Life as we know it

“From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached”.

Franz Kafka

I predicted in my recent ‘Review of the Year‘ post that this effort (a look ahead to the year just started) would either be dealt with in short order (there being nothing much to which to look forward) or really rather difficult to write.

We shall see which turns out to be the case…

Now – I could write a very simple list of things that we would like to achieve this year. It would look something like this:

• To get to see family and friends – face to face!
• To be able to entertain again
• To dine out
• To see some live theatre
• To enjoy some live music
• To attend a live sporting event (preferably Rugby!)
• To be able to travel… anywhere!

I do realise, of course, that these objectives may well be very similar – with minor variations – for many, many people this year. In the spirit of making a proper effort, however, I will see if I can do a little better in terms of our particular situation.

Extremely blessed as we are financially with the relative security of our pensions (who would have ever thought to be able to write such a thing) and our on-going part-time jobs, the one positive side-effect of not being able to do any of the things on the list above is that we do not currently have any major outgoings. For this reason we have decided to invest a little further in renovations to our home.

Readers may recall that in the spring of 2017 we had our new deck built on the back of the house. In the winter of 2017/18 we tackled the greatest challenge, with the wholesale renovation of the main floor of the house. In 2020 we had the exterior redecorated.

All that remains is for us to do some upgrades and tidying up in our basement. Our main guest bedroom is down there and needs a proper bathroom in place of the lashed-together affair that it currently has. The small kitchenette needs remodeling and upgrading and the family room – that which we re-painted in 2019 – needs to have its purpose properly defined and to be re-jigged accordingly.  We are thinking that we may turn some of it into a small fitness room.

This is all currently in the planning stages with a view to being effected in the spring/summer.

As I say – we are both expecting to carry on working – at least part time. I am not teaching this term (too small an uptake) but may instead teach a condensed version of the course in the spring (summer) term. The Girl will continue three days a week at her volunteer agency and is still seeing clients with her other hat on. I too will continue to make and promote music with The Chanteuse – following whatever course that may take.

As things stand I don’t think we can look further ahead than this. Like everyone else – we wait and watch…

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards”.

Steve Jobs

Yes – it’s that time of year again. Time to look back at the good intentions that I enumerated in the equivalent post last January – ahead of the first year of the new decade – and to determine just how well or how badly we did in our efforts to accomplish them.

Now – I hardly need to point out that 2020 did not turn out the way that it was expected to – for anyone… so, when I look down last year’s list I really don’t expect very much to appear in the ‘tick-done’ column.

The first point of business on last year’s list was actually a reference to the fact that we were – at that point – pleased to be playing host to a very long-time friend (particularly of The Girl’s – they having done some of their growing up together in Kamloops) who had been in urgent need of somewhere to live. It was truly a delight to have her with us, as she was until well into the summer. She is now working in Vancouver and we are delighted that she found considerably better fortune as the year progressed.

I mentioned that I was teaching a new course – an introduction to Computer Science – about which I had been quite nervous. As things turned out it went a lot better than I had expected and I found myself rather enjoying it – in spite of the fact that the shutdown with which we were inflicted in March resulted in my having to teach the last three weeks of the course online. I taught again in the autumn – this time entirely online – for upwards of thirty environmental science students whom I never met face to face. Strange times.

I also mentioned last January that we were going to run away for a week in February to Mexico. This we did – and had a lovely re-charging break there – though the COVID-19 lock-down undid a fair bit of the good work that had been done shortly afterwards.

The pandemic has disrupted so many lives – in some cases, of course, tragically – and The Girl and I feel particularly blessed in that we have been affected way less than have many others. We are very fortunate in that our property here on the peninsula affords us a very benign environment in which to be locked-down. I found teaching online to be less of a challenge than I expected, though it did take a fair bit of work in terms of preparation. The Girl works pretty much exclusively from home and that works reasonably well also. She thought at one point that her new business would have to go into hibernation whilst the pandemic lasted, but meeting clients in video-conferences has proved more effective than she expected it to – and she has found herself with rather more work than she anticipated.

I professed the hope, in last year’s missive, that I might get the opportunity to do some more music-making with The Chanteuse. As regular readers will be aware, things turned out to be considerably better than we feared might be the case – and we contrived to record a whole new album purely working online. I will post more news on that front in just a few days from now.

Naturally all travel plans (post-Mexico) went out of the window, something that we don’t expect to see changing anytime soon.

I rather suspect that the companion post to this one – in which I look forward to the year ahead – will be considerably harder to write and probably also considerably shorter, as it is very difficult to tell how things are going to pan out over the coming months.

I will, however, do the best that I can.