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The Girl

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Simpcw Days

September 26, 2024 in Life in BC | Permalink

To the North Thompson last week for the annual gathering of the First Nation of which The Girl is a proud member.

On Thursday last I drove up to the North Thompson to join The Girl (who had flown up a few days earlier) in a long weekend of re-uniting with family, participating in cultural and outdoor activities and gratefully and humbly attending most meaningful traditional ceremonies.

My weekend did not get off to an entirely auspicious start since – having disembarked from the ferry at Tsawwassen at about 10:30 in the morning – what is normally a five hour journey ended up taking seven hours… the which included just two 10-15 minute comfort/food breaks.

With the roads being very busy anyway and the Trans-Canada highway subject to considerable amount of construction work, one (or more) accidents within the road-works caused the highway to be temporarily closed. Three lanes of huge semis (articulated lorries) and pickup trucks (trucks) were filtered down to one lane… before we were booted off the highway altogether, with no helpful signage to guide us to where we might re-join the route. A temperamental sat-nav in The Girl’s Mazda didn’t help and I had to resort to following the biggest truck in the hope that it was going the same way as was I.

By the time I finally reached Barriere I was well and truly ‘toast’…

…all of which was immediately forgotten first thing the next morning when we clambered eagerly aboard an old yellow school bus to head off on a whitewater rafting excursion down the bottom seven kilometres of the Clearwater River. Whitewater rafting has long been on my bucket list and the experience was – as expected – a huge blast. I had hoped that some promised photos of our exploits – taken by the whitewater rafting team – would have arrived by now and could accompany this post. Never mind! Maybe later…

As indicated above I felt greatly honoured to be able to observe the ceremonies and rituals that occupied the last morning of our stay. I have read a fair amount about such things since coming to Canada but to be present at one was really most affecting. The Girl was nominated (thank you to her generous nominator) to be one of those honoured in the blanket ceremony – the which was completely unexpected…

…though well deserved!

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Logistics

April 7, 2024 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Logistics by <a href="http://www.nyphotographic.com/">Nick Youngson</a> <a rel="license" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC BY-SA 3.0</a> <a href="http://pix4free.org/">Pix4free</a>In my last missive I told the sorry tale of the Mobiliser that has ceased to mobilize!

The Girl ain’t happy – and when The Girl ain’t happy… well – you can join the dots for yourself.

So – what is to be done?

Naturally, I contacted the small English firm who make and sell the device. I sent them a recording of the machine’s death rattle and explained the symptoms. They were most helpful and – sight unseen – hazarded a cautious guess at what the problem might be (servo motor gearbox). They even gave me a ball park (and somewhat heart-stopping) figure for fixing the beast…

…if we could get the Mobiliser back to the UK.

Now – this thing folds in half and we sensibly kept the big cardboard box in which it came, but when packaged up the thing has dimensions of:

length: 46″ – breadth: 27″ – depth: 9″

…so – it isn’t small – and it weighs 40lb!

Canada Post were helpful – but quoted us a figure of around $800 dollars for the one-way trip. I swallowed hard, but that was as nothing compared to Fedex who quoted me double that amount (and are probably amongst the cheaper carriers). Canada Post man also suggested that I try Air Canada Cargo – which I thought was a good idea. They would have been happy to help, but pointed out that getting the box back to Heathrow is only half of the battle. Once there one has to hire a broker to get the thing through customs.

“The cheapest option” – opined Canada Post man – “would be to take it there yourself“.

Now – as it happens The Girl and I are heading to the UK in about two and a half weeks time. The trouble is, we are not going to the south east – where the company is based – but to Scotland. If all goes to plan we should be at Heathrow for about six hours as we transit from west to north. Perhaps there is a way of arranging a hookup with some helpful person who could relieve us of this weighty package and see that it gets to the manufacturer… then, three weeks later, could get it back to us on the return journey!

This is the sort of plan that works fine in practice but contains all sort of traps and gotchas that can throw the whole thing into chaos and confusion. “But surely” – I sense you thinking – “air travel these days has become so routine and prosaic that all such things must be feasible“. All we need to do, you might think, is to cast our minds back to our recently travel experiences to set our minds at rest… Oh!!…

Contemplation and negotiations continue. We are determined  that we must come up with some solution, because The Girl is sorely (see what I did there?) missing her regular treatments.

Look out for further installments….

 

 

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Tempting the gods

March 28, 2024 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“There is such a thing as tempting the gods. Talking too much, too soon and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster. The forces of retribution are always listening. They never sleep”.

Meg Greenfield

Just a few short posts back – in an offering entitled ‘Make it beautiful‘ – I ventured a short disquisition on the subject of permanence and impermanence. I wasn’t being particularly provocative – or so I thought. Apparently the fates saw things differently and no more than a couple of posts later I found myself having to relay the tale of our exploding (or more likely imploding) shower screen in a post titled ‘Synchronicity‘.

That particular mess is going to take a while to clear up (figuratively speaking!). The manufacturers of the screen rapidly ‘fessed up to what was most likely a manufacturing fault by the simple expedient of sending us, in short order, a replacement under warranty. I got in touch with our excellent contractor who had overseen our original renovation and came away with a list of contacts to get the bath re-surfaced (lots of pits and scratches from the falling glass) a man to install the new screen and another to put us in a new hot water tank (not directly related but I did mention it in the first post above).

The problem is that these things must be done in the correct sequence… nothing can happen until the bath is restored, and the bath restorers clearly have enough work on to take them through to next Christmas. I am still awaiting a call-back…

I had hoped that things would now settle down on the bad news front. Sadly, it seems that the gods are not finished with us quite yet.

A little over a decade ago – whilst The Girl and I were still resident in the UK – we purchased a device that the manufacturers describe as a ‘spinal mobiliser’. It is a sort of massage machine upon which one lays and which – by means of a system of rollers – stretches out the vertebrae whilst simultaneously massaging the surrounding muscle tissues. We came across this thing at (of all places!) the Windsor Horse Show. Horsemen and women are, it seems, much in need of such treatments after a heavy day’s competing in the saddle.

Now, as long as I have known her The Girl has suffered from Sciatica. There at the horse show she hopped (gently) up onto the demo device on the stand and immediately fell in love with the relief that it provided. The machine was an expensive beast – costing several thousand pounds even back then – so we hired one for a month to be sure that it was worth the outlay.

The answer being greatly in the affirmative we scraped together the monies and made the investment. When we later came to Canada the machine came with us (there being no equivalent over here, apparently) though we were obliged to purchase a big step-down transformer because the device only ran on 220V.

It would be an understatement to say that the Mobiliser has served us well and it has more than paid for itself. The Girl uses it most days and it is quite common for those visiting us to jump aboard as well. It was, thus, was a considerable shock when – just over a week ago – the machine emitted a plaintive rattling sound and gave up the ghost.

So – we now have something else that requires fixing. I shall have more to say on the subject in my next post.

Needless to say – The Girl is not happy.

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Synchronicity

March 3, 2024 in Life as we know it | Permalink

A couple of posts back I was musing upon the permanence/impermanence of things – including those items of domestic appurtenance with which we surround ourselves.

My last post concerned the domestic refurbishments/renewals we have recently effected to enhance our living spaces.

What odds then that this next post must needs concern a matter that touches on both of those last two topics. As the saying goes in London (on the subject of the London omnibus):

”You wait fifteen minutes and then three come along at once!”

Last weekend The Girl flew off to Prince George (for non-Canadians: in BC but way up north and still in the middle of winter) for a work event. She did not return until late on Wednesday evening.

The day before her return I had, in the morning, attended my regular fitness class – and had upon my return home made myself a cup of coffee, the which I was enjoying whilst checking my emails at the very peninsula in our kitchen at which I am writing this missive.

All of a sudden there was an almighty crash from somewhere close at hand, though I was unable to ascertain immediately whence the sound had emanated. Naturally I at once set off around the house to see if I could discover the cause of this loud report. The Master Bedroom was clear, but when I entered the en suite bathroom I came face to face with this:

Wow! The inner fixed glass screen of our bath/shower had shattered into a gazillion fragments, most of which had fallen into the bath. There followed an extensive and delicate operation to remove all of the glass debris from the room. Naturally it had gone everywhere.

The very next thing to do was to question the InterWebNet as to how such a thing might have happened. We had the shower screen installed when we renovated the house in 2017, so it is not that old. Google informed me that such happenings are not exactly rare – though the odds of being hit by flying glass whilst in the shower are apparently a fair bit less than those of being struck by lightening.

There is – it seems – always a cause for such a calamity, be that a manufacturing defect or damage caused to the screen during installation. Tempered glass is, of course, effectively under constant tension and a small flaw can spread suddenly and explosively… as we have seen.

Now, of course, we will have to battle to get the screen replaced. Sigh!

I was just very glad that The Girl was not at home – and certainly that she was not in the shower. I am also very glad that I was at home. I don’t go into the en suite (the which is The Girl’s bathroom) except to hoover it – and had I not heard the crash the first we would have known about it was when she arrived home at 11:30pm from Prince George and went into her bathroom to prepare for bed. That would definitely not have been a laughing matter.

Phew!

 

 

 

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Getting started

January 26, 2024 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Start by <a href="http://www.nyphotographic.com/">Nick Youngson</a> <a rel="license" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC BY-SA 3.0</a> <a href="http://pix4free.org/">Pix4free</a>If you have a dream, you can spend a lifetime studying, planning, and getting ready for it. What you should be doing is getting started.

Drew Houston

In these recent posts – ‘Adjusting the Sails‘, ‘One and One and One is Three‘ and ‘The World of Work‘ – I sought to bring the gentle reader gently up to date with how things had come to rest for The Girl and I at the culmination of a particularly – er – ‘eventful’ year (though aren’t they all nowadays!). What I have not yet done is to peep out from underneath the metaphorical duvet – to see if I can detect good news anywhere betwixt where we are now and the distant horizon of 2025.

So – this is what we know currently about what 2024 has in store for us…

In terms of travel 2023 was – for us – a complete shocker. Without incessantly ploughing the same furrow it is worth reminding ourselves that there was a point last year when we seriously thought that our travelling days were over. Not so – you will be happy to hear. We are already well advanced with the planning for another expedition for April/May this year.

“Which exotic part of the globe will you be visiting?” – I hear you cry. Well – I’m sure we all have our own definitions of ‘exotic’. This is one of ours.

The Girl and I have for a considerable while now felt drawn to visit the mystical realm of Scotland. Even casual viewers of these witterings will be aware of my love for – and great pride in – the home of my ancestors (the which I inherited from my father). My family travelled many times to the highlands for holidays just as soon as we were old enough. My father was a great hill walker and he and I (and sometimes my younger brother) climbed many a peak in different parts of the land. I have regularly over the years visited both Edinburgh and Glasgow for work and – with my theatrical hat on – ventured to the Edinburgh Fringe on more occasions than I can now enumerate.

The Girl has toured parts of Scotland just once before – with a good guide and great friend – but she and I have not been there together and we feel a very strong urge so to do.

Anyway – more on that trip as it unfolds…

In ‘The World of Work‘ I wrote:

“During the autumn just past The Girl reached the conclusion that her eight years at the volunteer service was enough. As it happens the service was undergoing some restructuring and she was able to do a deal whereby she would hand over the reigns to a full-time replacement, with a negotiated package that would enable her to take some time to figure out what – if anything – she wanted to do next. She is thus once again retired (for now!)“.

Following what might just be the shortest retirement ever… The Girl has just this week started an exiting new venture, about which I can currently reveal nothing at all, but concerning which I suspect a great deal will be said in the months to come. Watch – as they say – this space!

I have already dropped huge hints about creative developments in the musical department. We are firmly expecting a new album to put in an appearance at some point this year – and if we could play live somewhere to welcome it, then that would be splendid.

As ever at this time of the year there are many other exciting prospects bubbling under and – though there are also many very good reasons to feel nervous about 2024 – I like to approach the year under an umbrella of optimism. (Google assures me that – somewhat to my surprise – I am not the first to coin that particular euphemism. Oh well!).

Very best wishes to you all for 2024.

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The world of work

January 3, 2024 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Work life balance by <a href="http://www.nyphotographic.com/">Nick Youngson</a> <a rel="license" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC BY-SA 3.0</a> <a href="http://pix4free.org/">Pix4free</a>In my post of December 15th – last year (how time doth fly!) – entitled ‘A metaphor for endings‘ – I promised updates on a number of the strands of our lives. There is one such left outstanding – the which I feel I must needs address forthwith…

…the world of work!

When The Girl and I ‘retired’ to Vancouver Island back in the summer of 2015 it had been our intention to be just that… retired! So – how did that work out?

Well – The Girl lasted all of six months before she started looking for some form of employment. The tale of her finding a job with a volunteer service in Saanich during April 2016 may be found here:

I held out rather longer – not re-joining the workforce until January 2018 – but since then we have both been willing (if variously part-time) contributors to our local community – and felt all the better for it. Being healthily provided for in the pension department it is not exactly that we needed additional funds (though a little extra is always good to have) – more that we both needed a sense of purpose and to feel that we were pulling our respective weights.

Until now…

During the autumn just past The Girl reached the conclusion that her eight years at the volunteer service was enough. As it happens the service was undergoing some restructuring and she was able to do a deal whereby she would hand over the reigns to a full-time replacement, with a negotiated package that would enable her to take some time to figure out what – if anything – she wanted to do next. She is thus once again retired (for now!).

I have now taught on term contracts at the College for six years and – in spite of trembling on the verge of entering my eighth decade (in but a few days from now) I am quite happy to go on so doing. This term I am teaching a new (to me!) course that will be offered online only. I am scrambling at the moment to put it all together, but I have no doubt that things will settle down – as they usually do.

Imagine my surprise, however, when the Chair of my department offered me a continuing post in place of my habitual two contracts a year. I didn’t see that coming and I am not entirely certain that I really care for the idea – rather enjoying being a free-spirit! I do, however, feel rather flattered to have been made the offer. I don’t need to decide until around April time – so watch this space…

As ever, it seems, very little of what has befallen us has turned out exactly as we predicted when we came to Canada.

Life does contain such riches…

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A metaphor for endings

December 15, 2023 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“Everything has seasons, and we have to be able to recognize when something’s time has passed and be able to move into the next season. Everything that is alive requires pruning as well, which is a great metaphor for endings”.

Henry Cloud

Those who are anything but the most casual of visitors to this digital bailiwick will be aware that this has been a particularly trying year for The Girl and I. The implications of our various travails will inevitably rumble on for some time yet to come, but I will do my very best not to bore on about them too much here.

However, as the prepended Henry Cloud quote aptly reminds us, we are approaching the ending of the year and the changing of the seasons. Things can and do change constantly (of which there is nothing to be afraid) and we must needs indeed carry out some regular pruning, so that the blossoms may flourish anew in the years to come.

Those here for the long haul will already be aware of my habit of looking both forward and back (Janus-like) at this juncture of the year and will be unsurprised to find me taking full advantage of that annual ritual to update the gentle reader on a variety of present topics over the festive season.

These subjects I will certainly address:

  • The fallout from our aborted ‘trip of a lifetime’ to Botswana back in May/June. Progress on the recovery of our disbursements is glacial – but just consider what those gargantuan ice-flows are capable of inflicting upon a landscape. It may be a grind but ‘justice’ must eventually be done.
  • The Girl has decided that it is time for some major changes in her life. Old doors will be closed but new ones almost certainly opened. Stay tuned for the full details.
  • This time last year The Chanteuse and I proposed some loftily ambitious extensions to our musical project. Whereas things are taking longer to realise than we might have hoped, we are making good progress. There is exciting news to report – the which will be the subject of a post very soon.
  • Each year I ask myself afresh if I wish to continue with my periodic teaching at the College. Now, I have a big birthday coming up shortly (I do not really celebrate the lesser ones) so the question is particularly pertinent. I find to my surprise that the playing field has altered somewhat since last I gave the matter my consideration.

These – and other pressing subjects – will have lights shone bright upon them in the interests of illumination.

For now – I am writing this at 10 o’clock of the evening in the arrivals hall at Victoria International airport – awaiting The Girl’s timely return from Mexico. As I am considerably less than half the chap that I can be whenever she is not around, this is not a moment too soon.

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Cruelly sweet

December 9, 2023 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start, when memory plays an old tune upon the heart“

Eliza Cook

Way back in the dim and distant past – in what was virtually a pre-historic era in blog-world-time – The Girl and I took a poor decision; that we would live on different continents for what now feels like an absolute age. In the event we managed about ten months, with her resident here in Victoria and I yet back in the Old Country.

What were we thinking?

Those whose length of service qualifies them as blog-old-timers (yes – there are a few!) will recall that her departure for the West Coast of Canada back in 2012 was indeed the spark from which this online journal took fire. Commenced as a displacement activity as much as anything it rapidly became apparent that these scribblings might be useful as a way of keeping in touch with a small community of those either related to… or long-standing friends of… this slightly odd couple with the questionable decision-making skills.

“For what reason…” – I hear you ask, somewhat warily – “is this memory playing an old tune etc, etc – at this particular time?!“

Well – I refer you to this post from December 2017 – back in the pre-COVID world. On that occasion The Girl and I both visited Puerto Vallarta together, on what was my first ever trip to Mexico. Her timeshare share (huh!) is still there and still being paid for, so it is entirely proper that she should make use of the facility… the which she is currently doing. The real question is “Why aren’t I there with her?” – looking after her and keeping her safe. The answer is – of course – that I have still the end of term to negotiate, with its concomitant group of students suddenly keener than they have thus far been to get a decent grade at the end of the course.

The Girl and I are thus once again living in different nation states – though only for two weeks this time. Whereas she thoroughly deserves the rest and recuperation after what has been a tough year – I still don’t care for the apart-ness of the whole thing.

Guess I’ll just have to ‘cowboy up‘ and get on with it!

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Happy birthday!

October 2, 2023 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Yes – ’tis that time of year again at which to celebrate The Girl’s birthday…

Hooray and hoorah!

Happy Birthday to The Girl!

It now being (suddenly) autumn here on the west coast of Canada, the weather has given up any pretense of being remotely summery. Today is gray and rainy and no day for going out or doing anything much at all.

Fortunately we already did step out – a couple of nights back – to The Courtney Room at the Magnolia Hotel in Victoria for a very splendid dinner – complete with a quite lovely bottle of St Aubin.

Yum!

The festivities will extend into next weekend when – as I have made mention of previously elsewhere – we head to Vancouver to see Peter Gabriel (and to do other celebratory things!)

What jolly japes!

Happy Birthday!

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The wrong week

August 28, 2023 in Life in BC | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidAs trailed in my recent post The Girl and I have been (and are still at time of writing!) traveling within British Columbia. This trip had several purposes – to attend an engagement organised by The Girl’s First Nation – to (re)visit friends and family – to explore parts of BC that I, at least, have not yet seen – and to compensate in some small measure for our disastrous venture abroad earlier in the summer…

In this latter regard I am reminded of Lloyd Bridges’ running gag as Steve McCroskey in the classic 80s film comedy – ‘Airplane’. As things veer from bad to worse McCroskey repeats the mantra:

”Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up smoking/drinking/amphetamines…” etc, etc

Well – it looks like this has been the wrong year for us to go out traveling!

Now – it is clearly in poor taste to make jokes at a time that other folk have been suffering terrible loses (though mercifully not in terms of life and limb) but that is fundamentally the way that we Brits cope with such things.

A week and a half ago we headed for Kelowna in the Okanagan for The Girl’s three day engagement. Those readers who do not live in Canada may not have been following recent events in BC too closely, but that Thursday was the night that the big wildfire north of Kelowna swept down over the mountain and devoured the first of the several hundred properties in West Kelowna that have since been burned to the ground.

The image at the top of this post was taken from our hotel room shortly after we arrived. By the next morning very little could be seen at all.

The engagement was cancelled late that first evening and we were advised to retreat from Kelowna the next morning so that hotel rooms could be made available for those who had been forced to evacuate their homes. We made an early dash for Kamloops whilst the roads were yet open.

Following the engagement we had planned a few nights further south in the Okanagan – at Peachland – but by the Sunday evening travel orders had been issued to prevent tourists from driving to various critical areas of the province, the which was necessary so that the emergency vehicles would not be hampered in their operations and also so that further souls would not be put at risk, adding to the heavy burden already upon those services.

We were extremely fortunate, then, in that The Girl’s cousin – who lives in Kamloops but who has a lakeside cabin in the North Thompson which has previously been featured in these ramblings – invited us to spend a few days in that smoky but relatively safe part of the province.

This offer we most gratefully accepted. Pictures and further excursion meanderings to follow…

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