Memories

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Fun and games

May 23, 2016 in Life in BC, Photos | Permalink

I experienced an interesting echo of Britain’s colonial past this recent long holiday weekend. The occasion was my first visit to the excellent and hugely popular Victoria Highland Games.

That this was the one hundred and fifty third such informs us not only as to their date of origin but also as to the continuing popularity of the event. As was our colonial forebears’ wont around the globe the original intent of the festival would have been to recreate a much loved element of UK cultural life to ease the longing for home of the expats upon whom the empire depended.

Here – a century and a half later – I found myself standing on a grassy slope in Topaz Park, looking across a greensward teeming with pipers, drum majors, highland dancers, heavy lifters and hammer throwers (caber tossing was on a different day!) toward the smoky Sooke hills in the background and experiencing suddenly the strongest recollection of sitting on the grass bank at the Pitlochry recreation ground in Perthshire back ‘when I were a lad’, watching the proceedings of a ‘Highland Night’.

It worked a hundred and fifty years ago… it works now!

Some pictures…

In the clan society section I found that my own – Clan Donnachaidh – has made a reappearance after some years missing from the west coast. I signed up – naturally!

Tags: Celebration, Fuji x10, Memories, Photo, Scotland, Victoria

Echoes of the old country

April 14, 2016 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“Chinstrap: Here’s to the old country, sir!
Bloodnok: What old country?
Chinstrap: Any old country.”

The Goon Show, ‘Shifting Sands’

It is fairly widely acknowledged that – for the expat Brit looking for somewhere not too ‘foreign’ in which to establish his or her habitat – Vancouver Island, and Victoria in particular, pretty much tops the bill.

Many things about life on the southern tip of Vancouver Island will seem familiar to those from England – from the red double decker buses, the unexpected fondness for cricket, rugby and rowing, the love of messing about in boats, the discovery that hoards of other Brits have already made the journey – right down to the fact that the locals very nearly speak the same language as do we in the old country!

The fact that the standard of living is so high (whilst the cost of petrol (gas) is so low) and the discovery that the climate is way better than that in the south of England make living here a no-brainer. For those who prefer a relaxed, casual we(s)t-coast lifestyle, with perhaps just a slight tendency to left of centre politics… well – check! check! Plus – the familiar comfort of living on an island… Plus – being within sight of the sea and the mountains just about everywhere… Plus – just how beautiful it all is!

Little surprise though that one gets the occasional reminder of the old country herself. Some such – however – come as more of a surprise than others. Herewith a few recent examples.

I have in my meagre wardrobe a rather swish replica Great Britain polo shirt, of which I am inordinately fond. It has on the left sleeve at suitably subtle Union Jack emblem. Wearing this out and about seems not infrequently to inspire those of a certain background to approach and engage me in conversation. For example – just the other day in ‘Thrifty’s‘ – our local supermarket:

He: “Bet you wish you were back there now?”

I: “Oh – well I only got here last summer – and I love it!”

He: “Ah!” – a pause – “What’s it like there now – with all the immigration?”

I: “Um – well, around London it hasn’t really changed that much since I was a youngster. It always was a very multi-cultural city.”

He: “I read about it the Daily Express!”

I suggested as gently as possible that a British tabloid rag – particularly without the sense of balance that might have come with actually living in the place concerned – was possibly not the most reliable source of what might delicately be called ‘the truth!’. I’m not sure he was convinced. He was – he told me proudly – a Welshman! I thought it best not to point out that the main source of immigration in his part of the world was probably the English purchasing holiday cottages in sleepy Welsh villages.

But a short step along the road from ‘Thrifty’s‘ is one of Sidney’s many bookshops – in this case a secondhand and antique bookseller. I paid them a visit following my grocery shop to see if they had a copy of a particular marine atlas for which I have been searching.

They did not!

I did, however, discover – taped in a polythene bag to the outside end of one of their bookcases – this estate agent’s (realtor’s) street plan of the Merton Park area to the south of London. The map is not dated but – from various features contained thereon – I can deduce that it was printed sometime in the early 1930s. At that time Merton Park and Morden (Merton’s close neighbour) were outside London in the English county of Surrey. These days the area is some twenty miles inside the Greater London boundary.

This was certainly an odd item to find some five thousand miles away on the far side of the world – but why did it interest me enough that I felt at once moved to purchase it?

It shows the street on which I was born!

Tags: England, Memories, Victoria

Swing, swing together

March 17, 2016 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Jolly boating weather,
And a hay harvest breeze,
Blade on the feather,
Shade off the trees,
Swing swing together,
With your bodies between your knees,
Swing swing together,
With your bodies between your knees.

The Eton Boating Song

I have of late been thinking about my mother. This is not unusual for the time of year – she died six years ago at the end of February and her birthday fell within the first couple of weeks of March – but so to do does tend to leave me a little wistful and reflective regarding life’s strange twists and turns.

The regular reader might well at this point already be scratching his (or her) pate and wondering what this could possible have to do with the Eton Boating Song. That is, indeed, a good question – the which I will endeavor straightway to answer.

Before the war my mother was in the Sea Rangers and – I am pretty certain – rather enjoyed rowing, though I don’t know to what level she practiced it. As with many things that one thinks one ‘knows’ from childhood this may turn out to be a ‘false’ memory, but of one thing I am certain – on a number of occasions she expressed regret that I had not taken up rowing whilst at school. She was clearly somewhat enamoured of the notion of having a son who ‘rowed’.

My Alma Mater was a grammar school in north Surrey which was also my father’s school. It was – and remains – a good school, though it is now co-educational which it was not in my day. Whilst certainly not one of the ‘great’ rowing schools it has always been there or thereabouts. The school has its playing fields – complete with boathouse – on the banks of the Thames and it takes the sport seriously. The alumni include at least one Olympic gold medal winner in the shape of James Cracknell, of whom the school is understandably proud.

Much to my mother’s dismay I declined to join the boat club. I was a fairly stringy kid at that age – fast enough as a sprinter but without much in the way of upper body bulk. I have always considered myself far too much of a lightweight for such a physical sport. Besides – the rowers had to turn out for training at six in the morning – in all seasons! Since I lived a good hour’s journey from the school that meant getting up at an ungodly hour regardless of the weather – or of the fact that it was still the middle of the night! The final straw was that the master in charge of rowing at the time was the sort of petty tyrant fairly prevalent in grammar schools of the era. I had already had several unpleasant run-ins with him and I didn’t fancy making myself a target in yet another area.

Previous posts on this journal do attest – however – to my enjoyment of rowing as a sport. I was fortunate enough to work at two institutions which can truly be considered ‘great’ rowing schools – one of which built its own rowing trench (later used as the venue for the London 2012 Olympics) and the other of which is the current holder of the Princess Elizabeth Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta.

In light of all of this I like to think that my mother would have been looking down from god’s elastic acre on Tuesday last with a smile on her face. Had she done so she would have observed the Kickass Canada Girl and I – in the company of a couple of elderly (but most impressive) expat Englishwomen from the Victoria City Rowing Club – taking our first outing on Elk Lake in a quad scull!

How this came about is of itself something of a saga – featuring a conversation that the Girl had about rowing at a Burn’s Supper with a gentlemen who knew one of these redoubtable octogenarian athletes and who put her in touch with them. The ladies were marvelous… unbelievably fit and most wonderfully patient with the couple of complete novices. I don’t for a moment suppose that sculling in a four looks easy and I can assure you that appearances do not deceive. Balance – co-ordination – the ability to perform a sequence of contradictory actions simultaneously but independently… I was expecting muscular pain and shortage of breath. What I got was mental agony – from trying to stop my conscious brain from impeding the required subconscious rhythm.

Will we try it again? We may well do. For those brief moments when the four of us magically became as one and the boat flew across the water the sensation was magical – so who knows!

I think mother would be pleased!

Tags: Henley, Memories, Rowing, school

Other days

February 18, 2016 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“You know we just don’t recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they’re happening. Back then I thought, well, there’ll be other days. I didn’t realize that that was the only day.”

‘Moonlight’ Graham – Field of Dreams

One moment in time…

Back in the late 70s – maybe 1977 – or even 1978…

It is late summer – towards the end of August. The location is Edinburgh – somewhere on the south side of the city… a city that is buzzing because it is festival time and the official festival, the fringe, the book festival, the television festival and the film festival are all in full swing.

More specifically the location is the kitchen of a rented apartment, perhaps somewhere off the Lothian Road. During term time this is student accommodation and the space bears the scars accordingly. For the three weeks of the festival it is rented at a wincingly inflated rate to groups of young hopefuls – performers, actors, musicians, jugglers, acrobats, technicians… wannabees… all itching to make their mark on this most public of stages. They dream of discovery – though the chances of so being are little higher than of winning the yet-to-be created lottery.

This particular group of young thespists and musicians hails from the south east of England and they are all associated with a local authority youth theatre from somewhere not far outside London. Aged variously between 16 and 25 they have made the long trek up to Edinburgh largely at their own expense because… because… well… that really is the question. Why are they here – so full of passion and energy and ambition?

They are doing a show – of course – but why have they gone to all the trouble and expense of bringing it to the Edinburgh fringe where – no matter how hard they work on publicity, pounding the granite cobbles thrusting flyers into reluctant hands – they will be lucky to play to a few hundred souls in a week.

The kitchen is awash with excited chatter – of shows seen – clubs visited – contacts made – exotic beverages imbibed. Summer nights north of the border hold the light longer than they do down south and the evening has only just entered the gloaming. As more youngsters arrive back from their latest adventures mugs of coffee are concocted from a large tin of cheap ‘instant’ and endless rounds of toast and marmalade are churned out by willing volunteers. This – along with the baked tatties from the local ‘Spud-U-Like’ – comprise the essential diet for this week of living wildly.

Why are they here? There are many reasons. Some are just here for the adventure – some to escape home for a while. Some are here because it is a chance to explore the festival – some because they love performing… acting or making music. Some just want to be with their friends.

Some of them are serious in their intentions concerning their art. They are hoping to get into drama school or music college and will then to try to carve a career from these most fickle of occupations. Some of them will succeed – in some cases only until they grow weary of the constant rejection, or perhaps on discovering that this was not after all for them – but others will enjoy long and rewarding careers in music, TV or the theatre.

But how can they tell – crowded expectantly into this clammy kitchen with its hot sweet coffee, its toast and conserves – what might be the true significance of this moment in time? Their conversations are full of plans and dreams, of crazy inspirations, of ambitions and desires. They have not yet drunk of the well of cynicism and regret. For them this is but a staging post on the road to the dazzling future.

‘Moonlight’ Graham was right, though. As we look back now on our younger selves from some four decades on, might it be – for some of us at least – that we suddenly see clearly that what we once thought to be just an impatient foothill at the start of our ascent was in fact the summit itself – and that that night would turn out to be the truly significant one?

…that night and a hundred others like it…

Tags: Drama, Loss, Memories, Music, Significance, Youth Theatre

Heroes

January 22, 2016 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.”

Ernest Hemingway

When an iconic figure – one who regardless of the ceaseless march of the hours and the concomitant diminution of all other childhood heroes, their lustre etiolated with the passage of time – passes from this plane, the event causes a shock to the system no matter how timely that demise might be.

When two such figures succumb within a short space of time it is – with a not entirely disproportionate degree of exaggeration – as though the earth had shifted upon its axis.

I am not going to attempt to pen anything like an appropriate appreciation of the genius of David Bowie. Much has been already been written and can easily be found on the InterWebNet and elsewhere. I will simply state why – in my view – he was one of the most influential and revered of figures in popular music.

Bowie was impossible to characterise or to pin down, whilst at the same time blazing a trail across such a wide range of creative and media forms that a hundred people could admire him and his work and each do so for completely different reasons. In my opinion Bowie’s musical talents and chameleon-like imagination put him on a par with the Beatles – and with no less a luminary than John Lennon. From me there can be no higher praise.

As I say – we each have our own reasons. Being an old-fashioned boy mine are all to do with songwriting; Bowie having composed far more than his fair share of timeless classics. ‘Life on Mars‘, ‘Heroes‘, ‘Fame’, ‘Fashion‘, ‘Ashes to Ashes‘, ‘Loving the Alien‘… I could – quite naturally – go on. This oeuvre was writ large across the soundtrack of my growing years and Bowie was a massive influence on much that I scribbled musically – mayhap sometimes more than was strictly necessary.

David Bowie died at the age of 69 after fighting a battle against cancer…

…as – with fearful symmetry – did a leading light of the current generation of British thespists – Alan Rickman.

Despite the fact that – in the main – I abhor the practice of choosing to see a play, film or television production on the strength of the casting of any particular thespian, I have been known to disregard totally my own rules in the case of certain individuals.

Alan Rickman was one such – for he was an actor who was worth watching even if the vehicle itself were complete rubbish. Who can forget the Kevin Costner vanity project – ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves‘ – from 1991? As Lanre Bakare put it in a Guardian retrospective in 2014:

“Most things about Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves are terrible. Kevin Costner’s and Christian Slater’s attempts at English accents: terrible. Bryan Adam’s theme song which refused to go away during the summer of 1991 and can conjure mass feelings of nausea to this very day: terrible. Seeing Costner’s naked arse as he gets washed in a waterfall: terrible…

...Yes, it’s ridiculous and cliched, but it’s entertaining, and there are some – OK, there’s one – genuinely great performance. Alan Rickman managed to polish one of the 90s cinema’s biggest turds when he put in a brilliant turn as the ruthless Sheriff of Nottingham, who attempts to usurp King John while being held back by his workforce of incompetent jokers and a witch.”

It is truly one of the cinema’s greatest pleasures to watch Rickman acting the ‘star’ of the show off the screen at every turn – and one for which I still occasionally endure reruns thereof.

Rickman would probably prefer to be remembered for his work at the Royal Court and with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 80s – or perhaps for playing the male lead – the Vicomte de Valmont – in Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses‘. Younger readers – should any such there be – will know him as Snape from the Harry Potter films.

Whichever role it may be, his presence will be sadly missed. The United Kingdom seems curiously able continually to turn out generations of massively talented actors and actresses – far more than is statistically feasible. That does not mean that we can readily afford to lose the likes of Alan Rickman.

David Bowie – 8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016

Alan Rickman – 21 February 1946 – 14 January 2016

Rest in peace!

Tags: Loss, Memories, Music, Theatre

Rounded with a sleep

January 2, 2016 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Shirley D. Bertoli

1932 – 2015

Our revels are now ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded in a sleep.

Prospero – from The Tempest, Act IV Scene 1
William Shakespeare

You can shed tears that she is gone
Or you can smile because she has lived
You can close your eyes and pray that she will come back
Or you can open your eyes and see all that she has left
Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her
Or you can be full of the love that you shared
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday
Or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday
You can remember her and only that she is gone
Or you can cherish her memory and let it live on
You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back
Or you can do what she would want:
Smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

David Harkins

Tags: Loss, Memories

Remembrance/Armistice Day

November 12, 2015 in Life as we know it | 4 comments

Today was Remembrance Day – the eleventh day of the eleventh month – which marks the falling silent of the guns on the western front at the end of the Great War.

In the UK it is a normal working day and the occasion is marked – for those who mark it at all – by a two minute silence at the eleventh hour. The UK has always made more of Remembrance Sunday, which is held on the nearest Sunday to Armistice Day itself.

In Canada the day is a public holiday!

Either way it is entirely right and proper that there should be an annual reminder of – and a chance to reflect upon and give thanks for – the sacrifices made by those obliged to become engaged in armed conflict on behalf of their countries and who have paid the price thereof. It is a time also to extend thoughts and sympathies to those left behind.

I have always personally felt ambivalent about the wearing of the poppy, though it is a splendid symbol and the campaign raises essential monies for a truly worthy cause. During the sixties and seventies – when I was in my youth – the campaign in the UK featured the tagline “Wear your poppy with pride”. The prevailing mood at the time seemed very much to celebrate our glorious military history.

I couldn’t help feeling that – whereas pride might be an appropriate emotion for the combatants themselves, given the part they had played – for those of us with no direct involvement neither pride nor glory had a place in the remembrance of loss and sacrifice. It was surely more appropriate to feel sadness, regret and shame… shame that our country had been obliged to ask its young men to kill the young men of other countries and to make the ultimate sacrifice themselves.

Whatever one’s notion might be of ‘just’ war it is indisputable that of all the conflicts that have raged throughout history wars that could truly be thus classified are far outnumbered by those that could have – should have – been avoided. It is a shameful reflection on humanity that, whereas we continually spend vast fortunes and devote considerable ingenuity to developing newer and more hideous ways to kill each other, we are incapable of making a similar investment towards bringing war itself to an end. We struggle even to terminate the most prosaic of conflicts.

Perhaps on this day of remembrance we should also turn our minds to all those who are responsible – through their madness, their bigotry, their misguided idealism, their fanaticism, their political ambitions, their misplaced xenophobia and jingoism, their greed, desire, lust – for any part in fomenting or promoting armed conflict.

It seems – tragically – that remembering the dead alone is not enough to bring an end to war. Perhaps we must also keep fresh in our memories all of those whose actions – or lack thereof – have helped to sew the seeds of conflict.

Tags: Loss, Memories, Politics

Clouds of meaning

April 20, 2015 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“What bothered me about this terrible recognition was the way in which the evidence of past things lies before us, trailing clouds of meaning… and we miss it!”

Hugh Hood – ‘A New Athens’

In my last posting – with reference to the start of my final term at the School – my train of thought terminated with a perhaps slightly unexpected reference to the circle of life. It was not the first time that this notion has featured in this eclectic assemblage of jottings.

I find myself – as life progresses – increasingly aware of its oblique nature. The events of the past make appearance alongside that which is present and – indeed – that which is yet to come. Should an analog assist at this point you might try imagining that you are standing on the face of a huge clock at – say – seven o’clock. You can look back across the clock face to three o’clock – and indeed look ahead to ten o’clock, but when all is said and done time will still appear to sweep by in a continual circuit – a sort of temporal Mexican wave – with midnight marking both the end of the old and the start of a new cycle.

To what – I hear you ask – might this metaphysical mood be attributed?

On Friday last I attended the funeral and wake of a widely loved and sadly prematurely deceased member of the School’s support staff. The turnout was of such proportion that the diminutive chapel at the cemetery was almost literally bursting at the seams, the magnitude of which congregation might at least have offered some small consolation to the grieving relatives.

Such occasions do of themselves have a tendency to promulgate the philosophic. A little more than a year ago – in March 2014 – I posted this piece on the occasion of a not dissimilar event that had contemporaneously marked the the passing of one life and the arrival of another. The Kickass Canada Girl and I had attended the memorial service for a very old friend, the day before hosting a gathering at which was present a very dear but considerably younger friend, whose four month old baby boy inevitably and utterly stole the limelight.

At last Friday’s gathering the self-same friend (whose connection to the School was the source of our friendship) was once again present – this time bearing another very recent and as yet unmet addition to the family – a three week old daughter. On both occasions it was impossible not to be moved to the quiet contemplation of higher matters.

It would seem that – in these days – even our reminders of the cyclical nature of existence are now arriving periodically…

Perhaps the ultimate cybernetic system!

Tags: Friends, Loss, Memories

Flashback!

November 25, 2014 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

Every once in a while something happens that takes one by surprise – that brings one up short – that shakes one abruptly out of any sense of complacency. Well – such a thing happened to me just this last weekend. The Kickass Canada Girl flew back to Victoria for a brief sojourn to visit loved ones and friends.

Why did this come as such a shock – given that I knew well in advance that she was going?

For the answer to this question one need only look back over this journal to the entries from a couple of years ago. At the start of December 2012 the Girl flew back to Victoria to wind up her affairs there after the nine month experiment of the two of us living on different continents. Her job in Victoria had gone up in smoke, as had our plans of a rapid redeployment into retirement on the Saanich peninsular. The Girl was on her way back to the UK in time for Christmas – and our plans were on the way back to the drawing board.

This visit marks the first occasion since 2012 upon which the Girl has gone to Canada without me – and I have to say that I don’t at all care for the experience. I was not expecting such a strong echo of the many poignant occasions during those nine months when – following our all too brief visits to each other – we endured the abrupt wrench of renewed parting as we went our separate ways for a further six to nine weeks.

This period of absence brings back the sort of memories and feelings that I thought I had safely tucked away for good.

It is – of course – but a brief parting and we will soon be back together under the same roof – enjoying another Christmas together. In all probability the next time we make the journey to BC we will be traveling one way only.

All of this I know – but I still don’t like the sensation…

Sigh!

Tags: British Columbia, Long distance relationship, Memories, Victoria

Remembrance

November 12, 2014 in Life as we know it | Permalink

For the first time since since I joined the School not far short of a decade ago, the whole community gathered as one in the Founders’ Court just before 11:00am yesterday morning to participate in a simple but effective ceremony of remembrance.

It is – I suppose – little surprise that this particular Armistice Day should be accorded such significance though, of course, 2014 is the centenary of the commencement of the Great War rather than of its close. That it has acquired this importance may be determined from – amongst other like signifiers – the public response to ceramic artist Paul Cummins’ installation at the Tower of London. This extraordinarily moving presentation – entitled “Blood-Swept Lands and Seas of Red” – has clearly caught the public imagination far beyond the expectation of those who commissioned the work.

That we stand in silence and remember those who gave their lives is entirely apposite. Given even that the images of modern warfare are these days beamed into our homes like some obscene computer game, we still cannot begin to imagine the true nature of the ordeal experienced by those who find themselves in the combat zone. The utter horror of warfare – the mechanisation of destruction – the unimaginable cruelty of the carnage that men are persuaded to inflict upon one another – the impossibility of ever truly ‘coming back’ from war…

Those of us fortunate enough to have avoided any need to undergo such a baptism can only marvel at the fortitude, the courage, the sacrifice of those that have done so. There but for the grace of god – go each of us…

What should not be forgotten – especially at this time of remembrance – is the part played by those powers and potentates at whose behest and command our young men head for the battlefield. We would – of course – love to imagine that the wise heads and stout hearts of our leaders direct them to strain every sinew to ensure that any such conflict be avoided if at all possible. War should only ever be a last desperate act of self-defence. It is sadly all too clear that in many conflicts this is simply not the case.

I was moved to tears by an article in Saturday’s Independent newspaper that drew attention to the scarcely believable fact that – since 1945 – there has been but a single year (1968) in which no member of the UK armed forces was killed in action. This is a truly shocking statistic!

When we as a nation ask the ultimate sacrifice of our young men – the most precious gift that is life itself – do we not bear the immense responsibility of ensuring that we do so only when there is absolutely no alternative?

The Great War – as so many others – should never have happened. Europe’s rulers and political leaders – by their mendacity, their naivety, their ignorance, their incompetence… their fragile egotism… allowed the continent to slide into a cataclysmic conflict that wiped out a generation and changed the world utterly!

This also we must remember.

Tags: England, Loss, Memories, Politics

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