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COVID-19

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Back on the tracks

December 1, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Regular patrons of these marginalia will doubtless greet as old friends those posts that recur – in some form or another – on a regular basis. Into this distinguished category fall the annual November reports of our most recent outing on the Cariboo Express, courtesy of the engineer in chief – Barney Bentall.

We enjoy these evenings (in support of the Sidney Lions Foodbank) so much that we are quick to purchase tickets each year as soon as they become available. This we did as per usual last year (2020).

On that occasion, of course, the concert did not take place – for reasons that require no further elucidation. The dates were once postponed – and then postponed again. This was deeply sad but necessary. The run-in to Christmas just wasn’t the same without this jolly evening out, but we were not prepared to take any risks that might endanger our (or other people’s) health and well-being.

The final postponement of the event resulted in us being offered the chance to let the tickets spill over to become valid for this year’s equivalent pageant – and fortunately this time the precautions were deemed to be adequate (vaccine passports and photo IDs thoroughly checked) and we were able once again to gather at the Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney – well be-masked and well-behaved – for a most welcome live performance.

It really was quite moving to suddenly find oneself once again in the proximity of real live musicians and singers – and, of course, in a real audience. An object lesson – I think – in the need that we all (many of us anyway!) have to experience live performance… something else of which we clearly need a regular shot! A good evening was quite clearly had by all!

At this juncture we do not have anything much else of a similar nature in the calendar and – with new COVID variants looming – who knows how things will pan out or when we will next get to sit in a theatre watching a live show.

We are (said he through gritted teeth) determined to remain optimistic…

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Déjà vu – again!

November 3, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

I had an odd experience this evening…

I had just returned – on a dismal and dank November Wednesday evening – from  three hours teaching on the trot at the College. It was almost dark when I reached home and I was the first one back.

I made myself a cup of coffee – as is my habit upon returning home – and settled down with my iDevice to scan the headlines, to bring myself up to date with the goings on in the world.

Now – I was pretty tired… which may explain some of this – and I am getting on a bit… which may explain more.

I was scrolling down through the BBC website and happened upon a list of the ‘Most Read‘ news stories of the day. One of the items was the announcement of the death of Sir Sean Connery. As I studied the tributes I was overcome by emotion and my eyes filled with tears. This was clearly the end of an era.

At this point The Girl arrived home and immediately recognised that something was troubling me. Worried that I had had some bad news she quizzed me gently. I hastened to explain and to reassure her.

It took me yet a while more before the – “Hold on a minute!” – moment struck. Sean Connery died last year. I wrote an entry to this journal at the time. What was I thinking?

I hastened back to the BBC. Sure enough – at number seven in the list of ‘Most Read‘ news stories today was the item from last year announcing Connery’s death.

At a time when the nations of the world are gathered at COP26 in Glasgow in a (perhaps hopeless) attempt to save the world from climate change… in a period when the global COVID-19 pandemic threatens to burst forth anew across the globe… on a day when the US electorate have apparently forgiven and forgotten the GOP’s appalling behaviour over the past five years – on a day when the tory party in the UK has brazenly declared open season for corruption and sleaze in UK politics…

…the seventh most read story of the day was about the death of a film icon a year ago!

Most interesting!

Mind you – given how the story managed to affect me all over again a year on, perhaps that should not come as such a surprise.

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School’s in!

September 23, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam, Life in BC | Permalink

“Respect your parents. They passed school without Google!”

Anonymous

OK – so it is college rather than school, we’ve actually been back for nearly three weeks now – and September 2021 is not long for this world either.

Apart from that… you get the idea!

I promised that I would write something about going back to college – as in actually ‘going back to college’ rather than just starting another ‘virtual’ term from the comforts of my studio at home…

…and here I am!

The College decreed that for the new academic year we should all be back face to face in the classroom and lecture hall. This is entirely understandable, given that students had started displaying (along with gratitude that their health interests were being foregrounded) some discontent that they were not getting the full college experience even though they were still being asked to pay for it. In the light of this pressure the College probably had little choice in the matter.

The decision would doubtless not have been particularly contentious had it not been for the subsequent emergence of the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus. This unpleasantness has inevitably ramped up the risk level again and left us all considerably more concerned as to the best course of action going forward.

Still – face to face it is for now – but with a plethora of precautions to try to keep things safe. Masks must be worn inside buildings – including in the classrooms – and vaccine passports are required for access to sports and some other facilities, though not for the cafeterias and bookshops.

I am all for appropriate precautions and particularly keen to remain healthy myself. There are implications for teaching, however. We are obliged to wear a mask when teaching unless there is at least two metres between us and the nearest student – in which case we can unmask. Two of the spaces in which I operate are large enough that I can – gratefully – go maskless. My other classroom is a pokey little hole in which I have to deliver an eighty minute class once a week. Fun it is not!

My Chair is very keen that we should also make provision for any students who cannot attend classes in person – either because they have had to quarantine or because they do not feel comfortable being in such public spaces. There are – of course – methods by which classes could be simultaneously streamed if required, but this demands additional equipment and configuration which the department – and College – have thus far proved slow to provide. I don’t mean to be awkward, but I certainly have no intention of teaching the classes twice – once for those who are present and again for those who are not.

Oh well! No doubt we will stumble through the term in our usual manner. The odds on the term ending in the same manner that it has begun must reasonably long, I would have thought.

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Back in business

August 17, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Whereas the Chanteuse and I were quite delighted last year to have discovered a method of remote working that enabled Anam Danu to record (in real time!) our second collection of songs – “Winter Blue and Evergreen” – whilst safely ensconced within our own creative spaces, we knew at the time that it was unlikely to be an optimal solution – and certainly not in the longer term.

It is perhaps because we are both a little ‘old school’ (we like to work face to face – to hear properly and without any annoying delays what we are doing – to not be subject to random audio artifacts – to indulge in all of the essential non-verbal communication that is the norm for human interaction) that everything seemed a bit of a struggle. Using the Internet as a recording tool is indeed a splendid boon to which, of course, previous generations did not have access, but it is far from being perfect.

We were extremely happy that we got to make an album safely in the midst of a pandemic; we hope not to have to do so again.

The really good news is that as a result of recent relaxations in restrictions – thanks largely to the Canadian vaccination program – this last week we were able to start working together again for the first time in a year and a half – here in my studio. We are already well on our way to having a decent collection of new material and we are now able to start recording it in earnest.

I think a good sized ‘Hoorah!’ is in order…

Now – should any gentle readers wish to be kept in the loop with regard to the release of new material, navigate to the Anam Danu website and enter your email address in the box at the bottom of our contact page and you will be kept informed of the latest developments.

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Square root of negative one

July 24, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid“Vancouver is the square root of negative one. Technically it shouldn’t exist, but it does. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

Douglas Coupland

It is but two weeks since The Girl and I left  Vancouver Island for the first time in over a year for our rapid-fire visit to Kamloops – and yet here we are again already… away from our island home.

It is the pandemic – of course – that has kept us on the island until very recently, but we are both now fully vaccinated and the relaxation of the BC lockdown has enabled us to take some very careful steps back into the outside world.

The trip to Kamloops did not go quite as we had originally planned. We had intended to stay there for several nights, encompassing the event for which we had gone. As things turned out the fresh wild-fire at Sun Peaks overnight on the Saturday filled the valley in which Kamloops nestles with thick smoke on the Sunday morning, forcing us soft coastal dwellers to beat a hasty retreat back to the island. This meant two consecutive days of pretty heavy driving and our arriving back on the peninsula not until around 10:00pm.

The Kamloops trip came up fairly late on, but we had already planned a long-weekend away in the City of Glass – Vancouver – as a sort of ‘welcome back to the world’ – given that we knew that we would not be travelling further afield this year. The idea was to have a relaxing city break – to re-meet old friends and family with whom we have not been able to connect of late – to wine and dine ourselves and – mayhap – to take in a little culture.

I am writing this on the Saturday evening in the 23rd floor suite that The Girl (to whom I inevitably leave these important decisions) found for us in Coal Harbour in Vancouver, overlooking the West End and English Bay. I have the camera with me and have been making liberal use of it. I will regale you with the results and details of what we got up to once we are back home next week.

So – welcome (carefully) indeed back to the world…

 

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Back in the saddle

July 10, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

This year and more in lockdown (or even semi-lockdown) has been a strange time in so many ways. We have become accustomed to a completely different rhythm of life and some of the things that we used to take for granted seem now to belong to such a distant past that we can scarce remember them.

It has been such a long time since we ventured outside a relatively small area at the southern tip of Vancouver Island that it feels almost as though the rest of the world has ceased to exist other than through the TV (or other electronic device) screen… which never quite feels real.

And yet…

Of late, something in Canada (and doubtless elsewhere) has shifted. A significant number of us are now fully vaccinated and here in BC things have started opening up again. Many stores no longer require masks to be worn (they merely recommend it) and the directional arrows on their floors have started to disappear. In our local store the dividers that we once used at the checkouts (to prevent our shopping fraternizing with anyone else’s) have made a re-appearance for the first time since March last year.

I am beginning to think about teaching in the lecture room again in the Fall and all of those entertainments and enticements that have been closed down throughout the pandemic are starting to re-emerge blinking into the daylight.

And now – here I am writing this post in Kamloops – an hour and a forty minutes on the ferry and a four and a half hour drive from our home on the island!

Wow! How (and why) did that happen?

Well – for that you will have to await our return on Monday. I will explain all once we are back home…

Back in the saddle? Well – certainly trying it out for size again…

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Things are looking up…

June 17, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | 2 comments

“When things are looking up, there’s no point in looking elsewhere”

Agatha Swanburne

Here in British Columbia there are now definite – if still quite fragile – signs that things are beginning to return to some sort of normality.

Progress in this direction is being pursued with a high degree of caution and restraint, though we are of course as vulnerable as are most nations to the antics of the usual idiots. We do, however, eschew the sort of hyperbole that some must endure. Not for us the “World beating” – or “Irreversible” – or “Sure and certain knowledge”… I’m ‘sure and certain’ that you catch my drift…

This very day The Girl trotted down to the Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney to get her second COVID vaccination – the which was booked about three weeks ago.

I was beginning to wonder (for no good reason other than my impatience!) if I had somehow dropped off the list when I finally received the email inviting me to book a date for my second jab. I jumped at the chance and have an appointment in only ten days time.

”Result!” – as the ‘yoof’ were wont to say some decades ago…

So much are our spirits raised by these developments that we are now seriously contemplating re-entering the outside world by booking ourselves a mini-break during the summer – though we will not be leaving the province anytime soon.

More information – you may be sure – as it becomes available.

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Lighting fireworks

May 26, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam, Life in BC | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid“The neighbors are drunk and lighting fireworks. It must be Victoria Day!”

Unattributed

This last weekend was a long weekend here in BC (think ‘bank holiday’ should you hail from the UK). This particular one commemorates the birthday of the monarch for whom this city was named – Queen Victoria.

Now – as I mentioned in previous recent posts – having already resigned ourselves to the reality that we would not be traveling anywhere very far in this second year of the COVID, we have also now also had to accept the idea that we won’t be doing major renovations to our home either – given the current outrageous cost of building materials.

This is – to put it mildly – a bit of a bummer and left us feeling somewhat out of sorts and directionless.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidJust at the right time, however, we saw advertised at one of Victoria’s loveliest downtown boutique hotels an enticing  ‘Spend-the-night – Dine-in-room’ deal. We have not stayed at The Magnolia before but we have treated ourselves to its excellent restaurant – The Courtney Room. The restaurant is – of course – currently closed, but the deal (which ran only until the end of May) enables one to indulge oneself in their culinary offerings at a window table in a splendid bedroom, to spend the ensuing night in comfort therein and to do all of this in complete COVID safety.

What is not to love about that?

We visited on the Friday evening and dined splendidly on in-house breads & crackers with roasted eggplant dip and smoked paprika oil – dry-aged Two Rivers burger with aged cheddar and a splendidly fresh salad (for The Girl) – local catch of the day Bouillabaisse (for me) – followed by a Blood Orange Tart (with pumpkin seed frangipane, blood orange marmalade and Wild Mountain honey) and a Meyer Lemon Mousse (with caramelized white chocolate crumb and toasted bourbon meringue). All of which was washed down with a very passable bottle of Savigny-les-Beunes.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidWe watched the sun go down over the inner harbour and for a brief period all seemed right with the world.

The following morning the sun was doing its very best early-summer impression and we got to wander around downtown and to lunch outside one of our favourite predominantly vegetarian restaurant and juice bars – Re.Bar.

Because it would clearly have been a great shame for our splendidly indulgent weekend to peter out on the Saturday we also treated ourselves to some pampering at the lovely Brentwood Bay Spa on the Monday; a relaxing massage for me and a reflexology treatment for The Girl’s most lovely and dainty feet.

All in all a wonderful long weekend, during which it was possible – perhaps for the first time – to imagine what it will be like to emerge on the other side of this grim era.

Time to dream a little…

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

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Taking stock

May 9, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Well, here we are in May – already a third of the way through the year…

We are also – as The Girl pointed out to me this morning – now a full sixty weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic…

This is probably as good a time as any to take stock and to see how the year – and the pandemic – is progressing. It would seem sensible from our point of view to take as a yardstick the post that I wrote back in January in which I looked forward (as has become my habit during each January) to the coming year – laying out our plans, hopes and dreams for the months ahead.

That post contained a list of things that we very much wanted to be able to do. I make no apology for repeating it here:

  • 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!

So – how are we doing on that list? The answer is – of course – badly!

We must not be too down-hearted. The positive news is that both The Girl and I have had our first vaccinations. We even hear rumours – which we fervently hope will turn out to be true – that the second jabs will be made available somewhat sooner than the sixteen weeks that are currently being touted. Canada is apparently taking delivery in May of a vaccine delivery larger than those of the last five months combined – which is cause for an optimistic two cheers.

Now, I know that in some other places in the world – and I am thinking particularly of the UK in this instance – progress in the vaccine rollout has been significantly better. Friends and family back there have either had their second jabs already or are shortly so to do. There is much talk of ‘opening-up’ back in the old country. Now – the optimism could turn out to be premature and it may all end in tears, but let us hope fervently that it does not. I hope that the UK gets a decent outdoor summer season in some form and that as things move into the autumn life really does begin to return to some sort of normal.

Here in Canada things are not looking so good. In BC – and in particular here on the Island – we are reasonably protected, but other parts of the country are still suffering high rates of infection and talking about locking down further. I fear that our summer will be much like that of last year.

Aside from the wish-list posted above my January scribblings included one or two other projects or plans slated for 2021. In my next post I will report on how those are going.

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Needs work

April 13, 2021 in Life in BC | Permalink


The extremely good news – from my point of view – is that I now have an appointment for my first COVID vaccination.

Hoorah!

It is not until near the end of April but I have no complaints about that. The mechanism set up in BC for booking said inoculation – on t’other hand – as the title of this post suggests, needs work!

It seems somewhat unfair to cavil at such things when the splendid efforts of all those concerned are focused on helping us normal folk to be able to get on with our lives. If I do so it is because I believe that anything that potentially puts people off getting vaccinated needs to be fixed.

Herewith my experience:

Having discerned that I could now register online for the jab I followed the instructions and rapidly did the deed. Easy as pie and no complaints from me. The next step was to await a message inviting me to book an appointment.

This message duly arrived a couple of days later – at about 1 o’clock in the morning. No reason why it should not do so – and because I was still up and about I decided to book right away.

I followed the link and connected to the online service – supplying the requested details at the appropriate points. I selected my preferred location for the appointment and the service offered me a calendar from which to choose an appointment date. I took a punt and took the first date offered. A message popped up informing me that there were no available appointments on that date. I tried another with the same result. It rapidly became apparent that the calendar had not been equipped with a way of showing which dates had availability and which did not. All I could do was to work my way through them until I found a date that could accommodate me. Eventually I found and chose such a date and selected one of the offered time slots. The site then asked me to re-enter my email address – though I had already done so and the service must have know it anyway to have sent me the invitation in the first place.

I typed in the address and was told that the time slot was no longer available. Presumably someone else had booked it whilst I was typing. Doh! I had to go round this annoying loop all over again… becoming even more frustrated because the site had forgotten the information that I had entered on the first go through.

Eventually a slot was booked and a page appeared containing a QR code and a message telling me to print this code and to take it with me to my appointment.

Now, as I suggested, I was doing this really quite late at night and I was so doing from my iPad – which does not have a printer attached or configured for it. A confirmatory email arrived but did not contain the vital QR code.

OK – now I am a big boy and – as regular readers will be aware – have a long professional history in IT. I can sort such things out, but I am a lot less confident that everybody trying to book a vaccination appointment in BC will have the same good fortune.

Chaps – you are doing a difficult and critical job tirelessly and brilliantly – but do sort out these glitches so that everyone can get the protection that they deserve.

Ithankyew!…

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