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Repercussions

December 12, 2012 in Moving to Canada | 2 comments

It is pretty clear that the fallout from our recent and comprehensive change of plans will take a considerable time to assimilate. The repercussions will undoubtedly be extensive and at this point we can’t even begin to guess at the eventual outcome. One thing that is pretty certain already, however, is that I am now most unlikely to retire next summer as previously planned.

The Kickass Canada Girl and I still firmly intend to relocate to Canada, though this will now probably take place somewhat later than we had originally intended. I could consider retirement at any point – finances permitting – much as I have done already, but the Girl – being younger than I – will certainly have to work for a few more years yet. As it seems that jobs in BC in her field are likely to be hard to come by for the foreseeable future we will almost certainly be staying in the UK for the time being.

This in itself is no great hardship of course. We both love Britain as well as Canada and there are plenty of things that we still wish to do this side of the pond. In some ways the delay might actually makes things easier. We have not yet found a purchaser for the Buckinghamshire apartment – the market still being as flat as a flat thing – and it would have been considerably more difficult trying to sell the property from a different continent.

The emotional fallout is more difficult to deal with.

No-one likes to feel that they have not completed a job to their own satisfaction. The Girl is seriously good at what she does and is understandably put out that in this case – through no fault of her own – it was not possible to leave things in the way that she would have wished. In this interregnum before starting her new job – and with all the stress of having to leave dear friends in Victoria and to deal with the complexities of moving her life back to the UK – she is having to work hard to stay positive and to focus on the future.

For my part finding that I am not after all to retire at the end of the school year is taking some adjusting to. At my previous school – which I left some seven years ago now – my retirement age would have been 60. It this school it is 65 and until recently I was resigned to working until I reached that milestone. The events of this last year – during which my prospective retirement was advanced initially to two and a half years time and then, when we discovered the grim realities of living apart, to eighteen months – found me having to make a considerable mental adjustment. I had – unfortunately – just about reached the point at which I was fully committed emotionally and psychologically both to retiring within this short time-frame and also to moving immediately to Canada. I had even picked out my Canadian vehicle and boat!

As a result I am now having to work hard to change tack and to launch myself on a different emotional course. I find myself performing the maneuver much like the captain of some ponderous, gargantuan oil tanker. Changing course is certainly possible – but it will take a while…

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Frosty wind made moan

December 7, 2012 in Flotsam and Jetsam, Photos | Permalink

 

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee

Whether the summer clothe the general earth with greenness or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch smokes in the sun-thaw

Whether the eve-drops fall, heard only in the trances of the blast

Or if the secret ministry of frost shall hang them up in silent icicles

Quietly shining to the quiet moon.

Frost at Midnight

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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More to say…

December 4, 2012 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

I find that I have more to say on the subject of the latest Bond opus – Skyfall.

A period of contemplation found me considering the underlying meaning of the film. This in itself represents a considerable departure for a Bond film. How many of the previous offerings – however enjoyable they might have been – could be said to have a deeper (even if not much deeper) meaning?

Skyfall – on the other hand – does so.

It is entirely apposite that, with the franchise celebrating its 50th anniversary, questions should be asked as to the continuing pertinence of the series. Skyfall chooses to do this at several levels, questioning not only the relevance of Bond to the action film genre itself, but also of Fleming’s cold war ‘blunt instrument’ in the era of cyber espionage, both as a fictional character and also – by extension – in the world of real live spooks… whatever the reality of that might actually be.

This exchange between Bond and Ben Whishaw’s Q – sitting in the National Gallery in front of Turner’s “The Fighting Temeraire” – is germane:

Q: It always makes me feel a bit melancholy. Grand old war ship. being ignominiously haunted away to scrap… The inevitability of time, don’t you think? What do you see?

James Bond: A bloody big ship. Excuse me.

Q: 007. I’m your new Quartermaster.

James Bond: You must be joking.

Q: Why, because I’m not wearing a lab coat?

James Bond: Because you still have spots.

Q: My complexion is hardly relevant.

James Bond: Your competence is.

Q: Age is no guarantee of efficiency.

James Bond: And youth is no guarantee of innovation.

Q: Well, I’ll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pajamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field.

James Bond: Oh, so why do you need me?

Q: Every now and then a trigger has to be pulled.

James Bond: Or not pulled. It’s hard to know which in your pajamas. Q.

Q: 007.

The Turner is, of course, carefully chosen and there is little doubt that Sam Mendes – directing his first action movie – is to thank for bringing his erudition and intelligence to bear on what might otherwise have remained a somewhat dated format.

Mendes also no doubt had a hand in the choice of Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’, the final stanza of which provides a fitting climax to M’s peroration to the select committee – immediately before all hell breaks loose. I found myself pondering the exact reasoning behind this particular choice and this naturally led me back to the poem itself.

Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ takes the form of a dramatic monologue in three parts. In the first Ulysses – having taken 10 years to return home after the Trojan wars and having eventually recovered his long abandoned wife and throne – finds himself enduring a quotidian existence, much vexed by the trivial responsibilities of power. He pines for the glory days of yore, longing once more to be able to travel and to explore.

The second part comprises a relatively brief discourse on the virtues of Ulysses’ son, Telemachus, who will rule in his stead once he is gone. The tone suggests that he sees in Telemachus an altogether less passionate, perhaps more ‘modern’ – even sedulous – approach to the business of statesmanship. His admiration verges on the grudging.

He works his work, I mine.

The third and, perhaps, most oft quoted passage comprises an invocation to his mariners (though those who accompanied him on his ‘odyssey’ are – by most readings – already dead) to engage in one final quest, one last adventure – whilst they still have the strength. The passage culminates with these stirringly elegiac lines:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Interpretations of the poem are legion. Tennyson composed it shortly after the death of a close friend, the poet Arthur Henry Hallam, and said of it: “It gave my feeling about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life.” There is – as a result – much debate as to what extent Tennyson’s reading of Ulysses is autobiographical. This in turn informs a debate as to the ironical (or otherwise) nature of the poem. This view makes play of the apparent inconsistencies in the character of Ulysses across the poem as a whole.

Most interpretations do, however, seem to consider the closing stanzas inspirational – an invocation of the heroic – and as a result they are much used as mottoes by schools and other similar institutions. The last three lines are engraved on a cross at Observation Hill in Antarctica to commemorate Captain Scott and his party.

My reading is somewhat different. The subject to me seems to be loss. Ulysses is in reality – as Thomas has it – ‘raging against the dying of the light’. He recognises that his long moment in the sun is behind him, and though he comes out of his corner bravely – puffing out his chest and taking on all comers – he actually knows that the game is up.

It is, of course, in the nature of a true work of genius that each of us may find in it our own truths – our own meanings. Though Skyfall is itself certainly no work of genius I am indebted to it for leading me back to these other classics – and for making me think a little…

…and that is certainly more than can be said of any number of other like films.

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Moments of change

November 30, 2012 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history.

Joan Wallach Scott

“The time has come” – as the Walrus said – ” to talk of many things…”

More specifically the time has finally come to talk about how our lives have – once again – been dramatically altered over the last month, to the extent that all of our previous plans have had to be thrown out of the window and we must now start over again.

Put simply – Kickass Canada Girl no longer has a job in BC. In fact – for a over a month the Girl has had no job at all!

The facts are these:

The position in Victoria did not work out. These things happen and we need not go into the whys and wherefores here. Needless to say this eventuality was not anticipated and has required urgent re-adjustment of our plans and priorities.

As it turns out there are – quite simply – no other equivalent jobs going in Victoria at the moment. Indeed there are none in BC – in part as a result of the current provincial government hiring freeze there. The Girl had little choice but to return to the UK to seek employment here. She came back directly from Hong Kong after our visit there at the start of the month and has since then been attending interviews here.

And the good news? This very day the Girl has landed a plum new post in the UK which she will take up early in the new year. This will come as absolutely no surprise to all those of us who know her and recognise her totally kick-ass qualities. Well done Kickass Canada Girl!!

I will – naturally – write much more over the coming weeks on the subject of how our lives will change and what this will mean for our longer term plans. For the moment we are just happy to have been re-united, and to be able to move forward again.

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Stolen songs

November 22, 2012 in Life in England | 8 comments

“It’s mornings like this;
The stingy sun trying to hold back
Even the warmth of its reflection
Flashing coldly in the lake.
When November leaves drop in sudden gusts,
Like a red and yellow flock of birds
Swooping at once to ground.
Or even nights:
When winds reach wet hands
To take you spinning with random paper
Down back street gutters, under straining bridges
To clogged rivers.
It’s this:
The time of year, along with spring,
When poets must take care
Not to sing the same old songs
Stolen from tribal memory.”

Thomas R. Drinkard

In my opinion – humble or otherwise – November is quite the grimmest quantum of the year… far worse than Eliot’s ‘cruelest month’. There are entire days on which the light struggles helplessly to elevate itself beyond a Stygian post-apocalyptic twilight, and the dismal rain lashes the last few leaves from the traumatised trees to besmirch the sodden earth like eviscerated corpses smeared across the battlefield of the dying year.

The shortest day is yet a month away – and our subsequent celebration of ‘Sol Invictus’ has scarce reached the planning stage. Like the dormant green shoots themselves all thoughts of spring are still lodged securely underground – safe from the winter frosts. They will not expose their tender heads to the chill air for many months yet.

The Michaelmas term is always the longest – and the toughest – of the school year. The aim is to crack the preponderance of the curriculum before the solstice break – to form a platform for the anticipated achievements of the new year. The cause is noble, but the casualties are heavy – in terms of exhaustion, langour and ennui.

There comes a point at which one is just counting the days – and at such times, indeed, ‘poets must take care’…

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The restless urge of autumn

October 14, 2012 in Flotsam and Jetsam, Photos | 2 comments

“…as the slow sea sucked at the shore and then withdrew, leaving the strip of seaweed bare and the shingle churned, the sea birds raced and ran upon the beaches. Then that same impulse to flight seized upon them too. Crying, whistling, calling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore. Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and they must flock, and wheel, and cry; they must spill themselves of motion before winter came.”

― Daphne du Maurier, The Birds & Other Stories

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The richly woven tapestry…

October 10, 2012 in Flotsam and Jetsam | 2 comments

“The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect.”

Carson McCullers

One of joys – amidst the many drawbacks – of accomplishing maturity (growing old!) is that afforded by the slow accretion of knowledge which – one must surely most devoutly wish – will lead eventually to the attainment of wisdom. Sometimes it seems to me that this process – as the years advance – consists in the main of going back over old ground, slowly joining up the dots and nurturing the seeds that were sown a long time ago. Perhaps one day the final thread in this immeasurable tapestry will be woven, all the connections will be made and learning will come to a full stop.

Somehow I doubt it!

What prompts this particular reverie, I hear you enquire – tentatively?

Growing up – as I did – in the 1960s there was a fair chance that I would be a fan of the Beatles. You will be unsurprised to hear that this is indeed the case, and that I count myself amongst the more partisan of enthusiasts. I have read exhaustively, viewed widely and – of course – listened relentlessly to each and every note.

There has been until recently, however, one glaring omission to my ardent pursuit – and that can be explained by the fact that even in late 1967 – as I was on the verge of recording my fourteenth birthday – my parents were still, and determinedly, resisting demands that we should acquire a television set. We were thus unable – that Boxing Day – to join the bemused multitudes who sat in stunned silence through the premiere of the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour.

Such was the subsequent critical storm that the one hour film has since had very few public airings and somehow – though it has been made available on VHS and DVD – I have never really felt moved to track it down. Most likely I recoiled from the notion that my idols had after all proven to be encumbered with feet of clay.

Since then, of course, much has changed. Critical opinion now recognises the film to be a valid – if somewhat naive – adjunct to the burgeoning avant-garde that emerged from the 60s counter-culture. McCartney himself has been understandably and justifiably keen to promote the significance of his role in that movement. Further – the film itself is now seen as a precursor to the entire genre that is ‘pop video’, from which the whole MTV phenomenon and generation has since sprung. In this – as in so many things – it seems that the Beatles were after all truly ahead of the curve.

Last weekend the BBC finally broadcast a restored and digitally re-mastered version of the film – along with an accompanying documentary on its genesis – to mark the 50th anniversary of the release of the first Beatles single, Love Me Do. It was good finally to catch up with that which I had missed back in the winter of 1967.

Viewing the film also resulted in another connection being made – another strand finally woven. I have over the last year or so been somewhat fascinated by an American alternative rock band called ‘Death Cab for Cutie’. Actually, it is really the name that fascinates; somewhat bizarre but quite imaginative. I had not, though, investigated further.

Lo and behold, as I watched Magical Mystery Tour at the weekend, what should I see – making a guest appearance – but that well-known 60s surrealist comedy ensemble, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, singing a song clearly titled – wait for it – “Death Cab for Cutie”! A little further investigation shows that Neil Innes and Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzos wrote the song for the film, taking its title from an invented pulp fiction crime magazine which had been devised by British academic Richard Hoggart as part of his 1957 study of working class culture, The Uses of Literacy. Small world!

Neil Innes, of course, went on to write and record the songs for Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Vivian Stanshall – amongst many other achievements –  made an ‘appearance’ as the narrating voice on the last segment of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells.

Back in the 80s I vaguely knew Vivian Stanshall’s then wife. She and a friend of mine were the main drivers behind a project to convert an old German coaster into a floating theatre/restaurant in Bristol docks. The ship – the Thekla – is still there, though it is now a nightclub/music venue. The ladies fell out with each other and moved on many years ago.

I recall attending the opening night party for the floating theatre – which was filmed by the BBC for a documentary on the project – back in 1982. Vivian Stanshall was present – though perhaps the less said about his presence that particular night the better!

Nice to finally tie up these loose ends. In the phrase that E. M. Forster adopted as the epigraph to Howard’s End – “Only connect”…

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Look about you

October 6, 2012 in Life in England, Photos | Permalink

“Reader, if you seek his monument – look about you”

Inscription on Wren’s tomb in St Paul’s Cathedral

Each year the School – along with its sister school – celebrates its foundation and its Founder, John Colet, at a service in St Paul’s Cathedral – of which he was once Dean. This impressive logistical operation involves bus-sing the entire complement of both schools across London in time for a 2:30pm start. To my knowledge no-one has ever been late for it which – as those familiar with the London traffic will attest – is little short of a miracle.

I have always loved the cathedral and I attend the service each year simply to re-visit the building. This is all the more poignant given its romantic attachment for me and this year – as ever- I took a moment to stand directly under the dome and to lose myself to my thoughts.

Here are some snapshots:

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Parade’s End

September 23, 2012 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Look – I’m sorry to bang on about this – and I really don’t want to bore the gentle reader more than is absolutely unavoidable – but I really must just put in one final word for Tom Stoppard and the BBC’s adaptation of Ford Maddox Ford’s ‘Parade’s End’, which finished on BBC2 on Friday evening.

Achingly beautifully written, acted, directed and shot this (hopefully!) award-winning drama represents all that has ever been best in what really has become a very sorry creative sphere – that of modern television production. Those who know me even marginally will be only too aware of how little I find to admire these days in the televisual and filmic arts. Kickass Canada Girl claims – with some justification – that I have spoiled the cinema going experience for her. It is no fun at all to sit through a film at my side as I sigh, grunt and squirm irritably when faced with clunky dialogue, unbelievable characters and unnecessary yardage of exposition. The trouble is that she herself has now become much more critical and less able to sit through such mediocre offerings. Sorry about that!

The greatest failure to my mind on the part of TV and film producers – and one which is almost certainly a result of there being too many ‘executives’ now involved in the process who mistakenly think they know how to make drama – is that of not trusting the intelligence of the viewing audience. Let’s put that another way – of patronising the viewing audience. There is nothing more eloquent in drama than that fragmentary understated occurrence or reaction that generates in the viewer a small shock of recognition and understanding. This – surely – is how art can have such a great and direct impact on those eager to learn from it. These days in film and on TV it seems that there is a belief that only if signposted in huge letters on enormous billboards will the viewing audience actually get the point. My worry is that this in itself is breeding a new generation who indeed will not be able to ‘read’ creative works without such assistance.

By way of illustration of what can be achieved let me give just the tiniest example from ‘Parade’s End’ – and that not from any of the main plot threads but of just a single small incidental detail – beautifully handled.

In the trenches of the first world war Ford Maddox Ford’s passe protagonist, Tietjens (played exquisitely by Benedict Cumberbatch), finds himself unexpectedly and unwantedly in charge of his battalion. One of the more unexpected duties he is called on to perform is to give permission for a private – whom we have heard unknowingly for some minutes in the background practicing his bugling – to play the following night before the top brass at an event behind the lines.

A while later – during a German artillery barrage – Tietjens is given the news that a shell has burst in the entrance to a slit trench, and that there has been a single fatality. Tietjens hurries to inspect the scene and sees – half buried in the mud thrown up by the blast – the bugle case that we have seen previously. There is no dialogue – no lingering shot – merely the briefest reaction in Cumberbatch’s eyes.

Then – after some further narrative development – both we and Tietjens hear again the distant refrain of the bugler at practice. Again – no dialogue – no labouring the point – simply the realisation as revealed on Cumberbatch’s face.

This sort of thing requires (under)writing and acting of the highest order, but stirs in the viewers breast an empathy and understanding that no amount of dialogue or elaborate visual symbolism could have effected.

Enough! You have missed ‘Parade’s End’ in its first run (congrats to those who did not!) but it will doubtless be repeated.

…and there is always the boxed set – which would doubtless make a wonderful Christmas present!

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And on the subject of retirement…

September 21, 2012 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

I carry with me at all times what might these days probably be best described as a ‘man’s clutch organiser’.

It might, of course, also be called – usually with a whiff of obtrectation – a ‘man bag’.

This pejorative – with its invidious and somewhat mysogynistic insinuation both that the female of the species is in some way inferior and that a man who carries such an item is, by implication, somehow lacking – might in no small part explain why so few men – even in these enlightened times – actually carry one.

Such opinions trouble me not, as I have carried a bag in one form or another since the early 80s. I started doing so at roughly the same time that I cut my hair! Yes, when I left school in 1972 – having been required to keep my locks “above the ears and ‘orf’ the collar” throughout the fag end of the 1960s – I determined that I would henceforth wear it as long as I wished, and thus did not subsequently get it cut again until 1981 or thereabouts. Having surviving – from the unenlightened – the torrents of ‘humorous’ obloquy on the subject of my appearance throughout that godforsaken decade I am rendered completely immune to any such jibes.

I am frequently asked what I carry in my bag. The short answer is – ‘everything’! The slightly longer answer is – ‘all the things that other chaps stuff in their jacket, shirt and trouser pockets – then have to remember to switch to other clothes when they change – and have to remember to take out before they sit down or they’ll break their mobile phone”. That sort of thing…

The other question that I am asked is – “aren’t you afraid of losing it?”. Well – I never have lost one, but I have suffered several thefts. On one occasion my wallet was stolen from the bag… whilst I was holding it front of me… in a lift… in the Hotel Cosmos in Moscow! When – subsequent to the event itself – I worked out how it had been done, I was almost in awe of the execution of the heist. The setup had featured a little old Russian lady acting as the distraction, whilst the ever-so-helpful young Russian guy ever-so-helped himself to my wallet whilst ever-so-helpfully holding the lift doors open. Sweet!

On the other occasion the bag itself was stolen – in the bar at the National Theatre in London. This was particularly embarrassing as I had gone there to meet someone that I had not met before and did not know – to discuss a creative project. The bag – containing all my worldly possessions – was lifted from the foot of my chair as I sat in the bar having a drink with her. Without keys I had to abandon my car in the service road in front of the theatre, and without money I was forced to borrow from the stranger that I had just met in order that I might catch the train home.

I have replaced the bag at intervals as each has – one by one – fallen apart. As a result I have observed that these things go in and out of fashion, and that it is sometimes virtually impossible to get a bag with a sensible configuration – one that can hold everything without being ridiculously bulky. When I found the present incumbent – five years ago in Paris (don’t we sound cosmopolitan!) – I snapped it up immediately even though it was wickedly expensive, because it was the closest I had ever found to being the perfect bag.

Recently, however, it has started to show its age. One of the main zips has failed rendering it insecure and thus considerably less attractive. I enquired of Tumi – the manufacturers – as to whether or not it could be repaired, given that the leather itself is still in pretty good condition. Tumi hinted that they would need to send the bag away to Germany and wanted to charge me so much for the pleasure that it was really not worth doing.

It crossed my mind that – like me – the bag was ready for retirement and I took the opportunity of meeting friends in London last weekend to try to locate a suitable replacement. I was in for a shock. Tumi had discontinued this, the most useful bag in their range, and had no substitute that was even close. Further investigation revealed that – as far as bag manufacturers are concerned – this sort of thing is now distinctly out of fashion again. After a frustrating afternoon’s search I had to concede that I was not going to find a bag anywhere near as perfect as the one that I was about to retire.

Perhaps I should think about this a little more…

Naturally the InterWebNet provided the solution – a firm on Eton High Street called ‘1st Class Leathergoods Repairs’. Those that know Eton will, of course, not be at all surprised that in the end the solution was more or less on my doorstep, or indeed that it should take this form. The firm’s website announces:

“We are repairers to 

  • The Bridge – Il Ponte Pelletteria
  • Jane Shilton
  • Hidesign
  • Louis Vuitton
  • Mulberry
  • Radley
  • Samsonite
  • Tula & S.American Hide leather Holdalls, Land etc
  • Texier
  • new zip from £36
  • ladies purse
  • gents wallet
  • passport holders
  • handbags
  • shoulder bags
  • luggage wheels repair
  • antique trunks, storeage trunks, steamer trunks, wicker trunks
  • vintage car trunks, door retainer straps, bonnet straps
  • masonic cases , bags for freemasons
  • straps and covers, 
  • custom – bespoke hand made leather case, hand made leather 
  • custom made bespoke gunbags, custom hand made guncases
  • leather rip repair, leather scratch repair
  • leather strap, canvas strap, webbing strap, luggage strap
  • gun cases, cartridge bags, gamebags, refurbish , reline , 
  • footwear uppers, ladies sandal straps, riding & polo boots
  • fireside bellows
  • leather Tankards
  • leather grommets & washers
  • fire safety leather straps
  • experienced pilots have old cases
  • pannier bags, picnic cases, pencases
  • musicians have instrument cases – guitar , saxophone , mandolin , violin , cello , trumpet , horn
  • laptop bags, holdalls, cases
  • leather clothing, bike jackets, bike all in ones
  • embossing leather, embossing on sewn on panels
  • leather care products
  • repair estimates for insured travel goods, luggage, suitcases

Customers over the years have been unusual and varied in their requirements, and include historically famous families, celebrities, and business and professional personalities, as well as meeting the every day needs of ladies and men and people on the go.”

I can’t argue with that – and my ‘man bag’ is now safe in their hands.

I did reflect – as I walked away from their shop clutching all my worldly possessions in a plastic carrier bag – if there wasn’t a message in this for my own retirement!

Can’t think what it might be though…


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