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Let it snow

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Here in the south east of England we don’t get very much snow – and when we do it doesn’t usually stay very long. Canadian readers and those in the north of the UK will probably snort derisively at this point, but the Kickass Canada Girl and I currently live in the land of the ‘soft southern jessies’ and that is just the way it is. Anyway – as a result we get pretty excited when the snow lasts a long time, as it seems to be doing at the moment. I trust that you will forgive me, therefore, if I post a few more snow snaps!

 

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

I rather liked this instance of Pepper’s Ghost… candles in the snow!

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

The reluctant landlord

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Photo by Andy Dawson ReidReaders may recall – and those who do not may refresh their memories here should they so wish – that the Kickass Canada Girl and my very first scheme for moving to British Columbia – even before she was offered the job there – involved us moving out of our home in Buckinghamshire into rented accommodation, selling our apartment, purchasing a property in Victoria, letting it and then using the income to cover our rent in the UK until such time as we could move to Canada. The chief purpose of this little scheme was to enable us to leave the UK quickly when the time came and to have a property ready and waiting in BC on our arrival there.

As will be clear by now neither this nor any of our subsequent schemes worked out at all as planned. When it became apparent that we were not to be able to sell our apartment in short order we had to re-think. Rather than move back to Buckinghamshire we decided to seek a tenant to occupy the property and thus to cover our rental costs until such time as we were able to find a buyer. This was, after all, exactly what we were planning to do in Victoria – so where was the difference?

Well! All I can say is that the experience of our first year as landlords (or more properly as landlord and landlady) may well have put us off the whole notion for life! Nor does it does take much research on the InterWebNet or elsewhere to establish that anyone who lets property for any length of time ineluctably accrues their own horror stories. We just have to hope that our inchoate experience was anomalous and that our next time round will prove more propitious.

We seem to have suffered a particularly infelicitous run of bad luck when it comes to expenses. The Girl and I had spent a considerable amount renovating the apartment over the previous few years, which enterprise had included the installation of a complete new kitchen designed to a high standard by my brother – who makes his living thus. He is not cheap but he is very good!

Imagine my consternation, therefore, when – over the course of the year – I was obliged to:

  • replace the fridge/freezer
  • spend a considerable amount on oven repairs
  • call an engineer on several occasions to fix the washer/dryer
  • purchase a new control module for a gas fire
  • arrange for the ailing heating system to be looked at on more than one occasion.

This latter culminated in the eventual failure of the boiler (‘furnace’ – for Canadian readers!) requiring a complete – and expensive – replacement.

As though all of this were not enough our initiatory tenant proved to be a total nightmare. Quite apart from demanding a rent rebate whenever the slightest thing went amiss, this lessee eventually seemed to absent himself entirely from the property, only to be replaced (according to reports from our erstwhile neighbours) by a friend of his to whom he was ‘lending’ the apartment (the lease prohibiting him from sub-letting it). Our former home was thus now being lived in by someone of whom we had no knowledge or information at all, and who proceeded to upset the neighbours with noisy late night comings and goings and – ignoring our blandishments to the contrary – by smoking out of the windows. Matters eventually reached the point at which we were obliged to give the appropriate notice and the tenant – and his friend – finally moved out just before Christmas.

That was not – sad to say – the end of the matter. The tenant – whom we believed to be a very ‘house-proud’ fellow – had on taking up the lease enquired as to whether he could redecorate some of the rooms in neutral tones. We had no objection to this and at the end of the year were expecting to get the apartment back in good order. We were, therefore, upon receiving the check-out report from our management company, stunned to discover that the tenant had – without any consultation! – replaced a perfectly good neutral toned carpet in one of the bedrooms… with a black one!

Astonishing!! What sort of behaviour is that?!

As I write there are decorators and carpet-layers in the apartment restoring everything to a sensible state with a view to attracting fresh tenants. The cost of all this will hopefully – following the usual haggling, horse-trading and possibly arbitration – be recovered from the tenant’s deposit. I have no doubt that he will fight every inch of the way – because that is just the sort of unreasonable man that he is.

It takes – clearly – all sorts!

Working week

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Photo by Andy Dawson ReidThe recent paucity of posts on this forum is the unfortunate but inevitable consequence of this having been the busiest commencement to a year that I can recall for a long time. The first week of term is always a busy time, particularly if – as on this occasion – I have some small involvement in the pre-term INSET. This week – however – such fripperies have been small-fry by comparison to the main event.

I mentioned in my last post that my office – along, of course, with those of my staff – was being moved into our own little corner of the School’s splendid new science building. This edifice – which has been under construction for the last year and a half – is actually not quite complete and won’t be handed over officially until the end of the month. We made a special case for moving early because relocating the IT Department during term time was just too scary a prospect to contemplate. During what is rather curiously called ‘production’ much of our effort is spent ‘firefighting’ – which doesn’t leave much time for anything else.

As a result we currently live next door to the builder’s temporary site office, and thus rub shoulders on a daily basis with a lot of burly men wearing what is acronymically(!) denominated ‘PPE’ – or Personal Protective Equipment. That’s hard hats, big steel-capped boots, flourescent jackets, goggles and protective gloves to the rest of us!

Moving office was – however – not even the half of it…

The day before our relocation we also moved one of our two server rooms into the new building. This involved completely re-engineering the network infrastructure, taking the majority of our services offline (including all of the School’s telephones) and then restoring everything to operational status in the new location before being able to go home. We had hoped to have all of this done within a half day. It took 12 hours straight – and even then was not entirely done! A great deal of planning had been done to ensure that all ran smoothly, but as ever none of our scheming had equipped us to handle the unforeseen. This latter included equipment that had run without skipping a beat for the last few years and yet refused to start up again in the new location – not to mention the discovery that the equipment racks with which our new server room is generously furnished could not be adjusted to sufficient depth to mount our servers – falling short by a mere 2mm. We had to dismantle the racks, drill new mounting holes and re-assemble them before we could actually install the equipment.

We had two days to complete both office and equipment moves before the School’s staff – and subsequently the boys – returned for the spring term. We made it but it was a close run thing and – as a result – pretty exhausting…

…not to mention that the first and longest day was also my birthday! Of that – as they say – more anon…

 

 

Usually wrong…

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Photo by Andy Dawson Reid“Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.”

Thomas L Friedman

 

That change is the natural order of things is clearly a truism.

I recall reading – some decades ago – Bertrand Russell’s ‘A History of Western Philosophy’. Although this tome has been much criticized since its inception during the Second World War it has also been – and understandably so – a massive popular and commercial success and has remained consistently in print throughout the entire period. I found it to be a clear and concise guide to western philosophy for the uninitiated and would not hesitate to recommend it – though one should also read the critiques thereof for true balance.

Of the many schools of thought that Russell covers – from the Pre-Socratics onward – the ideas with which I feel the strongest resonance are those of Heraclitus. As quoted by Plato in ‘Cratylus’, Heraclitus’ best known doctrine – that all things are flux – is expressed thus:

“Everything flows and nothing abides.”

“Nothing endures but change.”

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.”

I would be greatly surprised if a credible case to the contrary could be made; the concept of Time’s Arrow – in entropy and all of its related forms – surely being irrefutable.

It is strange therefore – given this indigenous nature – that change is also something that many people fear or find difficult to deal with. We supposedly become more resistant to change as we grow older, and it is certainly often the case that if one is not radical in one’s youth one is unlikely ever so to be. The idea, however, of becoming a conservative in my old age scares me half to death, though friends will probably fall about laughing at this juncture – happily pointing the finger!

That change is on my mind will come as no surprise to anyone who has been following this blog for any period but, in addition to all of the other variables current in my life, this Friday morning finds me sitting in my office surrounded by boxes and packing cases. Next week we move into our new offices in the School’s shiny new multimillion pound science building. The fact that my new office is approximately 25 feet from where I am sitting now (yes, they have been building just outside our windows for the last 18 months) makes not a jot of difference. Moving is a major upheaval.

We have – naturally – taken advantage of this enforced relocation to instigate a major clear-out. My nature is to hoard – to hold on to things in case they might come in handy at some unspecified point in the future. Being impelled to throw things away goes against the grain though I am also very aware that it is a healthy – and necessary – thing to do.

As ever with change there is much to look forward to – in this case our splendid new facility – but much of which to be nervous.

Deep breath! Take the plunge…

 

Auld acquaintance…

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Photo by Andy Dawson ReidShould auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind…

Rabbie Burns

At this point – as the final full stop punctuates the ultimate paragraph on the page of 2012 and the leaf turns wearily to reveal the blank sheet that apprehensively anticipates the first words of 2013 – it is quite natural to take a last long look back at the events and happenings of the past twelve months before turning our anxious gaze once more to the future. Have we – by this reckoning – achieved those aims that we set ourselves at the outset of the year? Have we grasped the opportunities that have arisen unexpectedly since then? Can we – in short – feel satisfied that we have filled each “unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run”?

Well – maybe not entirely, though it is hard to imagine quite what else might have been done. This has certainly been a year in which the unexpected has trumped all carefully considered stratagems – in which squalls and tempests have blown apart accustomed weather patterns, both literally and figuratively. Of the specific aims and ambitions that we had ourselves formulated at the start of the year few now remain – having been scattered to the far corners of the earth by the rough winds of events – and yet we survive intact, as do our long term dreams and intents. There is yet much to learn from the experience.

I am not much of a one for New Year resolutions – those inflexible tenets that rarely survive intact the icy blasts of winter. We do – however – clearly need to re-focus our thoughts and to re-discover our ‘mojos’. This will probably take some time as we accustom ourselves to our new circumstances – and as the dark decurtate days of winter slowly give way to the renaissance that is spring. This tradition of mirroring our own development to the rebirth of the year through the change of the seasons is as ancient and timeless as the land itself and I see no reason to tinker with nature’s tenacious tutelage.

One thing I must do at this juncture, however, is to express my humble and heartfelt thanks to all those friends, family and acquaintances who have helped, supported and succored us both through this last year. Our gratitude is undying and we will do our very best to repay your kindnesses as we may.

All that remains is for me to wish you all a very Happy Hogmany.

“A guid New Year to ane an’ a’ and mony may ye see”

 

 

Leave to remain

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photo by Tomas Fano on Flickrin·def·i·nite

(adjective)
1.   not definite; without fixed or specified limit; unlimited: an indefinite number.

2.   not clearly defined or determined; not precise or exact: an indefinite boundary; an indefinite date in the future.

For those who came upon this post whilst searching the InterWebNet for information related to applying for Indefinite Leave to Remain or Permanent Residency for Canada – or for those who, like me, just require a sense of completeness or closure – I thought I should provide a brief overview of the tortuous passage that the Kickass Canada Girl and I negotiated earlier this year – and of how that particular journey ended.

As the Girl is – obviously – Canadian and I am far too old to be considered of any use to the Canadian (or indeed any other) economy, my particular route to permanent residency was inevitably going to involve sponsorship by my spouse – the aforementioned KACG. The thinking and logic behind this were outlined in ‘A Tough Occupation‘.

I subsequently gave more details of the Girl’s side of the process in ‘A Word from our Sponsor‘ and an outline of what I would be required to do in ‘Prerequisites‘. ‘Doctor, Doctor‘ tells the convoluted tale of the hoops through which this particular applicant had to jump to acquire the necessary medical certificate, whilst ‘A Little Application… 1‘ and ‘A Little Application… 2‘ completed the description of the plethora of forms that must be filled out and the extensive quantity of supporting information that must be submitted along with them. By the end of June – when I traveled to Victoria to spend a couple of frazzled weeks with the Girl and our dear friends in Saanichton – everything was complete on my side and I carried a weighty package of documentation with me which I handed over to the Girl to accompany her submission to Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

At this point the trail goes cold. Those who follow these things avidly will be wondering what has happened to my application since then and what effect our recent change of plan will have had upon it.

The short answer is – nothing!

The application was never actually submitted. The Girl – who as part of the sponsorship deal was going to have to agree to support me financially (if so called upon) for three years – was not able to file her submission as her employment details could not be completed until her six month probationary period was up. As it turned out her appointment was confirmed a mere couple of weeks before things turned bad and the whole deal went ‘tits-up’ – to avail myself of the vernacular. The completed forms and supporting documentation are once again crossing the Atlantic as I write, this time to be put into storage until such time as we are ready to start the process over again.

As it happens this is a good thing, since once permanent residency has been granted there is a time limit for moving to Canada. It would have been most annoying for the application to have succeeded and for us then to find ourselves unable to avail ourselves of it before it expired.

Once again we find ourselves looking on the bright side – which is, of course, a good thing!

 

Degrees of imperceptibility

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It is 41 weeks since the Kickass Canada Girl moved to Victoria to take up the job there that we had hoped would see her through to retirement and me becoming a permanent resident of Canada. This weekend – in the brave new world in which we now find ourselves – she flies back into Heathrow to resume her life here in England, with our relocation to British Columbia postponed until some as yet unspecified date in the future.

Welcome back, Kickass Canada Girl!

This post is my one hundred and second since the Girl left for Victoria in early March and my one hundred and twenty first since I took up blogging towards the end of January this year. I suppose the obvious question in this regard is  – do I carry on blogging now that the balance of my life has swung away from immigration and towards imperceptibility?

It would be entirely understandable if regular readers were to curl their lips in disdain and demand to know – since the stated theme and purpose of this blog no longer exactly holds (at least in the short term) – why they should continue to waste their time on my picaresque meanderings. They would indeed have a point and I would not blame them for dropping out at this point.

However – as you may already have deduced from the tone of the above – my initial reaction is to carry on blogging regardless in the hope that some of what I write may still be of interest. The Girl and I have many connections in Canada and we will inevitably be visiting as time goes by, though our next trip will probably not now be until next summer. Hopefully my contributions on trans-Atlantic life will continue to resonate, creating perhaps something of a virtual connection between our communities of friends on both sides of the ocean.

Truth be told I have enjoyed blogging this year. The self-imposed discipline of having to produce posts on a regular basis was particularly beneficial whilst I was living on my own and will, I believe, continue to be so once the Girl and I are fully reunited. Writing virtually daily is terribly good practice and the need to polish the resultant prolix prose into concise, pithy and apposite nuggets is slowly imbuing in me a most useful skill in an area that has perhaps previously been somewhat neglected.

So – with your kind permission – I will carry on…

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