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One year on…

June 28, 2013 in Life as we know it | 2 comments

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidToday is the last day of the year – in academic terms at least. At this time last year I was on the verge of flying off to Victoria (leaving for the airport straight from the School just as soon as the boys had departed) for what turned out to be my last (to date!) visit to BC.

Time to take stock…

 

A great deal has changed over the course of the year. My visit to Victoria last June/July was not to have been the only trip of the year. I was also expecting to join the Kickass Canada Girl and our lovely friends in Saanichton for Christmas – which would have been my first such in Canada and to which I was looking forward immensely. When I left BC in mid July I was thus expecting to be back before the year end and made my farewells accordingly. By the time I do visit next – this coming Christmas – eighteen months will have elapsed and many things will inevitably have changed. If nothing else, our beloved friends’ young boys will have grown (almost) beyond recognition.

The other significance of this particular day is that – had things gone to plan – this would have been my last day of term before retirement. Though I had intended to work until the end of July the serious business of education would have come to an end. Throughout these last two weeks I have been attending the farewell presentations and speeches to the Common Room of those who are moving on or retiring. I must admit to the odd twinge of envy for some of those who are hanging up their gowns and preparing for their post-School, post-work lives. It has not been easy adjourning this particular dream, though of course the presence by my side of the KACG makes up for pretty much everything. More than anything we are both eternally grateful that we no longer have to live on different continents.

The Girl herself is thriving. She loves her new job and now has the bit firmly between her teeth, already starting to build the role into something significant and substantial. She loves her rag-top roadster – in which we are intending to meander down to the Dorgdogne for a break in the sun (hopefully!) towards the end of July. She loves being able to go the the theatre and galleries in London – and she would be loving the bucolic English summer were we ever to get one!

All is good – all is good! Our lives are so blessed when compared with the travails of so many others in these uncertain times – and it is good for us to remember this.

These blessings we count daily!

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Credit and character

May 28, 2013 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidThere is a defined gulf
Between credit and character
If you doubt this, ask any banker;
He will advise that character is nice
But it is not collateral.

Evan Rhys, Poems from the Ledge

I am mindful of the fact that I promised a brief note on the… challenge – shall we say… of recovering monies from Canada to the UK once thence transferred. I am aware that in the normal run of things this would not pose any particular difficulty. Our case – as you might expect – does not entirely fall within that disposition.

Last year – whilst the Kickass Canada Girl was living in Victoria – we evolved a stratagem in service of which we would transfer to Canada such of our savings as could be spared, preparatory to the purchase at the appropriate point of a property there. To this end we opened a joint bank account and transferred funds to it using an online currency exchange – both of which operations were accomplished with encouraging ease.

When the situation deteriorated and the Girl was forced – immediately before Christmas – to return to the UK we agreed that – since our long term plans remained essentially unchanged – we would leave our funds in BC. Shortly thereafter – however – it became apparent that we would need to recover a small percentage of the monies to the UK to cover immediate expenses. At this point things became messy.

A little research indicated that we would need to initiate the funds transfer from our bank in Canada. A call to their telephone banking line was not particularly helpful. I learned that – whereas small transfers could easily be made – anything above a few hundred dollars would rapidly fall foul of the limits imposed on daily, weekly and monthly total transfers. The telephone banking operative suggested that I should speak directly to the branch in Saanichton.

The call to the branch was not much more help. I was told that I could certainly transfer the funds required – by making an ‘arrangement’ so to do. Unfortunately this could only be done by visiting the branch in person. We had not made any such arrangement before leaving – of course – because we didn’t know at the time that we were going to need so to do.

Given that a personal visit was clearly not possible I was advised instead to consult my bank in the UK, the implication being that they might be able to effect something by themselves calling Canada in my presence. I duly paid a visit, queued for an advisor and was told in no uncertain terms that they could do nothing to assist and that the onus was on the Canadian end to instigate the transfer.

I called the branch in Saanichton again – this time speaking to the lady in charge of our account. She was sympathetic – but ultimately unhelpful.

At this point – rapidly losing patience with a system seemingly designed to render impossible that which should have been a relatively simple operation – I called Canada again, this time to the bank’s customer service line. I finally encountered someone helpful – an eager and charming young lady. Why – she said brightly – did I not simply write myself a cheque?!

I pointed out that I didn’t actually have a chequebook for this account.

No problem. I could order one online…

It is – apparently – quite impossible to arrange for funds to be transferred from Canada to the UK – either online or by telephone – unless one is actually in Canada at the time or has had the prescience to make the necessary arrangement. It is – however – a trivial matter to order a chequebook online – have it delivered to a Canadian address (our dear friends in Saanichton, who forwarded it on to the UK) – and then to write myself a cheque for any amount that I please.

My attempt to pay in this cheque-to-myself at my bank in the UK caused only momentary confusion for the front of house assistant, the resolution of which involved my being whisked peremptorily to the front of a long and somewhat irritable queue of other customers to obtain the necessary advice. I beat a hasty retreat before the murmuring behind me turned nasty – content that I had finally been able to get my hands on my own money!

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Recovery position

May 1, 2013 in Kickass Canada Girl | Permalink

Image by Rama on WikimediaIt is half a year now since the Kickass Canada Girl’s (purportedly) splendid job in Victoria went – to appropriate the vernacular – ‘tits-up’. She was – as a result – obliged to leave our dear friends in Saanichton and to return – jobless – to the UK, just in time for Christmas and for us to wave an un-fond farewell to the tenant in our Buckinghamshire apartment (and, of course, to his rent cheque!).

All in all, not the best of times!

In line with the seasons, however, that winter has finally turned to spring and all indicators are that summer will – as it ever does – eventually arrive.

The Girl’s new job in London was always really considered a positioning exercise with a view to a more appropriate opening rapidly becoming available in the organisation’s head office in Reading – a stone’s throw from our Berkshire home. Sure enough, she has duly been awarded a suitably interesting management post which she takes up today. Congratulations KACG! We celebrated appropriately last Sunday with a really rather splendid lunch at a beautiful hostelry in Oxfordshire.

I made reference at the top of the year to the Girl’s quest to source a ‘new’ car, to replace the sexy Civic that she so generously sold to my nephew before leaving for BC last year. This search has taken longer than anticipated for a number of reasons – not least of which are those related to the difficulty that we encountered (and which I will document in a future post) transferring monies back to the UK from Canada. No matter! She finally found what she wanted and parted with her principal.

The Girl’s choice of motor fully meets my approval. She has – on past occasions when in the market for ‘wheels’ – flirted with the idea of acquiring something ‘interesting’ – but has ultimately ignored my blandishments and settled for the ‘sensible’ option instead. This has always struck me as being slightly surprising since – in many ways – she’s not that kind of girl! Not so this time, anyway. She has finally bitten the bullet and invested her hard-earned moolah in… (drum roll!)… a convertible!!! Not – in her case – a Merc (we can barely afford to run one of those!) but instead the best ‘British’ sports car never made – the Mazda MX-5 Roadster.

Hoorah!

What with new tenants in our Bucks apartment and spring finally bursting out all over we are both feeling positively perky…

…and who knows where that might lead!

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Bush telegraph

January 29, 2013 in Life in England, Moving to Canada | 2 comments

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidA few weeks ago I celebrated my birthday. Actually – ‘celebrated’ is probably somewhat too strong a word as I am of the persuasion that regards birthdays as mere nodding acquaintances rather than as seldom-seen long-lost friends. Actually – that isn’t entirely true either, because once a decade – on the occasion of what is melodramatically known as ‘the big one’ – I do let my hair down (what  remains thereof) and go – metaphorically at least – to town!

Needless to say – this was not ‘the big one’! That is still a year away.

When that festival does come around I had intended celebrating the event on the west coast of Vancouver Island. That may still turn out to possible, but the notion was predicated on the assumption that the Kickass Canada Girl and I would – by then – actually be living on the island. As that is no longer the case we may now need to re-consider. But then again…

The passing of this particular milestone has in any case not been without interest. I have now entered my sixtieth year on the planet and this is of itself food for thought. There is something about the ultimate season before a ‘major’ event that feels quite different. It is as though the hard yards have been gained, the finishing post is in sight and one can relax a little in the knowledge that the job has been well done. The feeling is somewhat akin to the endurance of the long distance flight. At the onset all is about settling in, getting comfortable and trying to moderate the chronometer of anticipation. The preponderance of the subsequent peregrination is spent asleep or in being fed, watered(!) and/or entertained. Finally – as one stirs, bleary eyed, from one’s semi-slumber to find that touchdown is less than an hour hence – an unreasonable sense of achievement pervades, as though to have survived the passage thus far were somehow note-worthy… a hangover perhaps from the days when travel really was an arduous undertaking.

At one point last summer I found myself experiencing a very similar feeling about having entered my final year at work before retirement. I had already commenced composition of a post on the subject for this blog at the point at which that hope was snatched away by the fickle hand of fate. Unfortunately, in my enthusiasm for this newly acquired state of pending retirement I had clearly mentioned my intentions to one or two too many others at the School. Such rumours have a habit of spreading like wildfire – as is the way in all such contained environments – and I now find myself somewhat embarrassed at having to disabuse eager well-wishers of the notion that I am shortly to disappear.

Now of course, when I do finally announce my impending retirement – at whatever point that happens – no-one will believe me!

 

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The reluctant landlord

January 16, 2013 in Life in England, Moving to Canada | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidReaders may recall – and those who do not may refresh their memories here should they so wish – that the Kickass Canada Girl and my very first scheme for moving to British Columbia – even before she was offered the job there – involved us moving out of our home in Buckinghamshire into rented accommodation, selling our apartment, purchasing a property in Victoria, letting it and then using the income to cover our rent in the UK until such time as we could move to Canada. The chief purpose of this little scheme was to enable us to leave the UK quickly when the time came and to have a property ready and waiting in BC on our arrival there.

As will be clear by now neither this nor any of our subsequent schemes worked out at all as planned. When it became apparent that we were not to be able to sell our apartment in short order we had to re-think. Rather than move back to Buckinghamshire we decided to seek a tenant to occupy the property and thus to cover our rental costs until such time as we were able to find a buyer. This was, after all, exactly what we were planning to do in Victoria – so where was the difference?

Well! All I can say is that the experience of our first year as landlords (or more properly as landlord and landlady) may well have put us off the whole notion for life! Nor does it does take much research on the InterWebNet or elsewhere to establish that anyone who lets property for any length of time ineluctably accrues their own horror stories. We just have to hope that our inchoate experience was anomalous and that our next time round will prove more propitious.

We seem to have suffered a particularly infelicitous run of bad luck when it comes to expenses. The Girl and I had spent a considerable amount renovating the apartment over the previous few years, which enterprise had included the installation of a complete new kitchen designed to a high standard by my brother – who makes his living thus. He is not cheap but he is very good!

Imagine my consternation, therefore, when – over the course of the year – I was obliged to:

  • replace the fridge/freezer
  • spend a considerable amount on oven repairs
  • call an engineer on several occasions to fix the washer/dryer
  • purchase a new control module for a gas fire
  • arrange for the ailing heating system to be looked at on more than one occasion.

This latter culminated in the eventual failure of the boiler (‘furnace’ – for Canadian readers!) requiring a complete – and expensive – replacement.

As though all of this were not enough our initiatory tenant proved to be a total nightmare. Quite apart from demanding a rent rebate whenever the slightest thing went amiss, this lessee eventually seemed to absent himself entirely from the property, only to be replaced (according to reports from our erstwhile neighbours) by a friend of his to whom he was ‘lending’ the apartment (the lease prohibiting him from sub-letting it). Our former home was thus now being lived in by someone of whom we had no knowledge or information at all, and who proceeded to upset the neighbours with noisy late night comings and goings and – ignoring our blandishments to the contrary – by smoking out of the windows. Matters eventually reached the point at which we were obliged to give the appropriate notice and the tenant – and his friend – finally moved out just before Christmas.

That was not – sad to say – the end of the matter. The tenant – whom we believed to be a very ‘house-proud’ fellow – had on taking up the lease enquired as to whether he could redecorate some of the rooms in neutral tones. We had no objection to this and at the end of the year were expecting to get the apartment back in good order. We were, therefore, upon receiving the check-out report from our management company, stunned to discover that the tenant had – without any consultation! – replaced a perfectly good neutral toned carpet in one of the bedrooms… with a black one!

Astonishing!! What sort of behaviour is that?!

As I write there are decorators and carpet-layers in the apartment restoring everything to a sensible state with a view to attracting fresh tenants. The cost of all this will hopefully – following the usual haggling, horse-trading and possibly arbitration – be recovered from the tenant’s deposit. I have no doubt that he will fight every inch of the way – because that is just the sort of unreasonable man that he is.

It takes – clearly – all sorts!

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Leave to remain

December 19, 2012 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

photo by Tomas Fano on Flickrin·def·i·nite

(adjective)
1.   not definite; without fixed or specified limit; unlimited: an indefinite number.

2.   not clearly defined or determined; not precise or exact: an indefinite boundary; an indefinite date in the future.

For those who came upon this post whilst searching the InterWebNet for information related to applying for Indefinite Leave to Remain or Permanent Residency for Canada – or for those who, like me, just require a sense of completeness or closure – I thought I should provide a brief overview of the tortuous passage that the Kickass Canada Girl and I negotiated earlier this year – and of how that particular journey ended.

As the Girl is – obviously – Canadian and I am far too old to be considered of any use to the Canadian (or indeed any other) economy, my particular route to permanent residency was inevitably going to involve sponsorship by my spouse – the aforementioned KACG. The thinking and logic behind this were outlined in ‘A Tough Occupation‘.

I subsequently gave more details of the Girl’s side of the process in ‘A Word from our Sponsor‘ and an outline of what I would be required to do in ‘Prerequisites‘. ‘Doctor, Doctor‘ tells the convoluted tale of the hoops through which this particular applicant had to jump to acquire the necessary medical certificate, whilst ‘A Little Application… 1‘ and ‘A Little Application… 2‘ completed the description of the plethora of forms that must be filled out and the extensive quantity of supporting information that must be submitted along with them. By the end of June – when I traveled to Victoria to spend a couple of frazzled weeks with the Girl and our dear friends in Saanichton – everything was complete on my side and I carried a weighty package of documentation with me which I handed over to the Girl to accompany her submission to Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

At this point the trail goes cold. Those who follow these things avidly will be wondering what has happened to my application since then and what effect our recent change of plan will have had upon it.

The short answer is – nothing!

The application was never actually submitted. The Girl – who as part of the sponsorship deal was going to have to agree to support me financially (if so called upon) for three years – was not able to file her submission as her employment details could not be completed until her six month probationary period was up. As it turned out her appointment was confirmed a mere couple of weeks before things turned bad and the whole deal went ‘tits-up’ – to avail myself of the vernacular. The completed forms and supporting documentation are once again crossing the Atlantic as I write, this time to be put into storage until such time as we are ready to start the process over again.

As it happens this is a good thing, since once permanent residency has been granted there is a time limit for moving to Canada. It would have been most annoying for the application to have succeeded and for us then to find ourselves unable to avail ourselves of it before it expired.

Once again we find ourselves looking on the bright side – which is, of course, a good thing!

 

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Cultural differences

August 8, 2012 in Life as we know it | 4 comments

I was really quite taken aback – after nearly eight years together – to discover that there are still major cultural differences between Kickass Canada Girl and myself.

Picture the scene… The Girl and I exit the Hypermarche laden with Provencal goodies which I lovingly load into the minuscule boot of our diminutive hire car. She tosses me the key and says,

“You drive”.

With the sun attempting to scorch us to toast before the air conditioning has a chance to kick in I jump into the driver’s seat and fumble with the key for the ignition lock. Got it! I twist the key vigorously. The car leaps forward and slams into the kerb in front of us.

“What the heck!”, she exclaims. “Could you jolly well not do that?”

She didn’t actually say that, but for the sake of the sensibilities of the gentle reader let us assume that she did.

“Could you not leave the jolly car in gear!”, I retort.

Actually, I didn’t say that either…

Apparently I am a particularly slow learner, because it took me four or five bunny-hopping commencements to excursions before I figured out that the Girl was not – in some heat induced stupor – forgetting to put the car into neutral before disembarking… This is, clearly, what she always does. I had not noticed before because – under a peculiarity of UK regulations which meant that the Girl could only exchange her Canadian drivers’ licence for an automatic licence – she had not driven what the Canadians call a ‘stick-shift’ during her time in England.

It turns out, of course, that in Canada one is taught always to leave the car in gear when parked. My protestations that this renders the parking brake somewhat redundant – particularly because Canadians are apparently taught not to use it when waiting to move off on a gentle incline either – cut no ice. It seems that the gearbox is to be relied on but that the parking brake is not. So much for automotive technological advancement!

Let us hope – in the interests of saving face in front of the amused locals – that we reach a compromise rapidly, and that our progress throughout the south of France is free of further lapinary lurches.

Still – as they say here – ‘Vive la difference”!

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Canada Day

July 2, 2012 in Life in BC, Photos | Permalink

Back in BC in time for Canada Day with our dear friends in Saanichton. Good to be back!

No words at this point – just some images from the garden.

Happy Canada Day!

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A little application… 2

June 23, 2012 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

It has taken six weeks and has involved a great deal of ferreting out of information, hunting down old photographs, recovering long-lost documents and battling with a sometimes baffling bureaucracy – but, finally, I believe that the job is done and the task is complete. My application for Canadian permanent residency is ready to go!

For the record the package comprises:

  • 1 x completed form – IMM 008 – General Application Form for Canada
  • 1 x completed form – IMM5669 – Schedule A – Background/Declaration
  • 1 x completed form – IMM 5406 – Additional Family Information
  • 1 x completed form – IMM 5490 – Sponsored Spouse/Partner Questionnaire

Supporting documentation comprises:

Identity and Civil Status Documents

  • 1 x copy of birth certificate
  • 1 x copy if driving license
  • 1 x copy of marriage certificate
  • 1 x copy of previous divorce certificate

Travel Documents and Passports

  • 1 x copy of passport

Proof of Relationship to Sponsor

  • 11 x copies of photographs of the two of us taken on holidays and at other events over the past 7 years
  • 6 x copies of photographs of our wedding and reception in Victoria
  • 2 x copies of photographs taken on our honeymoon
  • 6 x copies of photographs taken at our wedding blessing ceremony in the UK
  • 1 x copy of our wedding invitation
  • 1 x copy of our wedding blessing ceremony invitation
  • 1 x copy of our wedding ‘thank you’ card
  • 1 x copy of a screen-capture showing a small number of the 3000+ emails we have exchanged over the last 7 years
  • 3 x copies of flight confirmations for our last three trips between the UK and Canada

Police Certificates and Clearances

  • 1 x Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) – Police Certificate

Proof of Medical Examination

  • 1 x completed and stamped form IMM 1017 Medical Report – Section A

Photos

  • 8 x photographs to the specification in IMM 3901 Sponsorship of a Spouse, Common-law Partner,Conjugal Partner or Dependant Child Living Outside Canada – Part 3 – Country Specific Instruction (Western Europe) – Appendix B: Photo Specifications

Other Documentation

  • 1 x completed document checklist from IMM 3901 Sponsorship of a Spouse, Common-law Partner,Conjugal Partner or Dependant Child Living Outside Canada – Part 3 – Country Specific Instruction (Western Europe) – Appendix A: Document Checklist – Immigrant

This bundle will accompany me to Canada when I travel next Friday (hooray!!) and will there we joined to Kickass Canada Girl’s similar agglomeration (see here for details) before – finally – being submitted to Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Then we must wait with fingers, legs, eyes – and everything else – firmly crossed.

And then – I think – we will deserve a drink!

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A little application… 1

June 22, 2012 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

I have spent much of the last two weeks filling out the forms to support my application for Canadian permanent residency. You may ask how it can possibly take such a long time to complete a few forms, and indeed that is a good question. The answer – as hinted at in previous posts on the subject – lies in the fact that I am applying through the family sponsorship route with my spouse as the sponsor. This requires – rightly in my view – a fair amount of supporting evidence.

The process is clearly designed to weed out applications from those engaged in ‘sham’ marriages and focuses extensively on the course of the relationship. Amongst the questions to which I am required to respond are the following:

  • Where and how did we meet?
  • Was the meeting arranged?
  • Were gifts exchanged at the first meeting?
  • How did the relationship develop – meetings, dates, trips etc?
  • Did our families and friends know about the relationship?
  • When did my spouse meet my family and close friends?
  • Are we married?
  • When and how did we get engaged?
  • Where was the wedding and who attended?
  • Where did we go on honeymoon?
  • Have we been living together – if so where and when?
  • If currently not together, have we visited each other since parting?
  • How often – by what means and in what language – do we correspond?

There is a fair bit more along these lines and for each answer we are required to provide supporting documentation in the form of photographs, itineraries, letters, emails and so forth.

Somewhat darker is the tenor of such questions as:

  • Was there a formal celebration of your engagement? If not – why not? (my emboldening and italics!)

I don’t much care for the tone of this but I am certainly not going to take any chances, so I answer cautiously and completely.

Digging out the answers to all of these questions – not to mention the supporting documentation – takes a fair bit of time and effort. Kickass Canada Girl and I have been together for more than 7 years and, for a brain as old as mine, remembering all of the gruesome details takes some doing. I simply didn’t recall when the Girl first met my family! It took a fair bit of detective work – involving ploughing through old emails looking for hints (yes – I have kept all of the Girl’s emails – more than 3000 of them!) and decoding the cryptic cyphers that comprise her diary entries – to come up with a plausible timeline for the events of half a decade ago and more.

It is, however, well worth it for the ultimate prize – and this keeps me nicely focused whenever I get a little grumpy or start to cut up rough!

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