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November 2017

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“I haven’t found anything to complain about. But being Scottish, it won’t be long.”

Peter Capaldi

Regular sufferers of these jottings will be familiar with my routine but wildly varying updates on the current state of Scottish rugby. My first item on the subject – way back in 2013 – introduced the eternal conundrum of supporting a national side whose fortunes have experienced more ups and downs than a roller coaster. The strangely stoic optimism that I believe is part of the Scottish makeup is essential if one is to be able to live in stasis with Kipling’s two imposters.

In recent times – however – the fortunes of the Scots have taken a most pleasant upward trajectory. Under the patient tutelage of (stern!) Vern Cotter and more recently Scottish rugby legend, Gregor Townsend, the side has steadily improved and positive results have started to follow. This very summer the Scots – having been largely ignored by Warren Gatland in his Lion’s selections for the All Black’s showdown – toured the southern hemisphere themselves. In Australia they took on – and beat – the number three side in the world.

Last weekend – in the Autumn Internationals – it was their turn to face the All Blacks in a Murrayfield encounter that many predicted would turn into a rout. The Scots not only matched the fearsome Kiwis for much of the game, but at times made them look distinctly ordinary. With time on the match clock almost expired the Scots trailed by a mere five points and their superstar fullback, Stuart Hogg, broke free down the left hand touchline. For a second it looked as though a match-winning try might be on until the All Black’s fly half, Beauden Barratt, scrambled Hogg into touch at the last moment.

Fears that the Scots (already missing a number of key players to injury) might have shot their bolt and be unable to raise themselves again this week for their rematch with Australia (who were themselves smarting from a somewhat exaggerated defeat by the English the week before at the Cabbage Patch) were only heightened when Stuart Hogg injured himself during the warmup for the match and had to be replaced.

It turned out to matter not a jot. Neck and neck as the first half drew to a close one of the Aussie forwards, Sepoke Kepu, essayed a rash challenge on Hamish Watson and was rightly shown the red card. Though there have been many examples of matches in which being a man down has not greatly affected the outcome, such was not the case on this occasion and the Scots showed admirable ruthlessness to put the Aussies away in a record 53 – 24 demolition.

For now at least the days of being tagged ‘plucky losers’ are a thing of the past. The Scots have shown that they now have strength in depth and that on their day they can live with just about anyone.

Lang may yer lum reek” – as they say north of the border!

Many congratulations!

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In the drama that is our ongoing renovation the first two acts are over and there is now a brief intermission before act three. The tearing out has been completed and the loaded bin (skip) of detritus has been hauled up onto its truck and trundled away. The new infrastructure has been installed; wiring, plumbing, gas, ventilation, sub-floors, windows and so forth…

We now stretch our legs gratefully and pop to the bar for a swift sticky whilst we await the fireworks of the cosmetic part of the project that start the second half.

The shell of the kitchen is ready for dry-walling and flooring:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidThe drawing room awaits its new ceiling and floor:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidThe bathrooms are also ready for the dry-waller:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidSome of the new windows have even been trimmed, though others must wait for further finishing:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidThe dry-waller comes on Monday to start on the walls and ceilings. The following week sees both the flooring and the tiling done and we will then be ready for the installation of kitchen cabinets and bathroom fittings.

All most exciting!

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Image by Andrew Thomas on WikimediaI could not resist sharing with the gentle reader this extract from a longer opinion piece concerning public offence – by Tim Dowling of The Guardian. In my view Tim absolutely nails it!

This snippet goes under the banner “In-flight entertainment“:

 

“Which brings me to the giant penis in the sky. If you know about it at all, you will have seen the image online at the weekend: a huge penile outline – with testicles – drawn using the condensation trail of a US military aircraft. About 2,500 people from Okanogan county in Washington state had a brief opportunity to be offended by it, although I can’t find any accounts of actual outrage – and one has to assume the locals are the source of all those gleefully retweeted pics.

I will admit that my first reaction to the image was: skill. I think all trainee pilots should be able to trace a passable penis in the sky before they graduate. The US navy thought different: it apologised for “this irresponsible and immature act”, and grounded the air crew of the E/A-18 Growler responsible. But I have to say that this is my kind of public offence: immature, irresponsible and absolutely massive. If there’s a better use of the $67m fighter jet, I can’t think of it.”

Too true…

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The English boys’ school that was my penultimate place of employ before we moved to Canada is known for many things, not least of which is its plethora of distinctive customs and traditions. These are sufficiently extensive – and codified in such a unusual vocabulary – that the institution provides an extensive guide to its unique terminology for all new members of staff.

One of the minor (but particularly charming) traditions on the staff side concerns a ‘miserable Monday’ in November. In short, a long serving member of the school staff from times gone by bequeathed to the School a financial gift sufficient to provide – on one particularly miserable Monday morning each November – Madeira and Bath Oliver biscuits to be served at the morning staff meeting – ‘Chambers‘. The School Clerk is tasked with choosing the Monday to be so graced and the skill clearly resides in picking the most miserable of the days concerned. Of course, should one go too early there is always the possibility that the weather might get even worse later in the month.

However arcane this odd little tradition might seem to outsiders it had the effect of brightening not only the Monday concerned but, through anticipation, those that preceded it.

Talking of November traditions – now that we are resident on the far side of the planet we are beginning to create (as one does) our own customs and recurrent habits. As regular readers might therefore already be aware – if it is November it must be time for Barney Bentall and the Cariboo Express! As you can see I have extolled the delights of this particular evening’s entertainment before. Suffice to say that this year’s outing was equally enjoyable.

On a different (but also delightful) note, being a household currently without usable bathtubs – but being at the same time imbued with the British love of submerging ourselves for extended periods in hot water – we are delighted to report that our little hot tub is at last in action. For various reasons – having much to do with electrical supplies – it has taken far longer than anticipated to get it up and running. We finally ‘leveraged’ (bah!) our renovations to make things happen and we can now wallow under our new deck whilst the rain pelts down but a few feet away.

Cool! (or more accurately, hot!)…

Hmmm! I think I hear the tub calling now…

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Two weeks into our renovation project and good progress is being made – though not all such will be immediately apparent to the quick glance.

First appearances, for example, would suggest that the kitchen is practically unchanged from its state of a week ago – whereas in fact much has been done. The gas feed for the range has been run in; the plumbing for the sink and dishwasher laid on; the electrics for lighting, appliances and so forth installed; and the extraction facilities for the range hood put in place.

The kitchen is actually very nearly ready for the drywaller to come in and to make it look like a real room again.

Similar progress has been effected in the bathrooms, for which first fix plumbing, electrics and extraction have been completed.

At one point it looked as though we may have found ourselves waiting for more than ten weeks for the delivery of our bath tubs, such being the current shortage in north America of the model that we (and clearly others) have chosen.

Mine is the larger of the two tubs (I have expressed before my feelings regarding the diminutive size of many Canadian bathtubs) and we were concerned that it might prove difficult to source. As it turns out we were most pleasantly surprised when it was delivered within a couple of weeks of an order having been placed, enabling our plumber to crack on with the installation.

Acquisition of the other tub promised to be a more difficult proposition and I thought it a good idea to visit the other bathroom equipment wholesalers in Victoria to see if anyone had an alternative that would do the job. To my great delight the second supplier that I tried had in their warehouse one (and one alone!) of the very tubs that we were seeking. It was duly delivered the very next day and installed forthwith.

In addition to the above mentioned construction tasks good progress has been made with the stripping of the ‘popcorn’ from the ceilings and on the laying of a new sub-floor – that which had been uncovered during the demolition phase being deemed unsuitable on its own for the task of carrying our splendid new flooring.

There have been times when our humble abode seems to have been hosting an apparently never-ending round of tradesmen. Our contractor and his young accomplice (or two) are constants; the electrician and his two sidekicks have done a number of days to complete their first fix; the gas fitter and his mate have done likewise; the plumber has worked alone but is a large enough character that he more than makes up for it; and the roofer (who put in the extractor vents) came and went before I knew it.

Add to this multitude the man from the flooring company and the window supplier and you will get an idea just how busy the place has been. We have not yet seen the drywaller, the kitchen cabinet installers, the counter-top templaters (and installers) or the roof insulators.

What a merry throng; all appropriately dedicated – it would seem – to the creation of our splendid new home…

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“I would say just the weather in Vancouver in the winter can be kind of unforgiving.”

Brandon J McLaren

Here be some photos of a wintery weekend in Vancouver.

Brrrr!

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidThese guys had some bottle!

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

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Photo by Andy Dawson ReidIn the midst of last week Victoria was basking in pleasant sunshine with temperatures hovering in the mid teens Celsius. By Friday morning (at the point at which our kitchen ceiling and all of the insulation had been ripped out, leaving the main floor of the house open to the attic and the fresh air vents therein) the temperature had plunged to around zero.

On Thursday night a storm blustered its way across the Saanich peninsula and we suffered the first power outage of the season (the which lasted more than three hours!) as the lines were brought down by falling branches. When I was awoken in the middle of the night – by all of the lights coming back on – I looked outside to find the garden (yard) covered with a blanket of snow!

All of this caused no little consternation since I was due to travel to Vancouver on the Friday to join the Kickass Canada Girl (who had been participating in a work conference there) so that we might attend BC Place for the much anticipated rugby encounter between Canada and the Maori All Blacks. It was our further intention to enjoy a weekend of wild hedonism in Vancouver before slinking back – tail between our legs – on the Sunday evening. According to the forecast, however, the weather was clearly in no mood to co-operate with our agenda.

Further concern arose from the realisation that – as our retreat into the basement for the duration had been accompanied by the closing off of the heating vents on the main floor (along with the cutting of a temporary return air feed into the downstairs ductwork) – the heating thermostat, being yet upstairs, was faced with the futile task of trying to engender some warmth into what had effectively become an outdoor space, whilst in the process almost incinerating everything that was now below stairs. The only alternative seemed to be to turn the heating off completely and to let everything freeze. The thought of going away and leaving the house in either state for the weekend did not fill us with enthusiasm.

Fortunately – having some little experience with cabling – it was not a overly difficult task to disconnect the thermostat, to pull the cable back down into the furnace room in the basement (being careful to leave a draw-wire in place for later reinstatement) and to reconnect the thermostat temporarily to service the lower floor alone.

Mighty glad by the end of the (chilly) weekend that I did so!

The Maori All Blacks? Well – no unexpected tales there. They gave the nearly 30,000 strong crowd a great exhibition of the finer points of the game of rugby and Canada a lesson from which they should learn a-plenty!

And we had a great time…

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Being new to the whole concept of timber-framed houses I find myself on a steep learning curve when it comes to the business of the construction and – more pertinently – the renovation thereof.

My long career in IT brought me repeatedly, if somewhat unexpectedly, into contact with the UK construction industry. Wearing my networking hat (one wonders exactly what sort of head apparel that might be!) I was involved with a wide variety of new-build projects pretty much throughout. I became as a result familiar with the methods and materials used, be they brick, concrete, engineering block, steel frame etc, etc…

This is far from the first kitchen that I have renovated and I thought that I knew a fair bit about that which is involved. It is, however, the first such that I have done in a timber-framed residence. In a brick built house the norm is for the kitchen services (electricity, water, gas and air extraction) to be run behind or on top of the cabinets. Stripping out a kitchen or bathroom is simply a matter of removing the appliances, tearing out the units, making good any damage and then rejigging the services appropriately.

I was taken aback to discover, therefore, that in a timber framed house all of the services are run through the walls instead. Stripping out a kitchen or bathroom thus also involves tearing out the drywall (plasterboard) walls and ceilings along with any insulation, going right back to the bare stud-work. The rebuild thus essentially starts with a blank canvas and is done from scratch.

The images that accompany this screed will give an idea as to what is involved and comparison with my last post may startle the gentle reader as much as the real thing did me.

This first phase of the project – the demolition – has been mercifully quick. From here on in we start to play the longer game.

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