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Victoria

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To fall and fall

September 12, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

“The rain began again. It fell heavily, easily, with no meaning or intention but the fulfillment of its own nature, which was to fall and fall.”

Helen Garner

There is something to be said for living in a land with a reliable climate (though I naturally make an exception for those parts of the UK that are oppressed mercilessly by lowering clouds throughout the drudgery of the winter months).

It is interesting to contrast the climates of London and Victoria. Wikipedia reveals the following:

  • London has some 1633 hours of sunshine per annum.
  • Victoria has some 2193 hours of sunshine per annum.
  • London averages 602 mm of rain per annum.
  • Victoria averages 608 mm of rain per annum.

Though rainfall figures are not dissimilar and average monthly temperatures are within a degree of each other (though London’s slightly warmer weather often feels muggy as a result of the humidity), Victoria’s extra five hundred or so hours of sunshine a year clearly make a difference. Though there are times during the Victorian spring when one wonders if the rain will ever stop – cease it invariably does, giving way reliably to glorious mild, sunny and dry summer months.

Sometimes too dry!

Then – toward the end of the season and just as it seems that the drought has set in permanently and the garden sprinklers are on the verge of giving up the unequal struggle to maintain life in the yard – the weather will break and verdancy is restored.

Sometimes this happens with a bang rather than a whimper:

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid…but sometimes equally the end result is the most incandescent of rainbows:

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

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The busy and the tired

August 30, 2018 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Image from PXHere“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

When I put the boat in the water at the start of July I toyed with the notion of keeping her there for two months instead of one. It would have been nice to have been able to take her out at a moment’s notice throughout the whole of summer.

Wisely (as it turned out) I deferred making the decision regarding a second month until near the end of July. My concern was that August might turn out to be a sufficiently frantic month that getting away to sit contemplatively upon the waters could turn out to be merely a pipe-dream – and the good ship ‘Dignity’ might simply bob about, sadly neglected, in her slip in Portside Marina for a month.

My fears proved to have been well grounded – with August slowly building up a powerful head of steam as it unfolded.

The latter part of the month is these days (as previously reported) given over to the Victoria Fringe. The Girl and I will have seen half a dozen shows by the end of the festival (upon which I will report in a subsequent post) but in my Intrepid Theatre BoD ‘Fringe Ambassador’ role I will have ‘schmoozed the queues’ for a dozen shows, spent an evening selling 50/50 raffle tickets at the ‘Fringe Preview‘ night and given a Saturday afternoon over to manning the Cardboard Castle at the ‘Fringe Kids‘ event.

I also have another term contract for post-secondary IT Literacy teaching for the fall term. This term starts in the first week in September, so preparation – including a fair round of meetings, INSET sessions and lengthy email exchanges – has been underway for a while now.

Finally – we are helping a dear friend move into a new house – in addition to hosting (this coming weekend) a birthday BBQ for her, since she is not really in a position to do so herself at the moment. To do this is, of course, both a privilege and a pleasure, but it does entail trying to knock the garden back into some sort of shape at just the time of year that it has decided that it can now relax, kick back and chill a bit.

This being retired lark is a total picnic!

 

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Fringe!

August 20, 2018 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Image from PixabayThis week sees the start of the 32nd Victoria Fringe Festival. Wearing my Intrepid BoD hat I (along with my fellow directors) will be in for a busy couple of weeks.

I naturally associate the month of August with fringe festivals, having been so many times to the Edinburgh Fringe over the years both as a performer and a spectator. Now, the Edinburgh Fringe is enormous and seems these days to be spilling over from four to five weeks. Here in Victoria everything is on a much smaller scale; a mere twelve days and forty seven shows in less than a dozen venues.

I was recently reading in the online edition of the Guardian an article by a journalist who had been sent to Edinburgh with the brief of visiting shows on the fringe that featured nudity – which trait has a long and chequered history. The Victoria Fringe is no stranger to such antics either – but that may be a post for a different day!

The article was only of moderate interest but – as might be expected – attracted a fair bit of Below The Line comment subsequent to publication – as was doubtless the intention. The online correspondence included this offering which rather caught my eye – from a poster going by the sobriquet ‘TheLonelyDivorcee‘:

“I went to the first Isle of Wight festival in 1968 when the headline acts were Jefferson Airplane and Fairport Convention, both of whom were fronted by naked women. Nobody thought it significant or indeed some sort of massive step forward in equality.

That was partly because people were a lot more open minded then, and partly because we were all out of our minds on LSD/Magic Mushrooms. I say ‘minds’ but really we were just a single mind collectively experiencing ourselves and the universe as unified, ecstatic matter.

In fact most people also spent the entire event entirely naked and due to our youth and the drugs, in state of high sexual arousal. As a result many happy unions were formed between men and women.

This occurred despite the complete absence of ‘safe spaces’ and ‘gender neutral zones’.

When I arrived back home to my parents I was completely changed, much to the disgust of my father who, when he was the same age as I was then had become paralysed after being shot down over Bremen during a 1000 bomber raid on the Nazis – note these were real Nazis, not just people who didn’t recycle their rubbish.

I can’t help think my generation has had the best of it. When I look at my Grandson who’s around that age he doesn’t seem to have much fun. OK, he’s got a £150 pair of jeans, an IPhone and a useless degree in drama – with the debt that comes with it – but there’s no culture other than consumer culture and an increasingly authoritarian attitude towards sex and relationships.

I’m in good health, but I reckon I’ve got about 10-15 years before I will return to matter, and frankly I’ll be glad to be gone as I believe we are entering new puritanical age, and that is not for me.”

If I say that this struck a chord the gentle reader may well understand why!

Happy fringing!

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God-given

July 29, 2018 in Life in BC, Photos | Permalink

“When I forget how talented God is, I look to the sea.”

Whoopi Goldberg

Time for some pictures!

A few weeks back – on my way to the Pride festival in James Bay – I parked on the seafront near Ogden Point overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It was impossible not to be overwhelmed in by the breathless beauty of the sea on that particular morning. As an ever evolving sky created a constantly changing vista I snapped these studies on my cell phone. Unable to choose between them I offer the gentle reader a pallet from which to make your own choice. As ever, double-clicking will reveal the full effect:

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

 

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OutStages!

July 3, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

By dint of an extraordinarily poor piece of planning on my part our trip to Montreal this May coincided exactly with the greater part of the first Intrepid Theatre festival of the year – UNO Fest. As a result, out of the ten day program of solo performances we were only able to see two shows – one at the very start of the festival and one at the end.

Much humble pie has been eaten for this faux pas and I have to report that of the many cuisines that I have enjoyed over the decades this hugely overrated dish will not be making my top ten anytime soon!

We were most happy, however, to have been able to see the wonderful Margaret McAuliffe in the Fishamble production – “The Humours of Brandon“. Mags is from Dublin and spins the tale of her attempt to become Irish Dancing’s open champion with exactly the kind of brio that one associates with her race.

The second festival of the year – OutStages – is considerably shorter, taking place over six days toward the end of June. Once again we saw two shows: this time they were both wonderful!

Up first was a rare appearance by the divine Queer Songbook Orchestra from Toronto in a show entitled “Songs of Resilience“. The conceit of the work is in the choices of popular songs made by members of the LGBTQ community and the frequently dramatic stories behind those choices. The show features guest narrators who read these submissions, to be followed by the twelve piece orchestra’s often startling re-interpretation of what might well be a familiar piece. The effect – engendered in no small degree by the excellence of the arrangements, of the musicianship and of the stunning vocal performances – is really most remarkably moving. I was not alone in wondering how nearly two and a half hours passed in a flash, leaving us wanting much, much more.

More concerning the QSO – including full recordings of their wonderful music – can be found on their website.

OutStages was closed by Peale Harbour’s extraordinary “Chautauqua“. Pearle is a drag queen also from Toronto (the creation of Justin Miller), and the show may best be summed up in words from her own publicity:

“Chautauqua is an immersive extravaganza: part cabaret, part tragicomedy, part Tent Revival. There’s music, sing-a-longs, puppet shows and even an exorcism! The world may be falling apart, but Pearle will show you that there’s more that unites us than divides us.”

From the moment that we were ushered into Pearle’s tent – ‘pitched’ on the stage of the Metro Studio – and directed to sit in pre-ordained places on backless benches, it was clear that this was going to be an unusual experience. That it was as memorable as it proved to be was in great part down to Pearle’s extraordinary stage presence. As Jennifer Enchin reported on “Mooney on Theatre”:

“She promised us that by the end of the night, we will be rid of all of our pain and sorrows. I’ll tell you one thing, with stage presence like that — I would believe pretty much anything this woman told me.”

More information, as ever, here:

Many thanks once again to Intrepid Theatre – and in particular to Executive Director Heather Lindsay and to Marketing and Development Manager Sean Guist who curated UNO Fest and OutStages respectively – for bringing such amazing talent to Victoria and for making us so very happy to be living here.

Ta muchly!

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Suddenly it’s summer

June 19, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

After a considerable period during which the summer attempted in only a somewhat lacklustre fashion to get properly started… now, suddenly, here it is! Temperatures kicked up by six or seven degrees Celsius almost overnight and the sun is now truly hot.

Nice!

We entertained friends on Saturday evening last and it was the first occasion this year on which we were able comfortably to sit out late on our now year-old deck. Indeed, ’twas so balmy that we stayed out ’til midnight or thereabouts, clad only in t-shirts, shorts and summer dresses (as appropriate to our genders and inclinations!). A splendid evening was had by all even if we were too busy chewing the fat to venture onto the freshly mowed croquet lawn. Oh well – plenty more opportunities now that summer is truly here.

On the Sunday – and only a little worse for wear – I was on Intrepid Theatre board duty. As part of its outreach program the company mans a feature at a number of Victoria public events. On this occasion it was ‘Car Free Day’, for which one of the city’s main thoroughfares – Douglas Street – is closed to vehicular traffic and given over to all manner of stalls and amusements. Next month it will be ‘Pride’ and then in August ‘Fringe Kids’ as part of the Victoria Fringe Festival.

For these events the company creates a 65 sq metre ‘Cardboard Castle’ for youngsters to paint. Those eager to express themselves are given an oversized t-shirt to cover their own clothes, a small container of poster paint in a colour of their choice and a brush, before being set loose inside the castle to cover its walls in any manner that they choose.

They may, of course, return at any point to top up with further colours and some spend a considerable amount of time creating their own masterpieces… either that or just painting each other! Either seems to work and the attraction is hugely popular, not least with parents who can come to rest for a while knowing that their offspring are safely pre-occupied within.

Golly… we are nearly at the solstice already! Now, how did that happen?

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Swiftsure

June 5, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

“For years, sailing bound us. We were racers, builders and cruisers. It was our family business, our sport, our drug of choice. Yet eventually, sailing blew us apart, too.”

Jim Lynch – ‘Before the Wind’

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidShould you have any interest in sailing – or in this particular (pacific northwest) neck of the woods – then I heartily recommend Jim Lynch’s novel – “Before the Wind”. Indeed, if you have not yet encountered Mr Lynch’s oeuvre I encourage you to take a look. I don’t read anywhere near as much fiction as I would like (my fault – too much fascinating non-fiction to cover) but I really admire what he does and how he does it. The characters, the situations… just speak to me somehow.

Anyway – the centre-piece of “Before the wind” is set at the annual Swiftsure International Yacht Race – the seventy-fifth running of which took place here in Victoria a couple of weekends back. The Swiftsure is actually no less than six different races run contemporaneously. The staggered starts are on Saturday mid-morning at Clover Point in Victoria, with the courses then following a variety of different circular tracks westwards through the Strait of Juan de Fuca before returning to Victoria. The biggest and fastest boats complete the course by early evening the same day; this year the slowest yacht finished sometime after 4:00 am on the Monday morning!

The image above gives an idea of the rolling starts. Close inspection should reveal HMCS Nanaimo in the midst of the flurry of yachts, with the tell-tale puff of smoke from the blank round just fired to start one of the sections. (As ever, double-clicking on the image will give you a better idea).

Now – I love the sea (what – you hadn’t noticed?!) and I have greatly enjoyed what sailing I have done – but… I would be the first to admit that this just isn’t a spectator sport. Whereas at the serious end of the Americas Cup only two (massive!) yachts are involved (whilst at Cowes there are other distractions altogether) with a complex ocean race like this is is well nigh impossible to tell at any moment what is going on. For those who really must know the race organisers helpfully provide a splendid race-tracker on their website, but that’s not really spectating – is it? It is impossible not to to be reminded of this splendid spoof Irish commentary from the 2012 Olympics.

Whilst on the subject of sailing – this rather lovely schooner was maneuvering out in our bay on the same weekend as the race:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidWhat a splendid sight!

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Tomorrow never knows

February 11, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink


Image from PixabayIn 2014 John Mann – actor and singer with the Vancouver based Celtic-rock ensemble, Spirit of the West – was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. He was just 50 years old.

Many of us will have had some experience of a loved one contracting Alzheimer’s or dementia and of the subsequent evanescence of personality and the dissipation of a presence that once played a large part in our own lives. Tragic and deeply sad enough in someone who is approaching the natural end of their days, we can only imagine what this might be like for one still in the prime of life, not to mention for those around and close to them who must endure the slow premature declension of a loved one.

Mr Mann’s wife – Jill Daum – is a playwright and her instinctive reaction to finding herself in this grievous position (with her husband’s full support, I should add) was to give in to her subconscious urge to allow the play that she was currently engaged in writing to morph into an examination of what it is like to find oneself in such a situation. The world premier of this brave piece – ‘Forget About Tomorrow’ – took place recently at the Belfry Theatre in Victoria and The Girl and I were present at last Sunday’s performance.

One might fear that such sombre subject matter would result in a worthy but grim night in the stalls, but Ms Daum is – thankfully – a far better playwright than that. She successfully locates (and subsequently mines auspiciously) the emotional motherlode that most writers spend their lives seeking – producing in the process a piece that can move an audience to tears one moment only to have them rolling in the aisles laughing but a few seconds later. The payload of the play is delivered all the more effectively for this skillful balancing act and the audience reaction at the close left no doubts that the target had been well and truly straddled.

Plaudits of course to Ms Daum and to Mr Mann (who contributed two songs – which may well be his last – to the enterprise) as well as to Michael Shamata, who directed with the most assured of touches, and to Jennifer Lines and Craig Erickson who play skillfully and truthfully Daum and Mann’s alter-egos – Jane and Tom. Excellence all round…

For me, however, the highlight was quite possibly the creation of Lori – Jane’s larger than life (how Canadian!) boss – played with considerable panache and dry, dry humour by the splendid Colleen Wheeler. Not only is Lori the source of much of the humour in the piece but she also manages to act as a very necessary counterweight to the emotional drama elsewhere – standing up for the everyman (everyperson?) who represents us in the face of others’ tragedies.

Following a couple of shaky seasons (in our humble opinion) the Belfry has landed three from three thus far this year.

Fight for a ticket!

 

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Beachcombing

September 17, 2017 in Flotsam and Jetsam, Photos | Permalink

A final batch of photographic images from the recent sequence…

Having survived the rigours of our efforts at the Victoria Fringe Festival and enjoyed the company of our friends from the UK, the Girl and I took a well-deserved couple of days off and scooted westwards around the coast to a quiet resort on the other side of Sooke. The wild-fire smoke that had been so pervasive a little earlier in the summer made a brief return (much of it this time from Oregon) and as a result we felt disinclined to do much that was strenuous. Fortunately our suite featured a splendid rooftop hot tub in which we could be-sport ourselves and – apart from indulging ourselves with the tasting menu in the Copper Room at Sooke Harbour House – that was pretty much all we got up to.

I did take the Fuji x10 for a stroll along the beach…

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto 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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Fringe benefits

September 8, 2017 in Life in BC | Permalink

The Victoria Fringe Festival has already made several appearances in these postings (here and here – should the gentle reader feel inclined to backtrack) as the Girl and I have become regular supporters in the couple of years a that we have lived on the outskirts of the city.

This year there is – of course – a significant difference in that I am now a member of the board of Intrepid Theatre – the splendid organisation that runs the fringe (and other theatrical festivals) in Victoria.

The practical difference for me is that the period during which the fringe takes place – twelve days at the end of August and the start of September – is now considerably busier than it has been in previous years. When compared to the sterling efforts put in by the company’s staff those of the members of the board pale into relative insignificance, but there are duties incumbent upon them (us!) during fringe season which require time and effort.

For a start – there is an ambassadorial role to play. It is our job to meet and greet members of the fringe-going public, to make them feel valued and cherished, to listen to their views and criticisms and to build – where possible – the sort of ongoing relationship without which an organisation which relies so heavily on the support of the local audience could not survive.

The second (but closely related) role is to raise funds. Intrepid receives considerable and most welcome grants from government bodies without which it simply would not survive. Given that the ethos of the fringe is that all of the proceeds of the venue box offices go directly to the performers, the central costs of running the fringe must be covered by other means. Some of this shortfall comes from the sale of fringe buttons – a badge without which one may not enter a venue – but the rest must be raised by generous donations and other fundraising efforts led by the board. This year these included a fifty/fifty raffle draw that ran throughout the festival.

My direct involvement in the fringe was restricted to the first week only (for reasons that will become clear in a subsequent post) but in that brief period I worked at the Fringe Preview evening, at Fringe Kids (an event for children in Victoria’s Market Square) and – selling fifty/fifty tickets – on the queues of fourteen shows. In addition the Girl and I managed to see a total of seven shows.

The standard this year has been as high as any. Herewith our personal picks of the fringe:

  • Local comedian Morgan Cranny as ‘Vasily Djokavitch‘ (get the pun?) – billed as ‘Russia’s #1 State Approved Comedian‘. Highly amusing and directed by none other than Mike Delamont!
  • ‘Gigantic Lying Mouth‘. Glaswegian spoken word artist Kevin P. Gilday in a dazzling blend of poetry, imagined conversation and multimedia – blending humour with much that was thought-provoking on the subjects of life, art and death.

…but perhaps best of all:

  • Englishman Charles Adrian as Ms Samantha Mann in ‘Stories About Love, Death and a Rabbit‘. Adrian has won awards for this show – a gentle confection of storytelling about love, loss and bad poetry – and it is easy to see why. It is a joy to see an actor so completely in control of timing, rhythm and inflection. Perfect!

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