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Life as we know it

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Homesick blues 2

December 8, 2015 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Image frim PixabayIn my last post – with reference to my recent minor bout of homesickness – I mentioned that my first instinct was to fire up the InterWebNet to do some research. This turns out to have been a smart move and one that I would definitely recommend to others who find themselves in a similar state.

Here’s why:

The first thing that the sufferer will learn is that he or she is not alone. Not by a long chalk! Indeed, it is really quite startling – until one really thinks about it – quite how much web-based material there is on the subject. This boon provides assistance in a number of ways:

  • It is always comforting to discover that the unexpectedly painful emotions that you are suffering are in fact really very common. They won’t necessarily hurt less for being so but it can help considerably to feel less alone in your discomfort.
  • Where there are numbers there is social interaction. The InterWebNet abounds with fora to which you can add your voice and on which you can recount your experience. This will quite likely engender a sympathetic response from others who have ‘been there – suffered that’.
  • There is much useful information online both as to the nature of homesickness, and regarding helpful hints for mitigating the effects thereof. Not surprisingly, doing some research into the nature of homesickness does indeed itself prove to be one of the useful strategies for coping.
  • The number of blogs addressing the issue of homesickness is illustrative of yet another coping stategy – that of recording your emotional turmoil as a way of ‘taming the beast’ – as it were…

…which is – after all – exactly what I am doing here.

The InterWebNet provides further assistance. Its use as a communication tool – by means of emails, social media, Skype, messaging and so forth – as well as in providing resources such as Steetview or websites to enable one to virtually revisit the ‘motherland’, means that we now have at our fingertips unprecedented power to mitigate the agonies of much missed people and places. No – it’s not the same as actually being there, but goodness knows how previous generations managed without these amazing tools.

For me the most useful thing was discovering more about the nature of the beast itself. I am not going to give you a complete guided tour of the resources available online as you can easily make a list to your own specification using Google (or an alternative search engine of your choice). I am going to reference a couple of thoughts that I discovered that were particularly relevant in my case.

In the interests of keeping things in handily bite-sized chunks, however, I will once again flow over into yet another post…

 

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Homesick blues

December 3, 2015 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Image from Wikimedia CommonsLooking back at the postings made over the getting on for four years that I have now been scribbling on this blog it is not difficult to detect some broad trends therein. One such is that the missives penned during the run up to the Christmas season each year tend to exhibit a certain world-weariness – sometimes almost bordering on actual desperation.

The posts themselves document the reasons for this dark tone, chief amongst which being – from my time in education – the exhaustion that is so often the end result of the duration and intensity of the autumn term as practiced in the English Public School. Mention is also made of a secondary cause – the general sense of melancholy and ennui that, for me, seem always to be engendered by the ultimate months of the year.

Given that I am now retired and living in beautiful British Columbia I would have hoped that this year my experience of the period might be somewhat different. It is certainly the case that I am sleeping well again, that I have lost a little weight and that – as a now regular attendee of a twice weekly weights class at the local leisure facility (Fabulous Over-50s!) – I am probably fitter than I have been for some years. It is therefore quite sad to have to report that my mood over the past week or so has been really quite disappointing.

There is a reason for this bad humour. A reason that explains why these postings have made no reference at all over the past month to putative renovations around the house. A reason that cannot just yet be made public knowledge, but that which – sadly somewhat inevitably – involves the legal profession.

I will naturally clarify all just as soon as I am able so to do. In the meantime we find ourselves in an unexpected hiatus. This has left us ample time to brood instead of getting on with the planning of, and the preparation for, domestic renewal… and brooding is never a good thing.

In my case it led to a fortunately brief but really quite aggressive bout of homesickness. I had been expecting this at some point, but it still took me unawares. My natural response to such things is to fire up the InterWebNet and to do some research on the matter. That – of course – means that I intend writing a brief(ish) missive on the subject…

…but that must wait for a subsequent post.

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Against faith itself

November 16, 2015 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Image by Jean Jullien

Image by Jean Jullien

A deep sense of dismay filled us on Friday evening last as the terrible news began to filter in from Paris. For a second time this year we looked on aghast at the horrific scenes from that most beautiful of cities. Our hearts go out to those who have had loved ones torn from them in this senseless slaughter and our thoughts are with the injured and bereaved.

It is deeply depressing that – whereas but a few days ago across many of the world nations had joined in remembering those who gave their lives in previous conflicts – here we are again grieving afresh. It is difficult not to feel anger along with the sorrow – anger that we seem incapable of conducting our international affairs in a manner that can prevent such hideous and wicked acts.

It is further – given the apparent motivation for these atrocities – impossible not to revisit critically the role of religions in the grisly affairs of man. We do altogether too well at glossing over the difficult questions that should be asked.

My issue with the major faith-based religions is not that they require their adherents to accept absolutely their textual and historical sources – and by extension to believe in their spiritual creeds – without adequate evidence. Frankly, this is in itself of little concern and the endless debates concerning ‘truth’ amount in many instances to little more than sophistry. The argument is in any case un-winnable either way.

No – my issue is with what is clearly the central tenet of such faith-based religions… that we mere mortals must surrender ourselves – subjugate ourselves – to some higher power which has a ‘purpose’ for each us that we are to fulfil without question. If the faith does allow us to retain some element of free will this usually simply concerns whether or not we accept our essential nature as a tiny cog in the supreme being’s omnipotent machine – there being inevitably some form of ‘punishment’ should we make the wrong choice.

Most religions insist on the belief that only by such submission to a higher power can humankind truly know and achieve its greater purpose. Such claims are doubtless made in good faith, but the dangers must be all too clear. It takes but a slight corruption for an ardent adherent to believe that they have been charged with committing an act of violence and wickedness as part of their gods’ purpose – thus not only essentially absolving themselves of responsibility but also justifying the unjustifiable.

The world’s major faiths would doubtless – and understandably – defend themselves by claiming such instances to be a perversion of true belief. History, however, demonstrates repeatedly that the basic premise is supremely vulnerable to corruption, and that the end result is more often than not some form of extremism.

Again the faiths would probably argue that secular society is no less corruptible than the spiritual, and that demagogues can spring up from all sides. This is absolutely correct. There is no such thing as benevolent dictatorship – whether spiritual or secular. However – misguided governments may be voted out – dictators and tyrants may be overthrown – oppressive regimes may find themselves the target of revolution.

Supreme beings are – by definition – inviolable.

Free men and women are absolutely entitled to seek consolation from any faith (or indeed from none) that works for them. There is no right, however, to impose those beliefs on others – and to commit acts of violence in the name of a belief can never – never – be justified.

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Remembrance/Armistice Day

November 12, 2015 in Life as we know it | 4 comments

Image from PixabayToday was Remembrance Day – the eleventh day of the eleventh month – which marks the falling silent of the guns on the western front at the end of the Great War.

In the UK it is a normal working day and the occasion is marked – for those who mark it at all – by a two minute silence at the eleventh hour. The UK has always made more of Remembrance Sunday, which is held on the nearest Sunday to Armistice Day itself.

In Canada the day is a public holiday!

Either way it is entirely right and proper that there should be an annual reminder of – and a chance to reflect upon and give thanks for – the sacrifices made by those obliged to become engaged in armed conflict on behalf of their countries and who have paid the price thereof. It is a time also to extend thoughts and sympathies to those left behind.

I have always personally felt ambivalent about the wearing of the poppy, though it is a splendid symbol and the campaign raises essential monies for a truly worthy cause. During the sixties and seventies – when I was in my youth – the campaign in the UK featured the tagline “Wear your poppy with pride”. The prevailing mood at the time seemed very much to celebrate our glorious military history.

I couldn’t help feeling that – whereas pride might be an appropriate emotion for the combatants themselves, given the part they had played – for those of us with no direct involvement neither pride nor glory had a place in the remembrance of loss and sacrifice. It was surely more appropriate to feel sadness, regret and shame… shame that our country had been obliged to ask its young men to kill the young men of other countries and to make the ultimate sacrifice themselves.

Whatever one’s notion might be of ‘just’ war it is indisputable that of all the conflicts that have raged throughout history wars that could truly be thus classified are far outnumbered by those that could have – should have – been avoided. It is a shameful reflection on humanity that, whereas we continually spend vast fortunes and devote considerable ingenuity to developing newer and more hideous ways to kill each other, we are incapable of making a similar investment towards bringing war itself to an end. We struggle even to terminate the most prosaic of conflicts.

Perhaps on this day of remembrance we should also turn our minds to all those who are responsible – through their madness, their bigotry, their misguided idealism, their fanaticism, their political ambitions, their misplaced xenophobia and jingoism, their greed, desire, lust – for any part in fomenting or promoting armed conflict.

It seems – tragically – that remembering the dead alone is not enough to bring an end to war. Perhaps we must also keep fresh in our memories all of those whose actions – or lack thereof – have helped to sew the seeds of conflict.

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Life lessons

August 25, 2015 in Life as we know it | Permalink

imageThis post has been a long time coming.

Regular readers will need no reminder of the tortuous genesis of our Canadian adventure. Should the casual passer-by wish to catch up on the history of our struggle to divest ourselves of our UK property – of the Kickass Canada Girl’s abortive 2012 attempt to establish a new career in Victoria – of our brief long distance relationship and of my delayed retirement… all of the necessary information may be gleaned from the archives to this blog.

I will simply refer all other gentle readers to this post, dating from the end of April of this year. This missive – lurking under the banner “A lesson in patience” – had as its theme the notion that the entire enterprise had been an extended education in endurance.

It turns out that in this regard I was somewhat off-beam!

The post contained the following paragraph:

“As the deadline for our departure for Canada approaches with all the subtlety of a runaway train we must keep our faith, our belief in our good fortune and our fingers firmly crossed. The universe is surely planning for everything to pan out just right – at just the right moment.”

At the point of posting the Girl and I had both made something of psychological leap, deciding that we would no longer fret and strut regarding our lack of progress but determining instead that we would retire and move to Canada in July come what may! Had we not found a purchaser for our Buckinghamshire apartment – or had my Permanent Residency at that point not been approved – we would go regardless and make of the emprise what we might.

It is now a matter of history that within forty eight hours of this missive having been penned we received – and accepted – a reasonable offer for the apartment. Within little more than a week of that milestone my application for PR was also granted.

The sale of the apartment was completed a mere week before we departed on our trans-Atlantic jaunt, just in time for a six-year high in the Sterling/Canadian dollar exchange rate to gift us a bonus of around $145,000 on what we would have had, had the property been sold when we first attempted so to do.

Our good fortune in finding our dream house in Victoria has been documented sufficiently recently that I need not repeat myself here. Suffice to say that faith in our fellowship of the fortunate few, which had been somewhat eroded over the last year or so, has been dramatically restored.

What might all of this mean?

Well – there is no denying that a great deal of patience has been called for over the last four years. The ultimate lesson – however – is surely rather that one should trust in the universe to provide what is needed – when it is most needed. One may – of course – ascribe this fortune to whatever higher force one deems appropriate. Personally I just think that we are just lucky, lucky buggers!

End of story…

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Heroes and villains

June 22, 2015 in Life as we know it | Permalink

skull-308551_640I’ve been in this town so long
So long to the city
I’m fit with the stuff
To ride in the rough
And sunny down snuff I’m alright
By the heroes and…

Van Dyke Parks, Brian Wilson

They say that you shouldn’t meet your heroes. Now – as it happens I have some small experience in this regard, having several decades ago been introduced to one of mine…

…and it turns out that ‘they’ are right.

Finding myself face to face with one of the most brilliant, erudite and talented playwrights working today (subsequently to be knighted for his services to the Theatre) I could think of nothing of any intelligence with which to engage him concerning the play that I had just experienced, instead merely burbling inanely some incoherence about his genius which probably embarrassed him as much as it did me.

Ouch!

Well – as part of what is quite clearly an ongoing education I now discover that one should not ‘meet‘ one’s villains either!

My antipathy towards the current Chancellor of the Exchequer will not come as news to those who have been subjected to the occasional political rants within these postings (examples – should you need them – here and here). Perhaps the most galling aspect – to my mind anyway – is that he is a Old Boy of the School. Given that he has, I am reliably informed, spoken in less than complimentary terms concerning his own schooldays it is perhaps mildly surprising that he has placed his son at the School.

Last week saw the final drama production of the school year. Long standing readers may recall that, two years ago, my own production of Parzifal featured in this slot. This year it was the turn of an excellently realised production of Beowulf featuring a cast of more than thirty – amongst which number was the aforementioned progeny.

Having volunteered my services Front of House on the Friday I almost inevitably found myself checking the ticket of the man himself. He had clearly brought his entire clan along to witness the adolescent’s senior school drama debut. To make matters worse he did not rush off afterwards, but joined the throng outside the Drama Centre in partaking of some liquid refreshment.

It is profoundly uncomfortable to find oneself sequestered for any period within a few yards of someone whose every public pronouncement incites one to near incandescent rage only to observe that, in close proximity, he is after all but a man – and one who is clearly extremely proud of his son. Yes – if one looked there were flashes of the arrogance, of the sense of entitlement, that have been so widely publicised (and criticised – not only by me!), but on another level this was simply a parent in an off-duty moment supporting his child…

…which is not at all how I want to think of him!

Bah!

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Men at work?

May 16, 2015 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Image from PixabayIn around two months from now our tranter of choice – Bourne’s International Moves – will pitch up on the doorstep eager to crate up all of our precious goods and chattels for the bracing sea voyage around Cape Horn and on up the west coast of the Americas to Vancouver.

I am – of course – kidding! All our worldly possessions will in fact rather traverse the Panama Canal…

At least – I hope that is the plan!

The point is – big, scary things are about to transpire and pretty much everything that happens between now and the date of our departure is ineluctably bound up with the process. It is doubtless for such reasons that neither the Kickass Canada Girl nor I have much time nor patience for the minutiae and trivia of everyday life.

One such item of trivia – trivial at least as far as I was concerned – was the decision to schedule in the midst of the working week some apparently essential water mains restoration works across one of the roundabouts on the main arterial route into London that forms part of my daily pilgrimage to the School. This ‘work’ entailed the blocking of all bar one lane around this particular roundabout for three days – as far as one could tell without any concomitant commitment to actually turn up to carry out any form of labour – there being no sign of such on any of the occasions on which I struggled past the site.

This apparently careless arrangement added at least half an hour to my journey in each direction – resulting in my total in-car time rising to around four and a half hours each day!

Given that my working life has but seven weeks to run before I retire you might imagine just how dim a view I take of having to spend such an extensive proportion of it sitting in traffic.

I realise – of course – that those of you not approaching retirement may curl your lips disdainfully at the petty grumbles of one about so to do – and I do naturally sympathise… really I do!… but I find it increasingly difficult to maintain an appropriate sense of perspective as to the true import of the activities with which we fill our days.

Oh well! Thirty five working days – and counting!

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Election and power

May 6, 2015 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Image from Wikimedia Commons“One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician’s objective.

Election and power are.”

Cal Thomas

I have – you may have noticed – throughout the past five weeks refrained from making any mention whatsoever of the UK General Election.

There are three reasons for this:

  1. Though I may on occasion feel moved to venture an opinion on a political theme, this is not the
    raison d’être of this blog and I would prefer not thus to abuse the casual reader.
  2. The standard of the political fare on offer this time round has been so dire that I can scarce summon the will to dignify it with commentary.
  3. For the first time that I can recall since reaching the age of majority I have myself been struggling to work out to whom I should give my precious vote. Now – if ever – is the time that we need a ‘None of the above‘ box on the ballot paper!

However….

Today we enjoy the opportunity to exercise our democratic right. I strongly feel that we should so do.

These two vital but little discussed issues will inform my eventual decision:

  1. Inequality: The gulf between the richest and the poorest has been growing steadily since the late 1970s. There is no sign that this tide is about to turn. The party that wants my vote must address this issue.
  2. Europe: The Tories have given in cravenly to demands from the far right for a referendum on continued membership of the EC. The right believes fervently that such a referendum would inevitably lead to the UK exiting the community, and they are quite probably correct in so doing. In this case I fear that I cannot accept that the ‘democratic will of the people’ should hold sway. I would do so could I believe that the majority of the populace had reached such a judgement after careful consideration and with reasoned thought, rather than merely as the result of simple knee-jerk xenophobia. We would do well – in this era of the anniversaries of the cataclysms that engulfed Europe across the twentieth century – to remember the origins of and the rationale behind the European project… before it is too late!

I entreat you – should you have a vote in this election – to think deeply and to use your vote well.

 

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Clouds of meaning

April 20, 2015 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Image from Pixabay“What bothered me about this terrible recognition was the way in which the evidence of past things lies before us, trailing clouds of meaning… and we miss it!”

Hugh Hood – ‘A New Athens’

In my last posting – with reference to the start of my final term at the School – my train of thought terminated with a perhaps slightly unexpected reference to the circle of life. It was not the first time that this notion has featured in this eclectic assemblage of jottings.

I find myself – as life progresses – increasingly aware of its oblique nature. The events of the past make appearance alongside that which is present and – indeed –  that which is yet to come. Should an analog assist at this point you might try imagining that you are standing on the face of a huge clock at – say – seven o’clock. You can look back across the clock face to three o’clock – and indeed look ahead to ten o’clock, but when all is said and done time will still appear to sweep by in a continual circuit – a sort of temporal Mexican wave – with midnight marking both the end of the old and the start of a new cycle.

To what – I hear you ask – might this metaphysical mood be attributed?

On Friday last I attended the funeral and wake of a widely loved and sadly prematurely deceased member of the School’s support staff. The turnout was of such proportion that the diminutive chapel at the cemetery was almost literally bursting at the seams, the magnitude of which congregation might at least have offered some small consolation to the grieving relatives.

Such occasions do of themselves have a tendency to promulgate the philosophic. A little more than a year ago – in March 2014 – I posted this piece on the occasion of a not dissimilar event that had contemporaneously marked the the passing of one life and the arrival of another. The Kickass Canada Girl and I had attended the memorial service for a very old friend, the day before hosting a gathering at which was present a very dear but considerably younger friend, whose four month old baby boy inevitably and utterly stole the limelight.

At last Friday’s gathering the self-same friend (whose connection to the School was the source of our friendship) was once again present – this time bearing another very recent and as yet unmet addition to the family – a three week old daughter. On both occasions it was impossible not to be moved to the quiet contemplation of higher matters.

It would seem that – in these days – even our reminders of the cyclical nature of existence are now arriving periodically…

Perhaps the ultimate cybernetic system!

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The home straight

April 17, 2015 in Life as we know it | 4 comments

Image from PixabaySummer term at the School started yesterday…

It need hardly be repeated that – for one member of staff at least – this term will be unlike any other. It is not merely my last term at the School – but my last term anywhere!

Retirement is a big deal. Retirement and emigration in one fell swoop is an even bigger one. There will, doubtless, be plenty of opportunity on future occasion to dwell at length on the emotion and intellectual chaos that will almost inevitably be the outcome of pursuing such a rash, if delightful, course – and you just know that I will avail myself of that opportunity. It is not – however – my topic for today.

Having spent my entire career in education – both higher and secondary – I am in consequence well used to that particularly perennial rhythm familiar to those whose years are divided into academic terms.

Since the age of five my annual round has comprised three concentratedly intense and well defined trimesters separated by welcome periods of recovery. When at school myself – and when later at college – such hard-earned breaks actually were holidays, rather than simply the much-needed respite from the demands of academics that has been a feature of my working life since. It will surprise the gentle reader not at all to discover that – at the School – such exeats are – in the splendidly anachronistic tradition of public school terminology – designated ‘Remedy’!

I am grown so accustomed to this familiar rhythm that I fear that life post-retirement without such a framework might take some getting used to. The ebb and flow of the academic year is – for those who choose such a life – part of the attraction.

Academic terms are simultaneously tense, exhausting and strangely exciting. So much happens in such a brief period that the senses can be quite overwhelmed. It is very much the norm for all staff in schools such as this to become heavily involved in a wide range of extra-curricular activities, and those who complain that teachers have a cushy number, blessed with long and undeserved holidays, should remember that a house master at a boarding school – for example – is pretty much on duty for eleven or twelve weeks on the trot, twenty four hours a day and with the bare minimum of time off throughout that period. Staff not in house might have things slightly easier, but will still probably find there to be little opportunity during term time for a life outside the school.

This is not – you should understand – a complaint. As I have indicated, this life and its associated rhythms really are most attractive, for its variety as much as for anything. By the end of the summer term I may not much care if I never see another boy as long as I live but, after a measured, low-key, methodical and rejuvenating summer break from their presence, the place is only too ready for their return.

The Kickass Canada Girl is wont to extoll the virtues of Costa Rica – the climate of which blessed country supposedly varies nary a jot from a steady 72F throughout the year. This is – so she claims – her perfect temperature! That is as maybe but – as I will argue whenever the topic is raised – I much prefer that we actually enjoy seasons. How can one truly appreciate the glories of the summer if one has not had to endure at least some winter? Spring and early summer are my very favourite times of year because I love to see nature reborn after the vicissitudes of the autumn and winter. The seasons’ cycle does – after all – reflect the circle of life.

I clearly have a preference for a perennial routine. The varied Victorian climate looks pretty ideal to me, and I have no doubt that we will rapidly fall into a regular rhythm – rugby and trips to warmer climes in winter – cricket, boating and the great outdoors in summer – the familiar round of pagan festivals…

I am – all too clearly – a creature of habit!

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