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2023

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In between

April 9, 2023 in Life in BC | Permalink

“Reality is not always dark or positive. It is somewhere in-between”.

Antara Mali

It is Easter weekend and here on the west coast of Canada we are once again caught in between. Winter has tarried over-long and though we have had occasional glimpses of spring it has to be said that we have not yet truly broken though thereto. Even the garden seems unsure as to whether or not to really ‘go for it’ – or to wait for things to warm up a bit. Most of our daffodils took one look at the weather and decided not to bother with flowers this year. The tulips boldly unfurled themselves but are now looking as though they wished that they had not bothered. I have mowed the lawns a couple of times but even the grass seems to be in two minds as to where we are in the seasons’ cycle.

A quarter of the year has gone. The clocks are wondering if they made a mistake with ‘summer’ time, but the planetary movements are relentless and we are already more than half way to the longest day. Hardly seems possible, does it?

Our exciting trip to Africa looms ever closer but the whole thing still seems more like make-belief than reality. It will be real enough, soon enough! We (in truth, mostly The Girl) have focused our minds on the expedition to come by carefully equipping ourselves for the sort of adventure that I don’t believe either of us has encountered before (well – I certainly haven’t). Will it be a life changing experience? Time will tell (and so, of course, will I)!

I am just finishing a fairly tough term at the College, during which I have been teaching not one class but two. I feel sure that the mental exercise of maintaining overlapping schedules has been doing wonders for keeping my ageing brain sparking; a sort of fitness class for the intellect. I have certainly detected a fair bit of grumbling from that quarter – the which is pretty much how I am when it comes to physical exercise also. Ah well – at least the remuneration goes some way towards paying for our sojourn south of the equator.

Well – let us hope that things change for the better and that the year begins to feel as though it has truly sparked into life.

 

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Failing better

March 30, 2023 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

"This work" is licensed under CC BY 4.0“Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Samuel Beckett

A handful of posts back I gently mourned the lack of a decent (IMHO!) Sunday Paper here in western Canada and breathed an authored sigh of relief at the discovery of The Atlantic magazine – by way of compensation.

As it happens I had not originally intended the subject of that missive to be my quest to find an agreeable journal here on the island, but rather an appreciation of a particular article that I had come across within the digital variant of my new favourite source of commentary.

The piece concerned is titled “The Fine Art of Failure” and is by the Canadian novelist, Stephen Marche. In fact, the article was adapted from the Marche’s slim Field Notes volume – “On Writing and Failure” (the which is also apparently subtitled – “On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer”). I was so taken with the article that I Amazoned forthwith and purchased the real thing.

Marche’s premise is that it doesn’t matter how famous or well-respected one becomes as a writer – the main focus of one’s existence is exactly the same as for the complete beginner… that of being continually rejected (albeit at a somewhat elevated level). Marche writes:

“Failure is the body of a writer’s life. Success is only ever an attire. A paradox defines this business: the public only see writers in their victories but their real lives are mostly in defeat“.

Much of this slim tome is made up of the sort of anecdotes that should be taken to heart. A few pages in Marche discusses the “cruel species of irony [that] drove the working life of Herman Melville“:

“His first book was Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, pure crap and a significant bestseller. His final book was Billy Budd, an extreme masterpiece he couldn’t even manage to self-publish. His fate was like the sick joke of some cruel god. The better he wrote, the more he failed”.

For those dreaming of literary success Marche is clear-eyed:

“The internet loves to tell stories about famous writers facing adversity. … What I find strange is that anyone finds it strange that there’s so much rejection. The average telemarketer has to make eighteen calls before finding someone willing to talk with him or her. And that’s for s*** people might need, like a vacuum cleaner or a new smartphone. Nobody needs a manuscript”.

…or a song …or a play …or a screenplay …or a painting! Marche acknowledges that his thesis is not restricted to the literary arts. It is the same all over.

I cannot recommend this slender volume enough to anyone who harbours the creative urge. It is strangely and contrarily reassuring to all those of us who had – at some point – to choose between keeping the stacks of rejection letters or throwing them away (or indeed burning them!) and giving up the whole idea.

You know who you are!

 

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Wow!

March 23, 2023 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

I posted – back in February – a really quite excited missive celebrating a Scottish Rugby triumph over the auld enemy on the opening weekend of this year’s Six Nations tournament – at Twickenham! Those who don’t follow such things may not be aware quite how big of a deal this was. The Scots won consecutive victories at the Home of Rugby for the first time in a very long time.

Subsequent to that post – in which I also looked ahead hopefully to at least two more wins in the competition – I kept fairly quiet, so as not to jinx the team. Well – the tournament finished last weekend and I need keep silent no longer.

As predicted, the Scots were unable to beat either the French or the Irish (currently numbers one and two in the world) – the latter completing a fine Grand Slam in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day (many congratulations!). The Scots did, however, win their other two games, finishing with three bonus point victories and third place in the tournament.

Even more impressive is what those results have done to the current world rankings (see below) – a matter of considerable import in a Rugby World Cup year.

Let it be said at once that Scotland are in a fierce group in the World Cup. They will have to face to both the Irish (again) and the South Africans in the group stages and they would need to beat at least one of them to stand a chance of progressing to the later stages of the tournament. This is extremely unlikely – but we Scots are by nature infeasibly optimistic, so who knows?

…and, of course, nothing will stop us celebrating in the meantime.

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Stuff happening

March 16, 2023 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Last Friday The Girl and I had a telephone consultation with the Travel Medicine and Vaccination Centre here in Victoria. Our purpose was to establish that which would be required for our forthcoming trip to Africa.

Now, The Girl has a rather splendid written record of her previous vaccinations and it was a breeze to determine what (if anything) is in need of updating and what additional precautions should be taken to keep her safe on the basis of our detailed itinerary.

I – naturally – presented a rather different challenge. I feel sure that all in the UK must now be effected in a considerably more rigorous manner than ‘when I were a nipper’; clearly I must have had the usual round of immunisations for a child growing up in the UK in the 60s – but I as far as I can recall I have never possessed a written record thereof. With the memory of a man heading rapidly towards his eighth decade there was no chance that I could categorically state that which I had had and when I had had it.

The lady from the TMVC cut through all the cr*p. I mattered not a hoot what jabs I had had back in the day; with the exception of HEPs A & B (which I had somehow contrived not to have thus far) everything would need to be updated anyway.

We thus presented ourselves the following day at the TMVC to be stuck like pin cushions. Tetanus, Typhoid, Polio, Diphtheria, HEP A & B… It is a good thing that we each have two arms !

Anyway – ’tis done and all we need to do now is to pick up our Malaria medication. Things have apparently moved on since my last experience of these vile tinctures – the which saw me through a visit to India back in the 80s. Then – having failed to read the instructions for the tablets with adequate care – we experienced several distressing nights of psychotic reactions – waking at 4:00am, sweating profusely with pounding hearts and the conviction that we were about to die in our beds. Not nice!

Preparations for the Africa trip are proceeding apace. Travel in Botswana on small planes necessitates the toting of only very limited luggage. We not only had to purchase soft bags small enough to fit into the cargo hold of a Cessna, but also to equip ourselves with a new safari wardrobe. The limitations are not solely to do with weight. The wildlife in Africa doesn’t like whites or other bright colours. The mosquitos – on the other hand – do like blues, blacks and other dark colours.

As we are travelling in the African winter we must be prepared for cold 5:00am starts, but also for 30C days. Layers it is then – and of suitably lightweight clothing. It is a good thing that Canada – being a nation in love with the great outdoors – has plentiful supplies of high-tech gear that is just the job (though at a price, of course).

Well, I think that is about enough of an update for now. More – of course – to come!

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Coda

March 5, 2023 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

When I wrote a post recently raising a cheer for the culmination of the long process towards adding Canadian citizenship (and a matching passport) to my existing British variants of both – I assumed that that was the last I would hear of the process. Indeed – what else could there be to say?

Imagine my surprise, then, when an important and most official looking package arrived for me just the other day in the post. The envelope indicated that it had originated in the Canadian House of Commons – the Canadian parliament – and when I extracted this rather swish folder from within the impression was confirmed.

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid
What could the Canadian government want with me? Was I in trouble already? Did they want their citizenship back?

I need not have feared…

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid
The folder contained a rather splendid certificate, signed by our local MP – Elizabeth May – welcoming me as a new Canadian citizen.

How splendid!

Now – I don’t want to draw comparisons, but when The Girl was awarded her British citizenship back in 2012, no-one from the UK parliament sent her an equivalent welcoming memento.

Hmmmm!

Elizabeth May is a resident of our local town – Sidney by the Sea – and is (joint) leader of the Green Party. She has long served the peninsula and the Gulf Islands as member of parliament and is one of the few Green Party representatives there. We like her!

Even more so now…

 

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Every glittering ounce

February 28, 2023 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“Good news is rare these days, and every glittering ounce of it should be cherished and hoarded and worshipped and fondled like a priceless diamond.”

Hunter S. Thompson

It is hardly feasible – no matter how hard our forefathers may have attempted so to do back in the bad old colonial days – to relocate to the far side of the world without making changes to the way one lives. Such modifications may turn out to be unexpectedly significant or even life-changing. Lesser amendments, on the other hand, might go virtually unnoticed in the moment – though perhaps acquiring greater import with the passage of time and with the benefit of hindsight.

I am writing this – for instance – on a Sunday. Back in the UK a key part of the Sunday ritual would have been the quick trip out in the morning to purchase coffees and a stack of Sunday newspapers. My personal and long standing favourite was The Observer – now part of the Guardian group.

When we came to Canada we looked around for a substitute; only to discover that there really isn’t one…  at least, not in a truly satisfying sense. There are some multi-part weekend papers to be sure, but they are very meagre fare by comparison to their British counterparts. They lack weight in all senses and are sadly not able – in my view – to  boast columnists or journalists of a comparable calibre to their UK equivalents.

It is, of course, quite possible to purchase British newspapers – including The Observer – in Canada… if one is prepared to wait for half a week and to pay a hefty premium for so doing. We are – needless to say – not!

It is further a fact of life these days that pretty much everything print-based has now been moved (or duplicated) online. It is certainly possible to read all of the titles with which we are familiar on the tiny screen, though some are protected by pay-walls to which I am not prepared to donate. Not all of these transitions online has been effected in an agreeable form. The Independent (my daily paper of choice in the UK when I had time to read such a thing) is now an online only journal that is sadly (but inevitably) beset by advertising. No big deal in itself were it not that the implementation in this case results in the screen constantly refreshing and jumping about as one tries to read – in the service of dandling fresh adverts before one’s weary eyes. The whole experience is so irritating that I was obliged to withdraw a routine contribution to their funds and to look elsewhere.

With the BBC website now a shadow of its former self – though still indispensable – I find myself now a subscriber to The Guardian – something that I had not anticipated. Though The Guardian‘s politics have always found favour in our household we have often thought them to be a little too po-faced to be likeable and their writers a little over-fond of the sanctimonious.

A year or so back I found myself searching furiously for a new source of cultural and current affairs analysis; a journal with its heart in the right place but still attractive to writers who knew how to turn a phrase and to frame a persuasive argument. I found just such in The Atlantic – that venerable literary magazine that has evolved into an influential platform for long-form storytelling and news-maker interviews. In addition to its monthly edition it produces a most useful daily digest of articles during the working week – and I would not now willingly be without it.

I recommend it – regardless of where in the world you reside.

 

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Goals and targets!

February 18, 2023 in Life as we know it | 1 comment

Target – an indicator established to determine how successfully you are achieving an objective.

Goal – an indicator established to determine whether you have achieved your objective.

I had an email from an advisor at my bank just today. The lady responsible for it ‘reached out‘ to me (thanks for that!) to enquire as to whether (or not) I was ‘on track to reach all of my goals‘.

I pondered awhile as to how my career as a global music megastar was progressing – what the likelihood of a multi-billion dollar lottery win was – or indeed how my devious plans for world domination were shaping up…

I replied to the nice lady that – as far as I could tell – I was roughly on track to reach such goals as I had.

This did remind me, however, that I owe the gentle (and most patient) reader an brief list of our goals (and possibly targets!) for 2023. After all – we are now half way through February and my promise to deliver same is as yet outstanding.

OK – here we go.

So – after our big trip to Europe last year this will obviously be a quiet, ‘home-ish’ sort of a year – our aims and ambitions being not dissimilar to those to which we have aspired ever since the pandemic broke…

…except…

…such a lack of ambition simply does not sit comfortably with – The Girl. She argues – persuasively – that if there are places to which we might desire to travel, then the time so to do is now – before I move into another and even more expensive (particularly in terms of travel insurance) decade. Who can tell – she further reasons – how long we will be fit enough for such bold venturing?

Now, though she has already traveled pretty widely, her bucket list has for a long time included an expedition to Africa – in particular to go on safari to Botswana and to the Victoria Falls.

This, then, is what we are going to be doing at the end of May and into June this very year. Such a venture does not come cheap, particularly as we are no longer prepared to set forth on such a long haul faced with the relative privations of economy class. To help fund my part in this  lavish expedition I have had to take on the teaching of a double course this term at the College. As long as that in itself doesn’t do me in I figure I should be fit and ready to go by mid-May.

It is going to be an altogether wonderful, splendid (if somewhat unanticipated) venture and you, gentle readers, will be hearing and seeing a great deal more about it as we progress through the first half of the year.

Such is the mental magnitude of the undertaking that we don’t have much space left in our imaginations at this juncture to conjure up other aims and ambitions for the year – with the exception of a musical ambition on my part. The Chanteuse and I have decreed that this year we should prepare ourselves to perform live. Even should we not manage so to do before the year’s end – we will be ready and raring to go immediately thereafter. More on this also –  later in the year.

Well! Who saw that coming?

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Burt Bacharach

February 12, 2023 in Life as we know it | 2 comments

Burt Bacharach

1928 – 2023

RIP

Phil Guest from Bournemouth, UK, Burt Bacharach 2013 (9219552969), CC BY-SA 2.0I mentioned only the other day in this forum that it was deeply saddening that we seem in these times to be losing so many of those giants upon whose shoulders sit the artists, thinkers, creators, sports-folk and even (dare I say it) politicians to whom we turn in these troubled times.

Now another has gone – and this time one for whom the soubriquet ‘legend’ is surely inarguable.

I am not going to enumerate the many classics that Burt Bacharach penned throughout his lengthy career, not tell you any of the details of his life. That is for the hoards of obituarists who have already covered many miles of paper with appropriately glowing eulogies.

I am instead simply going to recall the one occasion on which The Girl and I saw Bacharach in concert – in Pergugia at the Jazz Festival. This was during his eightieth year; fourteen years ago. His voice had by that time passed its best and he very sensibly employed three different singers to cover his beautiful songs, whilst he played piano and led the orchestra.

To our surprise he started with a ten-minute medley of some of his greatest hits. Having finished this he set out on another. We observed to each other that it was a rare star who thus disposed of his major hits within the first twenty minutes of a show.

Bacharach simply played on… giving us a further two and a half hours of greatest hits. What a catalog – and what a fantastic show! The sentiment that came most frequently into our minds during this magical concert was: “I didn’t know he wrote that!”.

Well – he did!

We will not see his like again.

Rest in Peace

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Huzzah!

February 7, 2023 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Image by <a href=" https://www.vectorportal.com" >Vectorportal.com</a>, <a class="external text" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" >CC BY</a>It is not often that one gets to celebrate happy occurrences two days running. This just happens to be one of those occasions.

In my last post I announced the long-awaited arrival last Friday of my shiny new Canadian passport.

“Hurrah” – says I!…

Then – on the very next day – Scotland triumphed at Twickenham over the auld enemy in the Calcutta Cup.

“Hurrah and twice hurrah” – I cry!…

Yes – it is that splendid weekend at the start of an otherwise gloomy February when the Northern Hemisphere’s greatest sporting event – the Six Nations Rugby tournament – kicks off. This year – being a Rugby World Cup year – promises to be particularly exciting, with the current top two sides in world Rugby – the Irish and the French – taking part. Both sides started with an away win – the Irish convincingly at the Principality in Cardiff – the latter rather more tenuously in Rome against the Azzuri.

The final match was the aforementioned Calcutta Cup clash between Scotland and England at Twickenham. There was a time – not so long ago – that the Scots routinely took a drubbing at the Cabbage Patch. Indeed, one had to look back a long way to find any Scots wins at all. Of late and for the moment, however, the worm has turned. Scotland have won the last three such encounters – including consecutive wins away from home. This is splendid stuff! Over the last six years the English have won once – there was a magnificent 38-38 draw at Twickers – and the remaining four wins have gone north of the border.

So far, so good. However, the Scots are all too aware that they have not, of late, been able to follow up these excellent wins with consistent results elsewhere. Now – no-one is expecting them to beat either the Irish or the French this year, but wins against the struggling Welsh and the greatly improved Italians would be most welcome.

Fingers – etc – firmly crossed and many pious invocations to the rugby gods duly rendered…

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Finally!

February 3, 2023 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

Clearly a day to celebrate!

Back in May 2012 The Girl was about to pay a visit to the UK so that she could attend her citizenship ceremony…

Those who have not been following this saga since I started blogging back in January 2012 may start scratching their heads at this point and wondering about the chronology… Actually, it is all quite simple. The Girl came to Victoria in March that year to take up a job opportunity that was (or appeared to be) too good to miss out on. I remained in the UK and the plan was that I would retire early in the summer of 2013 and join her in Canada at that point. Quite apart from the fact that living – er! – apart, was actually itself a very silly idea – as it turned out so was her taking the job. Later in the year it all went spectacularly tits-up and we ended up back in England for another couple of years.

However, back in May 2012 she had already applied for – and been granted – British Citizenship. The ceremony at the end of May was the end of that little chapter in this long and complex story.

The reason that I mention it at all is because her citizenship ceremony provided me with a suitable trigger to initiate my first attempt at applying for Permanent Residency for Canada – an essential prerequisite to moving here. How that process – and the whole move itself – panned out is the very basis for this online journal. Safe to say that it turned out to be quite a saga. If the details are of interest (perhaps you are contemplating such a move yourself) then searching the archive for posts in the category ‘Moving to Canada’ will reveal all – and then some!

Two rounds of PR applications (her return to the UK put the first attempt on hold) – retirement and the move to British Columbia in 2015 – a five year period living here before I could apply for citizenship – that lengthy process itself, culminating in my Citizenship Ceremony in the fall of last year – and finally, the slightly bumpy ride of applying for a Canadian passport to add to my UK one. All this has taken somewhat more than a decade to come to fruition, but today… today…!

…my passport was finally delivered!

Whooo-hoo!!

There it is at the top of the page, nestling up to my British passport. So – we are now both fully ‘citizened’ up and documented to travel…

…of which more in the next post!

 

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