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Accentuate the positive

January 24, 2021 in Life in BC | Permalink

You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between

Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters
Songwriters: Johnny Mercer / Harold Arlen

The Girl was talking on the phone this morning to a dear friend (the same dear friend who lived with us for a while last year and now resides in Vancouver). As do many such conversations in these days much of the talk concerned the vicissitudes and restrictions of life under lock-down.

This is hardly surprising given the circumstances.

The Girl did – however – perhaps for the first time since this whole thing began (and I am referring here solely to the pandemic) venture the opinion that there was finally some light at the end of the tunnel (and that it was not an approaching… yada, yada, yada… hopefully the gentle reader will already have eagerly consumed this recent post!).

The point is that – to the ‘reasons to be cheerful’ outlined in that post can now be added another and perhaps even more important one – the Government of British Columbia has revealed its COVID-19 Immunization Plan.

Hoorah! Hoorah! and thrice… Hoorah!

If nothing else this finally gives a rough shape to how the pandemic will be rolled back and normal life given a chance to commence its revival. This is the broad sweep of things:

…and this is the phase into which we both fall:

Phase 3

Timeline: April to June 2021

  • People aged 79 to 60, in five year increments:
    • 79 to 75 (D1 April, D2 May)
    • 74 to 70 (D1 April/May, D2 May/June)
    • 69 to 65 (D1 May/June, D2 June/July)
    • 64 to 60 (D1 June, D2 July)

Now – this means that if all goes well we will have been fully immunized by the end of July. Further it perhaps means that by the time the nights start drawing in and it becomes infeasible to socialise in the open air – we might actually be able to do so once again in the old-fashioned way – indoors and round the dining table…

…and that is bloomin’ good news and reason enough to celebrate (safely)!

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Autumn daze

October 21, 2020 in Life in BC, Photos | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidI wrote a piece within these pages back at the start of the year (well – February!) on the general subject of my level of fitness – and what it took to keep things that way. I made reference to having just restarted attendance at the fitness class of which I have been a regular pretty much since we came to Canada.

Of course, not long after I committed those musings to the digital equivalent of print, the COVID-19 pandemic broke and everything was turned upside down. The fitness class moved onto Zoom and was executed in the safety of our own living rooms. When restrictions eased a little as the summer unfolded we reverted to meeting ‘in person’ at the Shoal Centre in Sidney (a community ‘hub’ for ‘seniors’) where we undertook carefully socially-distanced classes wearing masks and with extravagant but necessary health precautions.

These classes have continued since then, but on each day when the weather permits – ie when it is not raining or snowing! – we have taken to exercising in the park across the road from the centre. This is not only much safer but it is also considerably more pleasant.

I took most of these pictures between exercises during yesterday’s class.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

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Never too busy

September 13, 2020 in Life in BC | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid“Have you noticed that even the busiest people are never too busy to take time to tell you how busy they are?”

Bob Talbert

Well, it has – of course – been busy. It was, after all, the first week of term… the first week of exclusively online teaching (for me – as I did not teach during the summer). As it happened it didn’t go too badly. Fingers crossed that this is a portent for the remainder of the course and that we will sail through it serenely – without alarums or excursions – and that everyone gets an A+ (well – all those who deserve so to do anyway).

On Friday we were also washed – and by ‘we’ in this case I mean ‘the outside of our humble abode’. I mentioned in a relatively recent post that we we finally getting the outside of the house painted; a thorough wash and brush up being the first step in that process. We now wait for a week for the dust to settle (metaphorically, I assume) before the actual business kicks off.

The crew that washed the house were all personable and strapping young chaps and it took The Girl all of about a minute to determine that they play rugby together for one of the Victoria clubs. I can’t tell you how much confidence it fills one with to know that one’s treasured property is in the safe hands of those who participate in that most excellent of sports. The Rugby ethos forefronts the core values of Teamwork, Respect, Enjoyment, Discipline and Sportsmanship – and what’s not to admire about that!

The image at the head of this post marks another development this week. Back at the start of June – in this post – I celebrated the fact that for the first time since the start of the pandemic I had been able to purchase a large container of Lysol disinfectant wipes. At the time I posited that this might indicate a change in the air with regard to the progress of the pandemic. As it turned out that was the last time that I saw the wipes, though not for want of looking. I asked one of the grocery chaps and he told me that they do come in from time to time, but that they usually arrive on a delivery at 11:00 at night and are subsequently and rapidly cleaned off the shelves by the old folk who habitually do their grocery shopping at 7:00 in the morning.

This week – finally – Thrifty (our local grocer) had a consignment that must have arrived during the hours of daylight. I scampered home with my allotted single container, to be met by The Girl who had – naturally – just found one somewhere else. We now have a pleasant surfeit of disinfectant wipes.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidMy very recent post concerning the wildfire smoke from Oregon and California crowed somewhat prematurely at the rapid disappearance of the noxious fumes. Naturally the very next day they returned with a vengeance and have settled in for the duration. We now have no vista at all, though that does not in any way compare with having no home – which is what happened to one of The Girl’s acquaintances from Oregon.

Looks as though this unpleasant stuff is going to be with us for at least a few more days and I feel suitably humbled.

Now what do they call that? Hubris? Amour propre? Smug-bastardry getting its due comeuppance?

Take your pick…

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Weighty matters

August 12, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink


There was an item missing from my recent list of COVID-19 pandemic losses and gains. That item was – counter-intuitively – both a loss and a gain… indeed, it was a gain because it was a loss!

Cryptic – huh?!

The fact is – since the beginning of March I have lost a healthy (see what I did there?) amount of weight – which is, naturally, a significant gain.

Now – I am aware that for some people the lock-downs enforced throughout the COVID world have had the opposite effect – and that the loss of gym sessions and other physical exercise has led to less than pleasant effects. My apologies to anyone to whom this applies (and indeed anyone else who takes offence!) should my gentle celebration come over as being in any way… smug!

Clearly I have been lucky. Now – I do habitually weigh a little less in the summer than I do when clad in my winter ‘overcoat’ and though my regular fitness sessions at our local leisure centre were abruptly curtailed in March I have continued to attend classes… first online via Zoom and more recently in the open air in the rather lovely park adjacent to the library in Sidney – but I don’t feel that these influences are great enough to have caused this difference.

No – something else is definitely going on. This is what I think has happened:

Being (mostly) retired and no longer tied to a single weekly grocery shop I have been in the habit of popping out on a day by day basis as and when we decide what to eat. Further – my two days a week at the college and my visits to fitness classes usually entailed the partaking of a coffee (or two) as part of the process. I have to admit that I had rather fallen into the habit of rewarding my endeavours with a little ‘treat’ of some variety.

Of course, under COVID one goes grocery shopping as little as possible – once a week or less – and without classes to attend (either as instructor or instructee) the notion of a reward becomes redundant.

There you have it. Cutting out the little treats helps Jack to lose some weight!

But does it make him a dull boy?

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The Lost Chord

June 25, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

On the first day of October last year – nearly nine months ago now – I posted to this journal a celebratory piece concerning the long-overdue uploading to the InterWebNet of some of the music of Anam Danu – the collaboration between the Chanteuse and I that had started roughly a year earlier.

We had chosen the excellent musicians’ site – Bandcamp – for this initial foray and made available a collection of seven tracks on which we had been working since the 2019 new year and which we had had professionally mastered by the estimable CPS Mastering of Vancouver. If you have not thus far been fortunate enough to have heard the Chanteuse in action I commend to you this offering – the which is entitled “Winds of Change” and which may be located here:

https://anamdanu.bandcamp.com

The October 1st post noted that to the seven tracks already uploaded were to have been added a further three songs – to complete the collection. Visitors to the site will, however, not have missed the fact that – nine months down the line – there are still only seven pieces there.

Unfortunately, scarcely had we uploaded the material – and certainly before we were able to make a serious attempt at publicising the fact – the first of a sequence of harrowing events overtook the Chanteuse. I am certainly not going into any of the details of the months that followed but I will just say that had some budding TV script-writer come up with such a far-fetched narrative they would have been drummed out of Hollywood. All I can do is to offer heartfelt sympathies for all that occurred.

As dictated by Sod’s Law we had no sooner held our first recording session subsequent to these events than the pandemic struck – along with the accompanying lock-down. That pretty much put a stop to any thoughts of further work and the powers that be have made it quite clear that singing is going to be one of the last things that we will all be allowed to do again in ‘public’.

What the rest of the musical world is doing at this point is finding ways to work and to record remotely – thus avoiding the problems of isolation. Because of the sequence and timing of the events that lead to this point we were not able to make any provision for such a course as the lock-down was imposed. I am now struggling to put in place a suitable mechanism for working in this manner – but much new learning is required and these things take time. I will – of course – offer updates on this journal as to how we get on.

The thing is – though we have been unable to record, I have also been unable to stop writing songs. Since we last worked together I have written and recorded the tracks for a further nine compositions!

It would be good to be able to finish some of them…

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Good grief!

June 19, 2020 in Life in England | Permalink

I have refrained from making public comments regarding the world-wide handling of the COVID-19 pandemic because – with certain blatantly dishonourable exceptions (not to mention a small number of highly honourable ones) most nations and their governments have been muddling through in a reasonable fashion, given the severity and unprecedented nature of the crisis with which we are all are faced.

For Canada Justin Trudeau is considered to have had a reasonably good pandemic thus far, but here in British Columbia the real star is our Provincial Health Officer – Bonnie Henry – whose handling of the crisis has been beyond reproach… transparent, clear and rational.

One reason for maintaining an embarrassed silence with regard to other nations is that my mother country and its bizarre government – whilst having no trouble talking the talk (way too much in most cases) has proved almost uniquely incapable of walking the walk – tripping over its own clown shoes and falling flat on its face at every opportunity.

I have bitten my tongue at most of it, but hot on the heels of yesterday’s schooling of our mendacious Prime Minister and his entire cabinet by a Premiership footballer (yes – you read that correctly!) on the subject of free school lunches for disadvantaged children, comes the latest in the sorry saga of the UK’s Tracking and Testing program. Today’s announcement concerned the much touted tracing App that has been in development since March – the which was intended to alert individuals if they have been in close proximity to someone who is later discovered to have tested positive for the virus. This is about technology (which is, after all, my field) and I feel driven to comment!

When the Tracing and Tracking program was announced back in mists of time with the usual exaggerated fanfare it was described as “world beating”. We would, naturally, have settled for something that just worked – but you take what you can get!

One of the important elements of the program – or so it was claimed at the time – was to have been the App. Now, similar Apps have been – or are currently being – developed across the world. There are two basic models for this tool. One works purely locally to the device on which it has been installed which, if it comes into close proximity to another device belonging to a virus sufferer, alerts the user and advises the best course of action. The second version has a similar functionality, but is also tied into a centralised database, so that all sorts of information may be collected (for what purpose?).

The giant tech corporations, Apple and Google, have collaborated to produce a tool that follows the first, distributed model. Unsurprisingly the great majority of nations have plumped for this solution, since the backing and technical expertise of such behemoths is not to be sniffed at. Of those nations that did not do so immediately many have subsequently changed course and gone that route.

Concerns regarding data privacy were raised about the UK’s choice and computer scientists and other commentators warned back in April that the chosen solution would almost certainly prove impossible to engineer successfully on the platforms for which it would be required (iPhones and Android devices). The UK government – determined to to have its centralised database solution – announced (and subsequently abandoned) a succession of launch dates throughout May and early June. Rumour spread over the past few days that the App would not be ready until winter, further adding to the delay in the full implementation of the Track and Trace program, the which is vital if the UK economy is to re-open successfully.

Today’s (entirely predictable) announcement told of the final total abandonment of the UK government App (which the Health Minister tried to blame on Apple!) and the adoption instead of the Apple/Google offering with which most nations have already been working for the last three months.

I’m sorry – but you simply couldn’t make this stuff up. These people are supposed to have kept the UK and its citizens safe from the pandemic – rather than allowing it to become one of the worst hit countries in the world. They will shortly also have the responsibility of ensuring that the disaster that is Brexit does not deal the economy a terminal blow.

Good luck with that one!

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Green shoots

June 3, 2020 in Life in BC | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidI mentioned a few posts back that something indiscernible (imperceptible almost!) had shifted with regard to our COVID-19 lock-down state here at the southern end of Vancouver Island. That something (that the previously lengthy queues for our local grocery store had all but disappeared) was – though not obviously explainable – clearly an indicator that things were beginning to change.

Here are a couple of other such signs:

Each and every visit that I have paid to our local store since this all began have included an unnecessary detour – courtesy of the pandemic one-way scheme – through the pet-food aisle, the purpose of which was to enable me to pass up the cleaning aisle in a fruitless search for disinfectant wipes and disposable gloves. The expanse of barren shelving where these essentials should have been was marked by signs commanding us to limit ourselves to a single item of each. Chance would be a fine thing!…

…until this week – when suddenly there appeared an entire pallet-load of Lysol wipes! Hooray! I took my one and – public-spirited soul that I am – passed the word on to friends, rather than just shoving a couple of extra packs behind something on the top shelf in the hope that they would still be there later.

Still no gloves though…

The other sign was that – in common with other countries that are also slowly loosening restrictions – we can now ‘entertain’ a few folk from outside our immediate isolation circle – as long as we do so outside, that no-one wants to use the washroom (or is prepared to re-sanitise it when they have done so) and that we keep our distance in the approved manner.

Now – this is where having a splendid garden and a mild (for Canada) late spring climate comes into its own. We can sit around (two metres apart) drinking wine and eating take-out sushi (purchased individually) long into the evening. For this to really work at the end of May (or indeed for much of the summer) one needs that other Canadian staple – a fire basket or pit. Even at this stage open fires are banned here on the island because of the wildfire risk, but Canadian Tire (other ironmongers are available!) handily supplies propane fueled devices such as the one below… and jolly good it is too.

Well – here’s to slow progress… I hope that your neck of the woods is seeing similar – though cautious – relaxation of the restrictions.

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

 

 

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The ‘New Normal’

May 17, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink

It is really not that far short of two months since I wrote this blog piece in which I described the business necessarily involved in a visit to one’s local grocery store (supermarket). I ended that post with the expression of a fear of just how long the restrictions then newly imposed might need to remain in place – and of how the public might react when that fact became apparent.

Here we are two months down the line and it is fascinating to observer how what then seemed like an emergency provision has after all become what is described by that increasingly hackneyed phrase – the ‘New Normal’. The business of grocery shopping here is still essentially as I described it then, but with significant improvements to the first ‘draft’. Other things have changed as well – some of them less expected.

The whole bulk-food section has gone (to be replaced by shelf-loads of properly packaged offerings) as have the fresh fish and meat counters. The one-way system around the store has been refined and the checkouts now have plexiglass screens not only between the masked operatives and the customers but also between adjacent lines. Customers have also become more adept at the delicate dance of avoidance that we all perform around the aisles. Finally, even those of us ideologically opposed to the practice have adopted the use of ‘tapping’ at the credit card machines so that no direct touching is required.

The biggest practical change, however, occurred a couple of weeks back. I had been going to the store once a week early in the morning and queuing with all of the other anxious shoppers. Then – without any warning – the queues vanished. On no occasion since then have I had to wait at all to enter the store – I have just swanned right on in.

Other elements that are rapidly becoming ritualised in the ‘2N’ include the return home. Mine goes like this:

  • Carry the disposable (paper) bags of shopping into the house. Place on the floor.
  • Remove the disposable gloves that I wear in the store and wash hands.
  • Remove each item from the bags and carefully wipe it down using hand sanitiser and kitchen towel.
  • Dispose of bags.
  • Wash hands.
  • Using hand sanitiser and towel wipe down steering wheel, door handles and other controls in the SUV.
  • Wipe down front door handles and locks.
  • Wipe down keys, man-bag and glasses.
  • Wash hands.
  • Put away groceries.

Now – some of this may seem over the top… or not – depending on how rigorous the gentle reader has determined is necessary in his or her particular circumstances. We wear cloth face masks when we go to stores. Others don’t.

It is somewhat depressing to think that this might be how we live now for an extended period, but we can certainly do it. It is the other things that feel to be a greater loss – socialising with others – dining out – going to the theatre – music in the parks and suchlike…

Those I really do miss…

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A sign of the times

May 14, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Back near the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis I wrote a post (pleasantly entitled ‘Make Yourself Happy‘ – fortunately without an exclamation mark) in which I reported on one of the UK national newspaper’s re-posting to their digital site of the ‘live’ minute by minute’ commentary of a favourite footie fixture from some point in the (middle)-distant past (1971 as I recall) – a notion that has, I observe, since been picked up and run with by all and sundry. My observations may have been ‘voiced’ in a tone that the casual reader – someone who doesn’t know me better – might have mistaken for cynicism (Who, me? Never!).

The problem that the broadsheet had accurately and most presciently identified is, of course, that during an extended lock-down – in which none of the usual newsworthy happenings – er… happens – there is nothing much left about which to write – apart from the wretched pandemic itself.

By now even the less fleet-footed amongst the gentle readers of these ramblings will already have figured out where this is going…

Yes – apart from gardening and… um!… well, that’s about it – there is not too much else to write about when one’s existence has been shrunk from our usual mad gay whirl to a really rather limited routine. I am not – of course – complaining. One is – after all – a long time de*d!

So – in the spirit of The Guardian’s enterprising sports editor I intend to replay coverage – in ‘real time‘ – of our legendary trip to the UK and Europe of this time last year (observe the date on the luggage tag in the accompanying photo). I will be revisiting – virtually – some of the places to which we went and some of the friends and family with whom we spent time a year ago. I will also, of course, be revisiting – somewhat wistfully – the Greek islands. Look out for the posting of some of the photos that didn’t make the cut first time round.

Of course, the whole point about keeping a regular blog is that one has an enduring record of what one did in previous years – and of when one did it. As this is all (somewhat rashly) available publicly (as it were) there is nothing to stop the gentle reader from glancing back through the archives to view the postings from a year ago. What I will be doing, however, is looking back through my rose-tinted spectacles with the 20/20 benefit of hindsight.

One of the first observations to make is how jolly lucky we were to have finally settled on traveling last year. Who knows when we might be able to do so again…

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Bizarre gardening accident

April 22, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Those of us of a certain age – and in particular those of us who played in bands ‘back in the day’ – will be familiar with Rob Reiner’s ‘mockumentary’ (the very first of its kind) – “This is Spinal Tap“. It was obligatory in the mid 80s for us to have seen the film (often many times) – to know it sufficiently well that we could quote chunks of it by heart – and to claim that it must somehow have been based on our own band’s experiences (usually completely missing the point that it was a satire… Yup – we took ourselves pretty seriously!).

Now – I must confess that, though I have certainly seen the whole film, I have a feeling that I have not ever done so in one sitting. I also have a feeling that I may not be alone in this. No matter!

Why am I bringing this up now?

Well – though the main characters in the spoof band were played by talented actor/musicians Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer (who went on to voice a number of key characters in ‘The Simpsons’) – one of the jokes was that Spinal Tap had worked its way through an infeasible number of drummers – most of whom had died in unusual circumstances (two from spontaneous human combustion onstage and one from choking on “someone else’s vomit”). Yet another had died in a “bizarre gardening accident” which was supposedly described by the police afterwards as a mystery “best left unsolved.”

Yes – you’ve guessed it! I was on the InterWebNet looking up unusual gardening accidents. There are – of course – many ways to injure oneself whilst tending to one’s estate (pretentious? moi?) and most of them do not bear thinking about. Some – however – just hurt a lot and make one feel particularly stupid. Such was the minor incident in which I was involved the other day.

I was mowing the lawn – which I am obliged to do with sufficient frequency that I should by now have achieved ‘black-belt’ status in the noble art of grass cutting. I should certainly know well enough what I am about that the following should not have taken place.

I stopped the mower to empty the clipping bag. Having done so I set things up again and gave a vigorous tug on the starter cord. Unfortunately I had not noticed that I was positioned rather too close to the corner of our garden tool-shed (Canadian: shop) and as I jerked my arm back the point of my elbow impacted with the corner of the building.

“Ouch!” (That is – of course – not the word that I used at the time…)

What a numpty!

 

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