of some of the things that they have done recently.

When one writes routinely and regularly – an activity which requires speed and accuracy – one demands that the tools that one uses do a good, efficient job without getting in the way of the creative process. Such folk – and particularly those who are growing a bit long in the tooth (such as I) – do not like their tools to change because that interrupts the process, disrupts the flow and requires an agonising re-learning period just at the point that one is trying to focus elsewhere – on that which is being created!

The editor that one uses (or used to use) in WordPress is fairly basic, but it is simple – not unlike using a word processor such as Word. It had its drawbacks but many of us loved it and knew intimately its various foibles.

In their wisdom WordPress decided to replace it. Many of us old farts immediately disliked the new tool – a very different beast called the Block Editor. WordPress claims that it is simple to use. Well – let me tell you – it ain’t! Now – I realise this is the equivalent of some teenager telling you that his new mobile device is ‘simple’ to use. That is because it is – to him! Not so the rest of us…

Fortunately – in this case WordPress relented slightly and allowed us old buggers to continue using the ‘Classic’ editor whilst the hip young things got on and did whatever the heck it was that they wanted to do. So that was OK – until the recent upgrade to WordPress 5.5. Now – though the Classic Editor is still visible and can still be opened – lots of bits of it don’t work anymore. It is for that reason that this post looks a mess – ‘cos I can’t access the tools that I am used to employing to format it properly. I can’t format the image – I can’t add tags – I can’t look at the page in raw text mode – I can’t tell how many words I have written…

In fact – I can’t at the moment tell what it is going to look like when published – so my apologies if it is simply unreadable!

Bah!

Not impressed!

 

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Weighty matters

August 12, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink


There was an item missing from my recent list of COVID-19 pandemic losses and gains. That item was – counter-intuitively – both a loss and a gain… indeed, it was a gain because it was a loss!

Cryptic – huh?!

The fact is – since the beginning of March I have lost a healthy (see what I did there?) amount of weight – which is, naturally, a significant gain.

Now – I am aware that for some people the lock-downs enforced throughout the COVID world have had the opposite effect – and that the loss of gym sessions and other physical exercise has led to less than pleasant effects. My apologies to anyone to whom this applies (and indeed anyone else who takes offence!) should my gentle celebration come over as being in any way… smug!

Clearly I have been lucky. Now – I do habitually weigh a little less in the summer than I do when clad in my winter ‘overcoat’ and though my regular fitness sessions at our local leisure centre were abruptly curtailed in March I have continued to attend classes… first online via Zoom and more recently in the open air in the rather lovely park adjacent to the library in Sidney – but I don’t feel that these influences are great enough to have caused this difference.

No – something else is definitely going on. This is what I think has happened:

Being (mostly) retired and no longer tied to a single weekly grocery shop I have been in the habit of popping out on a day by day basis as and when we decide what to eat. Further – my two days a week at the college and my visits to fitness classes usually entailed the partaking of a coffee (or two) as part of the process. I have to admit that I had rather fallen into the habit of rewarding my endeavours with a little ‘treat’ of some variety.

Of course, under COVID one goes grocery shopping as little as possible – once a week or less – and without classes to attend (either as instructor or instructee) the notion of a reward becomes redundant.

There you have it. Cutting out the little treats helps Jack to lose some weight!

But does it make him a dull boy?

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You win some…

August 8, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink

…you lose some!

My last posting celebrated our recent tenth anniversary dinner at the Deep Cove Chalet at the top end of the Saanich peninsula. Though obviously meaningful in its own right this event carried an extra significance in that it was our first meal out at a restaurant since the COVID-19 lock-down took effect in mid-March. We have somewhat lost the habit of dining out and it felt slightly surreal to be doing so again. We were glad in the circumstances that we got to dine outside on the terrace; we are still not sure how we feel about repeating the experience indoors.

In any case the evening started me thinking about all of those good things that have been lost to us all in this peculiar summer as a result of the pandemic. I am not in this instance referring to those who have tragically lost loved ones, friends or colleagues (or even of those who have themselves been ill) – our hearts go out to them all and those that we know are very much in our thoughts.

No – in this case I am thinking of the everyday things that have disappeared or been put on indefinite hold and have as such left a hole in our lives. In addition to dining out and gathering together with friends we very much miss going to the theatre and the loss of the live music scene is keenly felt; at this time of the year we would normally be enjoying the weekly music in the park series in nearby Brentwood Bay.

Travel is not so much missed – the thought of flying at the moment gives me the shivers – but the pleasures of planning the next trip are. I do, of course, also miss live sport. International cricket has recently resumed in the UK – played in empty grounds and with the players essentially quarantined for the duration of the series. Rugby has yet to restart and is sorely missed. We have still not yet seen the end of the Six Nations tournament that was so abruptly truncated in March.

As is my nature I also fell to wondering if any positives could be identified from this much disrupted period. I believe that there are. Not having to commute to work is a definite plus, as is being able to spend more time at home. We are fortunate in that we have not – as have some – gone stir-crazy as a result of a paucity of things to do. We have both been busy, busy, busy… (in my case this includes the writing of many new songs and the re-writing much of my course material for the autumn).

Some people’s gardens have had more attention than they have had for a good long while and one of my great joys has been just how much more time we have spent entertaining in our garden (in a suitably socially distanced manner, of course). In some years this wonderful garden does not seem to get enough use – what with one thing and another. This year has more than made up for any previous lack.

Of course, we have not yet arrived at the hardest part of the lock-down. At the start of it we were all in a state of some shock and just wanted to hunker down and stay out of trouble. By the time we started getting really restless again the summer was upon us and there we pleasant diversions – even if only just outside our doors. Now we are heading rapidly towards the autumn and the winter – with no relief currently in sight.

I fear that it is going to be a long, hard winter…

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Copper bottoming

August 4, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam, Kickass Canada Girl | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid“Are you aluminiuming them my man?” “No, I’m copper-bottoming ’em Mum.”

Tongue-twister

Well – I promised you another anniversary – and here it is…

As of last Friday The Girl and I have been married for ten years – a decade which has passed in a flash… or mayhap in a haze of happy hours and preposterously pleasant pursuits. In common with others who would normally have been celebrating significant anniversaries in this most unprecedented of years we have been unable to do that which would normally come naturally – the throwing a party (or at the very least a full-scale barbie!).

So – I hear you mutter through clenched teeth – just how did you celebrate then?

Easy… we went out – just the two of us – to indulge in a splendid dinner at The Deep Cove Chalet. They may not have been able to accommodate the Ginger Prince earlier in the year but they had no trouble fitting us in for our special occasion on their lovely waterfront garden terrace.

Now, neither of us have previously visited The Chalet – which is no surprise in my case given my status as a BC ‘noob’ but is more so in the case of The Girl, who has intimate knowledge of most of the eateries of Greater Victoria. I think it is safe to say, however, that this will not be our last visit.

The Deep Cove Chalet – in its gorgeous position overlooking Deep Cove at the northern end of the Saanich Inlet – dates back to 1913 but has been owned by Pierre Koffel since 1972. It is a classic French restaurant of the sort that would come as no surprise in northern Europe, but the which is considerably harder to find in the non-French speaking parts of Canada. They do what they do well and with panache. The service was attentive and well-judged and they clearly have a good understanding of special occasions and of how to enhance them.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidAs to the feast itself – we shared Atlantic scallops followed by a fabulous steak tartare, before each having our own helpings of a wonderful saddle of venison. This excellent repast was washed down (though that is hardly the appropriate term – let’s say ‘perfectly complemented’ instead) by an excellent red Burgundy from Morey-Sainte Denis.

As it happened I had popped over to The Chalet a couple of days previous to our booking, to check the availability of wines on their extensive list and to arrange for our chosen one to be treated with respect and opened appropriately ahead of our arrival. On asking Pierre for his recommendation I was invited to go down to the wine cellar to have a look for myself. Once down in that chamber of delights Pierre disappeared, with a wry – “If you have not come out in an hour we will send someone to look for you“.

I think that it must be clear that we were impressed all round and really most grateful for the excellent hospitality.

 

Copper-Bottoming? Well – the tenth anniversary is traditionally ‘aluminium’ (not aluminum!) and I’m sure that you know the tongue-twister…

Well – you do now!

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