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Life in England

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Prerequisites

May 23, 2012 in Life in England, Moving to Canada | Permalink

As you may have gathered from my last post, after nearly 8 weeks of incessant rain, below average temperatures and unbroken cloud cover, the weather in the UK has suddenly and dramatically broken. In a 24 hour period the temperature has soared by 10 degrees (Celsius), the sun has broken through the cloud cover and summer appears to have arrived. The Brits have emerged – blinking – into the light, dug out their bikes, un-garaged their convertibles and are basking as only a people more accustomed to the gloom and the cold can. To the optimists (me, me, me!) this is the start of the long hot summer. To the pessimists it will all be over by next week. Either way – we will make the most of it!

 

Back in the world of bureaucracy, form filling, visas and immigration I am still making slow progress toward the submission of my Canadian permanent residency application. Before I can bundle together all the necessary forms, photos and other supporting evidence and forward them to the Kickass Canada Girl for submission there are two further documents that must be acquired – the Police Certificate and the medical report.

Applying for a Police Certificate is relatively painless and all the necessary details can be found on the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) website. All that is required is:

  • The completed application form.
  • Two proofs of current address – recent utility bills or suchlike.
  • A copy of my passport – showing photo, signature, expiry date, nationality and any extension pages.
  • A colour passport photo – endorsed by a responsible person (the ACPO site provides a list of those professions that meet the criteria).
  • A second form completed by the endorser of the passport photo.
  • The correct payment.

The Police Certificate costs £35 if one is not in a hurry – or £70 if one is!

Acquiring a medical report is – sadly – less straightforward and considerably more expensive.

The medical examination can only be carried out by a ‘designated medical practitioner’ – and the list of such in the UK is not extensive. I chose a clinic reasonably close to us in Maidenhead. To make an appointment for my examination I had first to fill out and submit, by email, a ‘Booking Request Form’. The clinic then phoned me to make an appointment. They informed me that I would need to bring the following when I attended my medical:

  • A completed application form – the clinic’s own ‘Immigration Medical Registration Form’.
  • Documentation regarding existing medical conditions and details of any prescription medication.
  • My passport.
  • One other form of identification – incorporating my current address.
  • 3 colour passport photos.
  • Any prescription glasses or contact lenses.
  • Credit card details.
  • A completed Canada immigration form ‘IMM 1017 Section A’.

This last item is the cause of some controversy. The details given on the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website suggest that for those applying for permanent resident status sponsored by a family member  – as I am – and with the sponsor in Canada and the applicant elsewhere, should use the form that is in Appendix C of document ‘IMM 3901E – Sponsorship of a Spouse, Common-Law Partner, Conjugal Partner or Dependent Child Living Outside Canada – Part 3: Country Specific Instructions’ (for Western Europe). The clinic demurred and said that I should instead bring ‘IMM 1017 Section A’. I said that I would bring both, at which they enquired as to whether my ‘IMM 1017 Section A’ had been stamped. I replied that it had not – since I had downloaded it from the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website.

The clinic receptionist then suggested that I should contact the Canadian High Commission in London. I agreed that this would be a good idea – if for no other reason than to obtain a definitive answer.

I phoned the Canadian High Commission. I was bounced around a stack of automated menus before being finally spat out back where I had started. Apparently one cannot call the Canadian High Commission – one must use email. I then followed the complex chain of links on the website to which I had been referred, and found the email submission form – along with a list of conditions under which it could be used. Apparently it is possible to email the Canadian High Commission on visa matters only after submitting one’s application. If one is eager to check that the application is correct before submission, one can neither call nor email the Canadian High Commission to verify that this is the case. Something tells me that if I were to submit the wrong form they would be only to keen to tell me so. What a pity that they cannot do so in advance!

Regardless…

My medical examination – for which I must pay £250 plus any extras deemed necessary – is fixed for the end of next week. In the meantime I think I will go and bask in the sun for a while…

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Testing, testing…

May 20, 2012 in Life in England | Permalink

There is a certain nervous tension in the air ‘chez nous’ this weekend. Both Pearl and I are in need of examinations.

For new readers I should explain at this point that Pearl is my rather lovely Mercedes 300SL, about which you can read more here. It is widely held that – for chaps of a certain age – owning a convertible is a sure sign of mid-life crisis. If that is the case then mine must be one of the longest on record, given that I have not only owned Pearl for more than 10 years, but she also is my third rag-top. Perhaps my life is a perpetual crisis… On the other hand, if this is indeed mid life, then I should be in for a good long innings!

I digress…

I am in need of a medical examination as part of the application process for my Canadian permanent residency. More on this – quite probably much more – in my on-going series of posts explaining the whole process in gruesome detail. Let us – for now – focus instead on Pearl.

It is that time of year at which Pearl’s MOT test falls due. I feel sure that vehicles in Canada are subject to a similar testing regimen – indeed I have no doubt that such is the case the world over. In the UK the test was instigated in 1960 by the Ministry of Transport – hence the origin of the name. We no longer have a Ministry of Transport, but the name survives in acronym form as the title of this annual inspection.

When first established the test was applied to vehicles aged ten years and above. By 1967 it had been modified into roughly its current form, applying to all vehicles that have achieved their third anniversary. This reminds me of the witty comment made by Michael Flanders – the vocal half of Flanders and Swann – during their 60s musical comedy review, ‘At the Drop of a Hat’.

“Hello again. We had to look outside during the interval, see if our car’s all right. It’s getting a bit old, it’ll have to be tested soon. You know they started these tests for 10-year-old cars, they brought it down to six, now five, they’ll bring it down to three. There’s even been some talk of having them tested before they leave the factories.”

I grew up on Flanders and Swann, largely as a result of my mother’s affection for them and for their satirical songs. They were an unlikely duo who had been at Westminster School together before the war, but who hadn’t really started working together until they met again once the war was over. In the meantime Michael Flanders – who once had ambitions of becoming an actor – had contracted polio and was confined to a wheelchair. Donald Swann wrote the music and played the piano, and when they discovered that Flanders’ humorous introductions went down as well as the songs they adopted the review format that was to make them famous.

Their humour was gentle, witty and intelligent – all the things I like in comedy. I was immediately impressed by a duo who could base a song on the first and second law of thermodynamics – who wouldn’t be – but the clincher for me was an elegiac lament called ‘The Slow Train’, which – by incorporating the idiosyncratic names of many of the bucolic English villages and hamlets that had their railways stations sundered from them in the early 60s as part of the wide-ranging cutbacks imposed by the pillaging Dr. Beeching (the first Chairman of the British Railways Board) – contrived to say something heartfelt about the loss of a minor but important part of our heritage.

“The Sleepers sleep at Audlem and Ambergate.
No passenger waits on Chittening platform or Cheslyn Hay.
No one departs, no one arrives
From Selby to Goole, from St Erth to St Ives.
They’ve all passed out of our lives
On the Slow Train, on the Slow Train.”

 

I digress – again!

Pearl is now some 26 years old and getting through the MOT test is no longer the formality that it once was. To be fair, she does live in a dry garage – under a cover – for much of the year, and does a relatively low mileage mostly in dry, sunny conditions – but I reckon she has earned that. Anyway – when it came to it she sailed through with flying colours.

Let’s just hope my medical goes as well.

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…the darling buds…

May 13, 2012 in Life in England, Photos | Permalink

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

William Shakespeare

May is usually my favourite month. The first true taste of spring – the newly mown grass – the azaleas and bluebells – the fresh munchy green of the reborn floliage. It is time to step outside and to breath deeply of the nascent summer – to sit outside a pub and feel the sun on one’s shoulders. To lunch on tender new English asparagus – to lick the garlic from one’s fingers after the year’s first bowl of moules marinière – to savour the first sip of a chilled glass of crisp Sauvignon Blanc…

We have been granted a brief respite – two days on which the sun finally wrestled its way from behind the clouds. I took the Fuji x10 out to record the occasion.

Tomorrow it rains again!

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Apposition

May 10, 2012 in Life in England | Permalink

I have to work this Saturday – the occasion being the main event in the School’s calendar – the annual prize-giving and speech day which, in our case, goes by the name ‘Apposition’.

Apposition is as old as the School itself and thus dates back more than 500 years. The School – in common with other similar schools – is a charitable foundation with religious origins. Ironically, the Founder – unconvinced of the virtue and probity of his fellow churchmen – decreed that the governance of the School should be placed in the care of one of the preeminent livery companies of the City of London. The company remain the School’s trustees to this day.

Wishing to be able to hold the headmaster (known in our case as the High Master) to account, the livery company devised an annual examination of his abilities as an educator. An independent intellectual would be engaged each year to act as the ‘Apposer’.  A select coterie of the brightest pupils would be tasked with writing and delivering – before the Apposer and the assembled dignitaries – declamations on a range of academic subjects. The Apposer would then judge the High Master’s performance on the basis of the learning of the boys and – if satisfied – would recommend that the High Master be re-appointed for another year.

There have been – in the School’s history – two instances of High Masters not being re-appointed following this appraisal, but the last such was in the mid-eighteenth century and the event is now considered to be purely ceremonial. The occasion does, however, give parents and guests alike an opportunity to see some of the smartest boys in action and – if they are by chance related to them in some way – to glow quietly with pride as a consequence.

A list of this year’s declamation topics should give some idea of the level that these eighteen year old boys attain.

  • Mad Hatters and De-ranged Hats – Mathematicians will know what a de-rangement is. Others may want to take a quick glance here before looking away again quickly!
  • Can Noise be Music – From one of our music scholars (a brilliant cellist). Apparently the answer is that noise is not music, but it can be if we choose it so to be.
  • The Death of Neo-Liberal Economics – This year’s Apposer is a life peer who was a cabinet member in a previous Tory administration. It will be interesting to hear what he makes of this!
  • 11 Ball Juggling – How Hard Can it Be? – The physics behind juggling with 11 balls, by a young man who recently broke the world record.

 

If all goes to plan this time next year will see my last Apposition. I will miss these schools, with their strange rituals and quirky traditions… not because I am heading west to BC, of course, but because I will be retiring…

Still – plus ça change…

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…what we get!

May 3, 2012 in Life in England | 1 comment

“Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.” – Mark Twain

I added to this blog – some short while ago – a ‘Today’s Image’ feature. The intention was that I would regularly upload and display images captured day by day with the Fuji x10, which I now carry with me as a matter of course.

Those reading this post in real time will observe that the current image is of a rather splendid clock. Residents of Victoria will recognise it as being one of the predominant features of the atrium of the Bay Centre in that fair city. Now – clearly this must have been taken some weeks ago, before I returned to the UK.

The reason for the image not being more up to date is that the weather in the UK since I returned can only be described as ‘shocking’, and I have not felt moved to go out looking for photo opportunites. This has been the wettest April for a hundred years – indeed the wettest since records began. We have now moved into May and are all deeply disappointed to discover that the weather is no better. I struggle to recall the last day on which it did not rain, or indeed on which we were not overshadowed by the regulation thick blanket of grey cloud. Depressing!

So bad are things that the cricket season – which should by now be well under way – has seen virtually no play throughout the first three weeks. The only positive – from the reader’s point of view – is that you have thus far been spared my ramblings on the subject of that great game.

So much rain has fallen in the past week that some areas in the west of England are in serious danger of flooding, and the papers have been full of images of rising water levels as rivers burst their banks.

And yet…!

England is in the grip of a drought! Though April was washed out, March was one of the driest on record – as have been, in fact, the last two winters. The aquifers are at an extremely low level and it will take many months of rain for them to be fully replenished. The papers are carrying – alongside the photos of flooded fields – headlines warning that we may, by the end of the year, see standpipes in towns and villages as the water supply is cut off.

Only in England!

When referring to the weather in Victoria, Kickass Canada Girl is partial to the familiar quotation – “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute”. This saying apparently originates in New England and – contrary to some popular belief – was not actually said by Mark Twain. I do myself like the variable Victorian climate (which is clearly a good thing) as it seems to me to elude the dreary inevitability inherent in much English weather.

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Excepting February alone…

February 1, 2012 in Life in England | Permalink

“Why, what’s the matter, that you have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?” – William Shakespeare, ‘Much ado About Nothing’

February is definitely not my favourite month.

To those who – like me – are struggling to rid themselves of their ‘winter overcoats’ in this post-Christmas period it will come as no surprise that February took its name from the Latin ‘februum’ – which means ‘purification’. The Roman purification ritual ‘Februa’ – a form of spring-cleaning for the body – was held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. In my case there is still rather too much purification to be done before then, I fear.

I leave home at around 6:45 in the morning and don’t quit the office until somewhat after 5:30 in the afternoon. At this time of year this means starting both journeys in darkness. When it is also cold and wet and miserable – what the Scots would call ‘dreek!’ – I am not a happy bunny!

Since moving to Berkshire last September the quickest that I have done the commute to work is 55 minutes. The longest is something over 2 hours! The norm can be anything from an hour and a quarter to an hour and three quarters and varies by the day according to the vagaries of road works, accidents and what is described enigmatically as “sheer weight of traffic!”. My morning journey is a sleepy procession of three lanes of constantly flickering brake-lights, over-sized trucks and kamikaze motor-cyclists.

This latter reminds me of my first ever visit to Vancouver. Being so used to having bikes slaloming past the car on both sides – even at speed – it came as something of a surprise to see a group of Hell’s Angels queuing in the traffic for the Lion’s Gate bridge. Hell’s Angels queuing?! No British biker ever waits in traffic – Angel or not…

When Kickass Canada Girl goes back to Victoria in March she will be staying with dear friends on the Saanich peninsula. Her commute into central Victoria will take no more than 30 minutes and she will enjoy for much of the year the additional delight of the staggering panorama of the Olympic Mountains that so surprises the first-time visitor on cresting the hill at Royal Oak.

I could, of course, move nearer to town, but even in the current climate London rental prices are eye-watering and I don’t fancy spending the next two years living in something the size of a shoe box. So – with apologies to those who suffer the Colwood Crawl (whose journey has its own Facebook page!!) – I will simply embrace my victim-hood and look longingly across the Atlantic. The Girl is getting by far the better of this particular deal – though of course that is as it should be.

Ah well – two more winters……

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…gang aft a-gley!

January 26, 2012 in Life in England | 2 comments

(Last night was Burn’s Night – Slainte Mhor!)

About this time last year Kickass Canada Girl and I came up with a plan. It was a good plan. In fact, we were so impressed with it that we thought it might be The plan!

We own an apartment – a sliver of an old manor house in a small village in Buckinghamshire… 16th century church – pub – cricket club… and not a lot more. I bought the apartment long before Kickass Canada Girl and I met – it being about 5 miles from where I was working at the time. Since then we have both changed jobs and I suddenly found myself commuting into west London – a round trip of about 50 miles. The Girl had to endure a 45 minute drive in the opposite direction.

We were both getting pretty depressed at the amount of time we were spending sitting in traffic rather than being with each other, and we were also becoming seriously exhausted. We needed a plan.

The plan was this… We would sell the apartment and purchase a property in BC. As we wouldn’t be able to move to Canada until my retirement we would let the new house and use the income to fund a rented apartment in the UK – in closer proximity to at least one of our places of employ. When the time came to move we would no longer need to co-ordinate purchases on two continents but could simply terminate rental agreements and move into our house in BC. Genius!

We staged the apartment and put it on the market. We saw somewhere that we liked in a small village in Berkshire… 12th century church – pub – cricket club… you get the picture! We signed the lease.

That was when things started to go awry.

The market collapsed. Eight months and two price reductions later we still hadn’t had an offer on the apartment. With help from good friends we very nearly purchased a house in Victoria during the summer, but without the capital from the sale of the apartment we couldn’t make the numbers work. Having moved into the new apartment in Berkshire we were now having to pay rent on that. Finally, in November we had to acknowledge that we were unlikely to find a purchaser over the winter. We took the apartment off the market and found a tenant for it instead. Not quite according to plan…

Since then Kickass Canada Girl has landed her splendid new job in Victoria and will be moving back there in March. As she is 5 years younger than me (and looks 10 years younger than that!) she will have to work beyond my retirement in any case, so it does all make sense. Unfortunately, though the Berkshire village is pretty close to where she currently works, it is even further away from where I do. My round trip is now 68 miles!

I’m sure you know the Woody Allen quip: “If you want to make god laugh, tell him about your plans”…

 

Har, har, har!

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