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February 2012

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Over the years I have had several bass guitars stolen – one from the back of a van whilst it was being unloaded outside a venue in Edinburgh 20 minutes before the start of a show! I could almost admire the chutzpah required for that particular heist, were it not for the fact that the guitar – my first professional instrument – carried a strong sentimental attachment.

The last time I lost a bass, in the early 90s, I took the insurance cheque and headed for the music stores to replace it. I was in for a shock! Bass guitar technology had changed and I found that I no longer understood it. There were 5 string basses, 6 string basses, extended range basses, acoustic basses, semi-acoustic basses… I couldn’t play any of them! The tide had ebbed and left me behind – driftwood on the strandline.

Fortunately I found a proper old-fashioned guitar shop in Richmond (that is Richmond in the UK – in Surrey… oh, let’s not get confusing!) called – as I recall – Barney Marder’s. Sadly this store is no longer with us, as it used to carry a wonderful collection of old and sometimes rare guitars. There I found a much abused Fender Precision from the mid 70s, in a battered case and with most of the original finish worn away through use. It needed a bit of work but it will – if looked after – see me out.

I am reminded of this episode now because I am looking to purchase a camera. My intention – a good one I think – is to furnish this blog with images that I take myself. Though very much a novice when it comes to photography I do want to try to capture the things that I see and that I write about. The cheap digital camera that I have been using for the last few years does surprisingly well at the basics, but I have a hankering to be able to produce the sort of images that are now so prevalent on the web.

When I was young (painful to write that in so many ways!) there were basically only two types of consumer camera – inexpensive ‘compacts’ that used film cartridges and 35mm SLR jobbies that required flight cases, multiple lenses, filters and all the rest of the paraphernalia. I naively assumed that something similar would still apply, and that to step up I would need to look for the digital equivalent of the 35mm camera – the DSLR. I turned to the Internet to see what might be available.

Another shock! Camera technology has changed and I no longer understand it. Did I want a point and shoot camera, a compact system camera, a bridge/hybrid camera, a 4/3 format camera, a micro 4/3 format camera, an entry-level DSLR, a ‘prosumer’ DSLR… or should I just use the camera in the iThing?… if I had one… which I don’t!

Clearly I have no idea at all as to what I should be looking for. I made a list of what I think are my requirements:

  • There has to be a viewfinder of some sort – I don’t like taking pictures at arm’s length
  • There has to be manual or semi-automatic control – I like to tell the camera what to do
  • There should be dials and buttons rather than just onscreen menus
  • It must be possible to shoot in reasonable closeup and at a reasonable distance
  • It must be possible to shoot in fairly low light
  • The camera should be as simple as possible (no comments please!)
  • The whole shooting match should not be too heavy – or I just won’t use it

At this point I consult my brother, who is a designer and who has used cameras professionally ever since he left college. He solved the weight/complexity problem on his first trip to Canada – in the summer of 2010 to attend our wedding – by simply leaving his Hassleblads and DSLRs behind and traveling with an old Leica rangefinder. Mind you, he has just paid an arm and a leg for an M9, so I’m not sure about using him as a role model. Still, he has promised to have a think about it and to get back to me with a recommendation. His younger son is getting Kickass Canada Girl’s car at a knock-down rate when she leaves for BC, so he probably owes me one.

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An ongoing feature of this blog is going to be me embarrassing our dear friends in Saanichton by telling the world how amazing and wonderful they are. They are – so they’ll just have to put up with it!

Not content with throwing open their home to a confluence of foreigners, as hosts to our wedding in 2010 – and indeed putting very nearly the entire celebration together themselves, including making the champagne! – they then offered us considerable financial assistance last summer for our putative house purchase in BC. They will now be providing a home for Kickass Canada Girl when she returns to Victoria next month.

But that’s not enough for them… Oh no!

The Girl is selling her car – a sporty black Honda Civic with all the extras – to one of my nephews – my brother’s youngest, who is currently a medical student here in the UK. Canadians probably won’t get this because the Civic in Canada is a totally different car! The European version is much more sexy! Anyway, the intention was that the proceeds of the sale would go towards the purchase of a suitable vehicle in BC, and to that end the Girl has been online eying up all sorts of sports cars and convertibles and so forth – she being naturally that way inclined.

Then, just the other day, we received a message from Saanichton. Our friends had found what is possibly the best ever ‘pre-loved’ car for sale. A 21 year old Accord in showroom condition, with just 30,000 miles on the clock. One careful owner – always garaged – full service history – only driven on special occasions. A snip at $4,500, which is about £2,900!!

Ok – so it’s not quite the sporty number that the Girl had in mind, but it’s far too good a deal to pass up and she can put the rest of the pot aside for something fancier later. No sooner had she expressed her interest than our dear friends had purchased the car with their own funds, brought it back to their farm and put it into storage to await the Girl’s arrival in March. What are we going to do with these guys?!

They are amazing. We are truly blessed, and we love them to bits…

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“She said why don’t we both
Just sleep on it tonight
And I believe in the morning
You’ll begin to see the light
And then she kissed me
And I realized she probably was right” – Paul Simon

I firmly believe Paul Simon to be one of the greatest ever pop lyricists, and no mean tune-smith to boot. If you know of anyone who can better the incorporation of words such as “misconstrued” or “pertains” into the popular song lyric – without being pretentious or overly clever – then by all means feel free to educate me.

Kickass Canada Girl is currently working through the 50 ways, though – fortunately for me – it is not her lover that she is leaving… or at least, only in a transitory sense! The sorting out and the packing are major operations involving much detailed planning, as one would expect when moving permanently from one country to another. It is fortunate that the Girl is good with lists. The intercontinental character of our lives over the next few years should at least give us the advantage of being able to move her belongings incrementally, without the need to make all the decisions on day one.

The leaving of friends and acquaintances is another matter. Those who have come to know and love Kickass Canada Girl – that is, everyone who has met her – now find themselves having to contemplate saying goodbye with little idea of when and where the next meeting might be. Worse still – from their point of view – I will still be here, and they will have to suffer me moaning on about my lonesome condition for the next two years. The Girl will be back, of course – she is after all married to a Scot who lives in England – but those visits will doubtless seem all to brief, much as our visits to BC currently do to me.

Naturally everyone wants a piece of the Girl before she leaves, so we are busy arranging leaving gatherings for friends, relatives and work colleagues. This – on top of winding up and handing over her current job (during a particularly busy period – inevitably!) and getting everything ready to go, is causing an understandable degree of stress. Leaving dinners and parties fall into that slightly awkward category of events that are notionally celebratory, but which – being tinged with sadness – are perhaps not as easy to enjoy as one would wish. Fortunately the Girl has a week in Mexico to look forward to before she takes up her new post, which will provide a much needed hiatus, and the prospect of which should give her the energy to be the life and soul…

For myself, I might just…

“Slip out the back, Jack”

 

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Received today from the UK Pension Service – under the auspices of the Department for Work and Pensions – a notification of the change in State Pension age. The notice contains the following priceless text:

“You may be aware that the law has changed. State Pension age is increasing from 65 to 66. This affects men and women born on or after 6 December 1953.

Our records show that your date of birth is 07/01/1954. Based on this information, the earliest date from which you could be entitled to any State Pension is 06/05/2019. This date is unlikely to fall on your birthday.

 

You don’t say!!

 

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“Why, what’s the matter, that you have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?” – William Shakespeare, ‘Much ado About Nothing’

February is definitely not my favourite month.

To those who – like me – are struggling to rid themselves of their ‘winter overcoats’ in this post-Christmas period it will come as no surprise that February took its name from the Latin ‘februum’ – which means ‘purification’. The Roman purification ritual ‘Februa’ – a form of spring-cleaning for the body – was held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. In my case there is still rather too much purification to be done before then, I fear.

I leave home at around 6:45 in the morning and don’t quit the office until somewhat after 5:30 in the afternoon. At this time of year this means starting both journeys in darkness. When it is also cold and wet and miserable – what the Scots would call ‘dreek!’ – I am not a happy bunny!

Since moving to Berkshire last September the quickest that I have done the commute to work is 55 minutes. The longest is something over 2 hours! The norm can be anything from an hour and a quarter to an hour and three quarters and varies by the day according to the vagaries of road works, accidents and what is described enigmatically as “sheer weight of traffic!”. My morning journey is a sleepy procession of three lanes of constantly flickering brake-lights, over-sized trucks and kamikaze motor-cyclists.

This latter reminds me of my first ever visit to Vancouver. Being so used to having bikes slaloming past the car on both sides – even at speed – it came as something of a surprise to see a group of Hell’s Angels queuing in the traffic for the Lion’s Gate bridge. Hell’s Angels queuing?! No British biker ever waits in traffic – Angel or not…

When Kickass Canada Girl goes back to Victoria in March she will be staying with dear friends on the Saanich peninsula. Her commute into central Victoria will take no more than 30 minutes and she will enjoy for much of the year the additional delight of the staggering panorama of the Olympic Mountains that so surprises the first-time visitor on cresting the hill at Royal Oak.

I could, of course, move nearer to town, but even in the current climate London rental prices are eye-watering and I don’t fancy spending the next two years living in something the size of a shoe box. So – with apologies to those who suffer the Colwood Crawl (whose journey has its own Facebook page!!) – I will simply embrace my victim-hood and look longingly across the Atlantic. The Girl is getting by far the better of this particular deal – though of course that is as it should be.

Ah well – two more winters……

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