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Martin Mars

August 25, 2024 in Life in BC, Photos | Permalink

I first visited Canada in 2006, on which occasion I was introduced by The Girl to the delights of British Columbia and of Vancouver Island – along, naturally, with her family and many of her friends. The expedition was planned with the sort of thoroughness that is her hallmark and included my first meeting, in Nanaimo, with her father and her mother in law.

The four of us took a trip up island to Port Alberni and to Tofino. This memorable sojourn – the which included spending a day drifting down to Bamfield on the Francis Berkeley – has been replicated more than once when we have entertained visitors from outwith the province (or indeed the country).

Between Port Alberni and Tofino we paid a visit to Sproat Lake. Quite apart from being a very beautiful spot this 25km long lake is known for a number of interesting attractions, amongst which – until very recently – was that it was home to the Martin Mars water-bombers.

Now – I could regale you with the story of these huge and beautiful flying boats – built during the second world war and serving for many years fighting wildfires across Canada and elsewhere – but why don’t we let Wikipedia handle the honours in this instance. What gentle readers need to know for the purposes of this post is that ‘Hawaii Mars‘, which I believe to be the remaining flight-worthy aircraft (of the seven that were built) was this year donated to the British Columbia Aviation Museum, the which is right here beside Victoria International Airport.

A couple of weeks back ‘Hawaii Mars‘ made her final flight from Sproat Lake down to Victoria. For the last leg she was accompanied by the Canadian aerobatic display team – the Snowbirds. Many Victoria inhabitants turned out to view the spectacle, but we were fortunate enough to be gifted a grandstand view from our deck as the formation circled the airport.

As you would expect, this spectacle certainly brought a lump to my throat.

When the aircraft is finally ready for visitors at the museum I shall go and pay my respects.

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

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Random thoughts

July 22, 2024 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“There’s good random, and there’s bad random. There’s good silly and there’s bad silly, and you’ve gotta know the difference”.

Conan O’Brien

“I ride tandem with the random, things don’t run the way I planned them – in the humdrum”

Peter Gabriel – ‘Humdrum’

A few random thoughts and observations…

Close to home

When The Girl and I were planning our recent trip to Scotland we went looking for appropriate cultural events that might round out our visit to places and peoples. I had of late been doing quite a lot of reading on the subject of storytelling – and in particular of Celtic storytelling – so one of my focuses was very much on finding events along these lines.

Unfortunately it turned out that, because our trip was really quite early in the season, many such programmes were not yet up and running and we found ourselves drawing a blank.

As is the nature of such things, however, little sooner than we were back in Victoria than The Girl found an event at the Victoria Scottish Community Centre (the existence of which I was unaware) entitled ‘Stories of Scotland‘. Stand-up comedian and former physics teacher, Bruce Fummey, combines scabrous humour and a fascination with Scottish history to great effect – spinning yarns about the evolution of a peoples as revealed in their DNA. This was in itself quite a coincidence as I was just finishing Alistair Moffat’s book – ‘The Scots – a Genetic Journey‘ – the which I had purchased at the museum in Kilmartin Glen.

Small world!

Going Back to the Well

Whilst staying in The Girl’s brilliantly chosen Scottish AirBnBs and searching for some suitable evening viewing fare, we were able to re-acquaint ourselves with British TV. On Channel 4 we discovered that all seven series of ‘The West Wing‘ have been made available for streaming. As huge Aaron Sorkin fans it was a complete delight to start the whole oeuvre again from the top. We are still working our way through back here in Canada and have nearly reached the end of season 4.

I don’t think I need labour any points here regarding the quality of the writing, acting and direction that this ground-breaking series has to offer. Some will complain that it is unrealistic, naive, too liberal, sentimental, chauvinistic – yada yada yada… Don’t care!! This show delights in ways that most do not, moves us to  tears and to laughter – and rewards our time with the sheer joy of absorbing something brilliant. It is so good to be able to recharge the batteries thus…

Narrow Margins

There has been much debate over the years as to the feasibility of Lee Harvey Oswald having acting as a lone operator in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Leaving aside the wilder conjectures of conspiracy theorists, Oswald’s somewhat average record as a marksman in the Marine Corps and the less than ideal performance of the Italian Carcano Model 38 rifle shown to have been the murder weapon have long left doubts as to the physical possibility of his having carried out the assault in the time known to have been taken. Quite apart from such practicalities the pressures of the moment and of the act itself must be taken into account.

The reasons for this being on my mind now are, however, unrelated to the viability of the act itself. Instead I find myself pondering the consequences of the narrowness of margins. A mere inch either way might have resulted in all three shots missing (instead of just the one) or, perhaps, in inflicting only non-fatal injuries. How different might the world have been had Kennedy gone on to run for a second term.

By such small margins are the vagaries of history moulded.

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Angels come to visit

June 30, 2024 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidThe golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

George Eliot

If – on our recent expedition to Scotland – the eagerly anticipated prospect of the spectres of my ancestors queuing up to welcome us as we crossed the Tay at Perth and headed north into the foothills of the Grampians proved to be a touch quixotic – then much the same might be said of The Girl’s hope that she might re-experience the sense of wonder with which she had been so captivated two decades before on the unexpected discovery of such treasures as the Rosslyn Chapel and Kilmartin Glen.

It is not that these inspiring attractions are any the less worth seeing a second time around (with perhaps, for The Girl, the added bonus of being able to introduce them to me!) but more that the magical, mystical manner in which they were encountered on the previous visit could itself never truly be replicated. It is also the case, of course, that the monuments themselves have evolved. The renovations at the Rosslyn Chapel have moved on many a mile, whilst there is now a splendidly refurbished and extended museum at Kilmartin Glen.

So – where does that leave us? The Girl and I have both waxed lyrical to family, friends and acquaintances regarding the gratifyingly fulfilling nature of the trip; but what was it then that so captivated us?

Well – my ancestors may have been coy but that did not prevent me from revisiting the more recent past. It was quite a shock to realise (somewhat belatedly, truth be told) that though I am familiar with many of the places that we chose to visit (from our family holidays there in the 60s and 70s) it had been fifty years and more since last I saw most of them.

Fifty years? How is that even possible!?

I quickly found myself revisiting in my mind anew these Caledonian vacations that had constituted such a formative element of my teenage years – reminiscing unexpectedly about the very details of what had been such an important part of my upbringing. Sharing these memories with The Girl proved to be a surprisingly sweet experience – she learning things about me that she had not previously known, at the same time that something similar was happening to me. I took great pleasure in introducing her to the area in which our clan originated (the valley of the river Garry; Pitlochry, Blair Athol and Calvine) and it was a great delight to walk once again through the pass of Killiecrankie down towards the Linn of Tummel.

Asked about her highlight of the trip The Girl thought for a while and then pronounced that for her that would be our brief sojourn on Orkney. She had been determined from the start to work the Orkneys into the itinerary and she was not disappointed. She struck gold in finding our host, Nicky Bichan, in Kirkwall, who not only runs a splendid B&B – Shorelands – but also gives full-day guided tours of all of the historical and archeological sites. Nicky and his wife, Kirsten, are genuine and thoughtful people, perfectly placed to effect an introduction to the tight-knit community that is the Orcadians.

Should you ever find yourself in Kirkwall we would also strongly recommend the Storehouse Restaurant. We ate there on both nights of our visit, the second because we enjoyed it so much the first time.

The other element of the trip that had a big impact on us both was that of the making of connections. The Scots have a well-earned reputation of being a particularly friendly and welcoming race. Clearly this must also rub off on those who move to Scotland – or perhaps even just pay a visit. The other day The Girl and I composed a healthy list of those with whom we had had fascinating conversations on our travels. These are just a few examples:

  • The lunch-time waitress in the Edinburgh bistro who grew up in the circus – because her mother was a trapeze artist
  • The young man at the Thistle Stop Cafe – adjacent to our splendid National Trust apartment on the Royal Mile – who had spent time with his relatives in Kelowna here in BC
  • The Georgian gentleman who runs a whisky shop in half of the building that still houses our small but fascinating clan museum at Calvine
  • The unexpected Romanian couple who run the restaurant at the golf course in Blair Athol
  • The indomitable elderly Texan ladies with whom we shared our tour on Orkney (we avoided conversations about politics and guns!)
  • The Californian couple on the ferry back to Thurso – and the kind eastern European gentlemen who volunteered to help them to recover their hire car that had suffered a puncture as they hurried to catch the outbound ferry
  • The lovely couple who ran the AirBnB on Skye. He was from Yorkshire – she from Edinburgh. On the day we arrived, he had just put his fishing boat in the water for the summer season. He offered to catch us some fish the next day and – true to his word – appeared bearing three splendidly fresh mackerel – the which we cooked for our supper. Yum!
  • The theatrical house manager and chef at the excellent Lime Tree restaurant in Fort William. I thought I had lost The Girl after dinner but found her lost instead – in shared theatrical anecdotage with this enthusiastic brace of thespists

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidOne more item of reminiscence – and in a quiet way one of my top highlights of the journey. The photo at the top of this post is of our clan chapel in the tiny Perthshire village of Struan. In the small graveyard that surrounds the chapel may be found many memorials to important members and officers of the clan. If you examine the sign affixed to the chapel door you will see that the building is owned by a trust on behalf of the clan – and can be used for ceremonies and gatherings by members of the clan. My brother was married there all those years ago – and now, standing in that quiet and isolated churchyard in the heart of clan country, I really did feel a connection to something ancient and good.

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Kilmartin Glen

June 10, 2024 in Life as we know it, Photos | Permalink

This post offers to the gentle reader (or viewer, for that matter) the final batch of images from our recent ‘progress’ around Scotland. Whilst staying for a few days in Connel – not far outside Oban on the west coast – we paid a visit (or re-visit in The Girl’s case) to the extraordinary historical site that is Kilmartin Glen. Rather than duplicate what others have written (doubtless in considerably more detail and certainly more stylishly than could I) I will simply pass on this link, the which will furnish all that need be known:

Kilmartin Glen

Here are some photographs:


As you will see (should you enlarge this image sufficiently that you can decipher the text) the Iron Age fort of Dunadd at the foot of the glen was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Dalriada. The stone of destiny – which can be found therein – was used in the ceremonies inaugurating the monarchs of Dalriada; the new king being ‘crowned’ by placing his foot into the imprint.

 

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VE Day

May 10, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink

This weekend has seen the seventy fifth anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, the which was celebrated on May 8th 1945 on what was given the soubriquet – ‘VE Day’ – or ‘V-E Day’ – or ‘V Day’ – or ‘Victory Day’ – depending whereabouts on the continent one was.

That this auspicious anniversary should occur in the midst of a global pandemic has, naturally, caused some controversy, since the public celebrations that might have been thought to be the order of the day could not reasonably take place. In the UK at least I can’t help feeling that – even had the situation not been as it is – there would have been some disputes as to the nature and relevance of any celebrations.

David Lloyd George said of the end of the Great War in Europe:

“At eleven o’clock this morning came to an end the cruellest and most terrible War that has ever scourged mankind. I hope we may say that thus, this fateful morning, came to an end all wars.”

There are those among us who believe that such a hope should still be the basis of any and all remembrance. In his notable Zurich speech of 1946, Churchill said:

“We must build a kind of United States of Europe. The structure of the United States of Europe, if well and truly built, will be such as to make the material strength of a single state less important.”

There are – sadly – those in the UK who happily forget that VE Day was a celebration of the coming together of a continent of nations to defeat a small group of aggressors amongst its number and that the day itself is celebrated by more than just the plucky Brits. These zealots cleave to the image of Britain standing alone (regardless of the fact that she was backed by a huge world-wide empire and openly looked to the New World for salvation) and would love to see VE Day as a celebration of a victory over Europe rather than for it.

The exceptionalism that the UK currently shares with the US has served both nations poorly in their responses to the current pandemic and one of the rich ironies in the UK is that what remains of the generation that fought and won the war is currently dying miserable deaths in the nation’s ravaged care homes. The inevitable eventual inquiry into this tragedy will doubtless record that there had been a number of warnings in recent years as to just such vulnerabilities, the which were – sadly – ignored by successive careless or mendacious governments.

As is so often the case The Guardian cartoonist – Martin Rowson – manages to express in a single image that which I struggle to express in many words.

This moves me – at least – to tears.

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Will there also be singing?

April 7, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”

Bertolt Brecht, motto to Svendborg Poems, 1939

This poignant motto appears at the head of the last collection of poems published by Bertolt Brecht during his lifetime. He was by then living in exile from Nazi Germany in the town of Svendborg on the Danish island of Funen.

The ‘dark times’ to which he refers are, of course, considerably darker even than those which afflict us now, but a search on the InterWebNet for uses to which this brief motto has been put reveals a plethora of such instances in recent times – starting with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and gathering pace since 2016. The latest of which I am aware was by Chris Riddell for his cartoon on the Corona virus lock-down in the UK for last Sunday’s Observer newspaper.

When I first became aware of Normal Lewis’ wartime memoir – through Francesco Patierno’s film, shown on the BBC toward the end of last year – the current COVID-19 crisis did not even feature on the roadmap of impending concerns. Now, of course, contemplation of conflicts still sharp in the living memory has become something of a pastime – or more accurately a ‘pass-time’, since many of us are unable to follow our preferred pursuits and must needs instead find alternative ways to occupy the time that hangs heavy on our hands. It has become quite the thing to compare our current trials and tribulations with those of the generation that lived through the last world war.

There are good reasons for so doing – though even better ones for exercising finer judgement. We do indeed live in unprecedented times. As things stand we have no idea how this is all going to pan out, or into what reality we might emerge on the other side. When we look back we can discern no other period since the last war in which so many people’s lives were simultaneously thrown into chaos by such a crisis – be that through the direct touch of the pandemic itself, or through loss of employment, income or – even worse – of friends and loved-ones.

Writing about my father’s war-time experience in Italy – contemporaneous with that of Norman Lewis – I suggested that he had subsequently spoken very little about his experiences there. My mother would describe how she went outside to watch the vapour trails over south London during the Battle of Britain, but otherwise she likewise gave little away about how the war had affected her and those close to her.

We know – we think we know – from our readings of history, from novels and poetry and from the many film and TV productions concerning the war and its aftermath – just how broken and fragmented was the world in the latter half of the 1940s. Populations had been destroyed or displaced, the greater part of a generation had lost their lives, families and societies had been torn asunder, economies wrecked and great expanses of the old world reduced to piles of rubble. How could the world – the lives – ever be rebuilt?

Yet many of those who lived through that period chose not to – or simply could not – speak thereof… and the world – as it does – moved on.

In this age of instant and incessant ‘communication’ there is perhaps a case for saying rather less and listening – and thinking – rather more…

…and – yes! – I am aware of the contradiction in so writing.

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Naples 44 – part 3

April 2, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Inveterate lingerers upon these pages will no doubt recall (quoth he optimistically) my posting back in January of a brace of articles on the subject of the slim volume of wartime memoirs by the British travel writer and novelist – Norman Lewis – that was published in the late 1970s by William Collins and to which my attention had been directed in the closing months of last year by the BBC’s showing of Italian director Francesco Patierno’s impressionistic film that was based upon it.

To save further lengthy sentences containing multiple clauses elucidating the matter, let me save a little time by referring the gentle reader directly to those pieces – which may be effortlessly located here and here.

The articles in question contained the slightly embarrassing admission that I had not, in fact, actually read the book – though I had located a copy online and placed an order. This tome duly arrived shortly after my postings and accompanied us on our jaunt to Mexico back in mid February, where it took but a few days to consume, providing much pause for thought in the process.

The book is fascinating; thought-provoking, disturbing, funny and moving all at the same time. It highlights the chaos and insanity of war and the vivid description that it contains of a society that has been utterly upended and thrown into disarray – in which all human life must struggle to find a way to survive and even ultimately to flourish – offers important perspective and guidance on our own troubled times.

One of the things that struck me most about the book was how contemporary the prose feels. It does not to me give the impression of a piece of writing from the middle of the last century, nor yet of the 1970s when it was actually committed to paper. In my view this makes it even more pertinent today.

Should you wish to know more about the book I earnestly recommend this ‘Re-reading‘ piece from the Guardian back in 2011.

If you have read the second of my earlier postings on the subject you will know that one reason for my interest in the book is that my father was most likely in Naples – and certainly somewhere in that part of Italy – at the same time as was Norman Lewis. Lewis refers repeatedly to the Allied Military Government (AMG) that had been established in Italy subsequent to the landings there. I am pretty certain that my father had some small capacity in that organisation.

The reason that I believe this to be so is that I have seen a number of documents and other items from my father’s time in Italy which bore – as far as my aging memory can recall – the imprint of the AMG.

Why could I not simply check this before commencing this post?

Because said documentary evidence is – as far as I know – apparently irrevocably locked in the desk compartment of my beloved Davenport!

 

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Naples ’44 – part 2

January 26, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink


In my last post I wrote – probably somewhat unexpectedly – about Norman Lewis’s diary of his time working for British Army Intelligence in southern Italy during the Second World War, the which was published at the end of the 70s under the title – “Napoli ’44“. I did not explain in that post how I came to the topic, promising that fascinating titbit instead for this follow-up missive.

As it happens the book was brought to my attention – as is so often the case with such things – courtesy of the BBC. At the very start of December last year they screened a documentary film entitled “Naples ’44: A Wartime Diary“, the which was – as one might imagine – based upon the book.

The film was in fact made in 2016 by Italian director – Francesco Patierno, himself a Neapolitan – and is a very strange beast in its own right. Patierno was clearly very taken with Lewis’s perceptive and humane memoir of the war years as they affected his birthplace and his screenplay includes extensive selections from the book’s text, narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch.

Patierno assembled an impressive quantity of footage shot in Naples at the end of the war, to which he added dramatised recreations of wartime life and scenes of an actor representing Lewis – who himself died in 2003 – walking through the streets of modern Naples. He also – somewhat controversially – included rather incongruous clips from films such as “The Four Days of Naples“, “Il Re di Poggioreale” and – of all things – “Catch-22“.

To many critics – professional and amateur alike – this somewhat contrived attempt at summoning an atmosphere and creating a mood by means of a collage of no more than tenuously related images and scenes misses the mark dramatically (in all senses!). For me – however – the work had an unexpected resonance – the which I could not at first place. Many of the black and white images in the film reminded me of photos that I had seen as a child in pictorial histories of different elements of the Second World War that my parents had owned.

Then the penny dropped! My father and I had never talked very much about his war-time experiences. I was aware that he had had a ‘good’ war (if such a thing there could possibly be). I believe that he had done his basic training; that they had allowed him to fire a gun once, before rapidly taking it away again (Father’s eyesight and hand/eye co-ordination had been left poor by measles when a child) and that – with his studiousness and banking background – he rapidly found himself working in the military administration, well enough out of harm’s way. He loved languages (and in particular classical ones) and had been eager to travel, so spending much of the later years of the war in southern Italy suited him very well. (He would certainly have loved to have revisited the country subsequently, but never did. My mother did not care to travel and he would not go without her).

So – Father must have been in the region of Naples during the time that Norman Lewis was there and writing his diary. No surprise then that the words and images in Patierno’s odd film struck such a chord.

Now – of course – I must read the book and it is, accordingly, on order from an online bookseller…

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Naples ’44 – part 1

January 21, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

I started this post way back before Christmas but found myself sidetracked by other things… one of which was, of course, Christmas itself. I found myself a little reluctant, however, to just let it go – for reasons that will become apparent later. It has thus sat here in very embryonic draft form for nearly two months.

I think that it is time that I put it to bed.

Back at the tail end of the 70s the slim volume illustrated at the top of this piece – “Napoli ’44” – was published by William Collins (and later – in 1983 – as a paperback by Eland Books). It was written by the British travel writer and novelist – Norman Lewis.

Lewis had been a sergeant in the Field Security Service of the British Army Intelligence Core during the Second World War and had kept a diary – the which forms the basis of this book – from September 1943 to October 1944, on his posting to southern Italy following the allied landings there. For much of this period he was based in Naples – hence the title of the book.

As though being part of the British/American administration in the chaotic wake of the invasion and observing the Neapolitans struggling to make their lives work again in the ruins of the heavily bombed and water-less city were not a sufficiently apocalyptic experience already, on the 19th March 1944 Vesuvius erupted in spectacular fashion, shadowing all other concerns with clouds of ash and streams of molten lava. Lewis was sent out by his masters to check on military installations under threat from the lava flows. On arrival (under volcanic bombardment) in San Sebastiano he found that a lava wave was forcing its way relentlessly down the main street, consuming buildings large and small as it went and with the cupola of the church riding on its crest.

I find it difficult enough to imagine what living through such a traumatic and disorientating period must have been like without the volcano, but the point at which Mother Nature ran out her cannons and added her own destructive power to the show must truly have convinced some that the end of days was at hand.

Lewis’s account has been much praised over the years and is all the more remarkable for not having been written for nearly three and a half decades after the events that it memorialises.

Now – I must admit at this point that I have not actually read the book (nor indeed have I found a copy – shame on me!) – and the gentle reader may thus at this point be chafing at the bit somewhat. Patience – patience – and I will explain just how and why I come to be writing about it.

That needs must, however, await the second part of this post…

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Altamont at 50

December 5, 2019 in Life as we know it | Permalink

I remember just how startled I was when I first watched the Maysles brothers’ 1970 documentary on the Rolling Stones 1969 tour of the USA – ‘Gimme Shelter‘ – the which culminated on December 6th of that year with the hubristic free concert at the Altamont Speedway outside San Francisco. I don’t remember exactly when it was that I saw the movie for the first time, but I have watched it many times since.

Now – I never was a great fan of the Stones, though I do get a little of what the fuss is all about. I have only seen them live once – pre-millennium at the old Wembley Stadium in London. I recall being fascinated by Jagger’s ability to control an audience but otherwise being generally somewhat under-whelmed. The best thing they did that day was a cover of ‘Like a Rolling Stone‘.

I do think – however – that ‘Gimme Shelter‘ is a classic song and would be up there on my all-time best list.

I can’t deny that there is a fascination with that particular period in their – and our – history. I have read pretty much all that there is to read on Altamont – from Stanley Booth, Joel Selvin, Saul Austerlitz et al. There has for a long time now been much talk about the event being the antithesis of Woodstock – the end of the 60s – the death of the hippie dream and suchlike, but the main thing that I get from the inevitable golden-anniversary musings is that no-one is really at all clear as to the true meaning – should there be one – of this peripeteia.

I have a fascination for those turning points of history, regardless of the age from which they hail. They are frequently associated (probably understandably) with some form of a loss of innocence – though, given our long and ignominious history, how we as a species can yet manage to hang on to any shred of innocence is beyond me.

Fifty years – seems a good time to reflect on all such that has occurred.

Fifty years?! Where did that go?

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