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The power of celebration

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People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state–it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle…. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

It’s official! Kickass Canada Girl is now also Kickass Brit Girl! Hooray, hoorah and huzzah!

In a citizenship ceremony that will take longer to write about than it actually took to perform, the Girl acquired a second citizenship to go along with her Canadian one. The registrar briefly confounded by asking the Girl why she wished to take such a step now, but we concluded that this had merely been a way of extending a ceremony that otherwise – consisting as it did simply of reading a brief pledge of allegiance, being welcomed as a citizen and listening to a rendition of the National Anthem played on a small ‘ghetto-blaster’ secreted behind a display of flowers and Union Jacks – would have barely have justified the fee that must be paid if one requires a private ceremony.

Well – it is done now – and apart from the elegantly boxed certificate itself having to go back to have the hyphen removed from our surname (tut!) the Girl’s progress is complete. I suspect that my own journey to acquire a similar status in Canada will take a great deal longer, though to be fair she does have 8 years of residency under her belt, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain.

The Girl was most impressed that Her Majesty had chosen to mark the event with a four day celebration in London featuring a flotilla on the Thames, fireworks over the Palace and lots of soldier-boys in pretty uniforms. She thought that some of the acts at the concert on the Mall were a tad on the ropey side, but gave full marks to Stevie Wonder for blowing everyone else away. Oh – and she liked the little African girl singers too!

After the events of the last week the Girl also now knows more of the words to the British national anthem than she does to ‘O Canada’ – even if she still doesn’t know the second verse (she is, of course, in good company there).

I have put my foot down concerning the now defunct sixth verse with its references to ‘rebellious Scots’…

 

Doctor, doctor…

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“Doctor, doctor – gimme the news…”

Robert Palmer

I am now the proud possessor both of an Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) ‘Police Certificate’ and a signed and stamped ‘IMM 1017 Medical Report – Section A’…  these being amongst the numerous forms, appendices and other items that must be submitted in support of my application for Canadian Permanent Residency.

I attended for my medical examination at a clinic at Maidenhead in Berkshire here in the UK last Friday afternoon. I was there for nearly two hours and there was a point at which I thought that I would have to walk away empty handed and start the process again from the top.

The confusion arose because of the plethora of different routes by which application for Permanent Residency can be made. The most common case clearly encompasses those who need or wish to move to Canada to work. In such cases application is made in the home country – the UK in this case – and at the appropriate point in the process Citizenship and Immigration Canada send to the applicant a blank ‘IMM 1017 Medical Report – Section A’ form, with one of the photos that has been submitted with the application affixed to it and bearing the appropriate stamp. The applicant subsequently makes an appointment with a Designated Medical Practitioner and arrives for the medical, form in hand.

The fact that I had turned up bearing a blank form – no photo, no stamp – threw the clinic into a complete tizzy! Now – those applying for residency through a sponsor based in Canada – as I am – have to follow a different route, as outlined in ‘IMM 3901E – Sponsorship of a Spouse, Common-Law Partner, Conjugal Partner or Dependent Child Living Outside Canada – Part 3: Country Specific Instructions’ (for Western Europe). This specifies that all the forms and supporting documentation must be completed and gathered together before being forwarded to the prospective sponsor – in Canada – for submission to Citizenship and Immigration Canada along with the latter’s own application to be a sponsor.

To cut a long story short, after a lengthy search in their records the clinic eventually discovered an email relating to the only previous case that they had had for this form of application, and duly agreed to carry out the medical and to affix the photo and stamp the form themselves.

Hooray!

Having been given the green light it was then full speed ahead. I was subjected to a chest x-ray by the radiologist, to measurement and urine sampling by the nurse, to medical examination and general chit-chat by the doctor (who had been at medical school with the School Doctor at my previous school!) and finally to blood tests by another nurse.

End result? Unless anything untoward shows up in the blood tests (including the extra £60 test that they thought I should have, to add to the £250 I was already paying) then I am fit as a fiddle and possessed of the constitution of an ox!

Well – I could have told them that…

Distance… enchantment…

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As an accelerated passage to self-knowledge living on a different continent to one’s loved one is not to be recommended, though – conversely – precisely so to be. Such antithetical circumstances are doubtless sufficiently commonplace that I need not expand further upon them here, except to say that I firmly intend to remain humbly grateful for whatever lessons are handed to me.

Learning is, of course, all about the unknown, though I have come to recognise that – at the risk of being swept into waters Rumsfeldian – some lessons come as a greater surprise than others. In the case of my voluntary separation from the Kickass Canada Girl some lessons were easily anticipated. Others came as more of a surprise.

I had – before the Girl’s return – been focusing on the emotional mechanics of living apart – on the maneuvers necessary to maintain a relationship over a long distance… the frequent if sometimes prosaic communication – the need to remain engaged in one another’s life and so forth. I had paid considerably less attention to the things that I was doing to sanction my newly solo existence in the UK. Some of these latter stratagems only really became apparent when the Girl arrived back in Berkshire last Thursday.

It seems that – having shared this living space joyfully with the Girl since last September and having then had to come to terms with inhabiting it alone – I had put in place numerous little routines and rituals that were designed to prevent myself from becoming lonely, or from suffering too many morbid memories. I had clearly applied these defences sufficiently assiduously and conscientiously that I had achieved a sort of emotional plateau, on which – though I naturally missed the Girl hugely – my existence could be maintained for much of the time in a relatively pain-free fashion. Further, this had apparently been done entirely sub-consciously without me even being aware that I had done so.

As a result for the first couple of hours being together again in our apartment in Berkshire felt slightly odd – as though some protective levee had been breached and I was in danger of all my careful defences being swept away in the ensuing flood. Fortunately – notwithstanding my fears – this did indeed turn out to be the case, and the emotional rush of being together again performed its familiar magic as a wave of joy washed us up gratefully on the sun-bleached beach of togetherness.

I’m not sure that I will ever truly become accustomed to that roller-coaster moment when one crests the rise on the big dipper – but thankfully we will not have to do so too many more times.

In that – as in so many things – we are fortunate.

Distraction

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“…Weren’t you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)…”

Duino elegies – Rainer Maria Rilke

 

I hope that you will indulge me – over the next few days – if I seem a little distracted. The Kickass Canada Girl arrives at Heathrow in about 2 hours from now for her first visit to these shores since she went back to Victoria at the beginning of March. Understandably – as you might imagine – my mind is elsewhere…

She will be here for just over a week – including, as it happens, the Jubilee weekend – before returning to Canada following her citizenship ceremony a week today. This might seem a long – and expensive – journey to make for such a brief – though important – event, but such is the strangeness of life in these days that very little seems exceptionally unusual. We live in interesting times!

Now – if you will excuse me – I have a drama class to teach, and then I will head for the airport…

Perfect Day

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Oh it’s such a perfect day,
I’m glad I spent it with you.
Oh such a perfect day,
You just keep me hanging on,
You just keep me hanging on.

Perfect Day – Lou Reed

Well – a perfect weekend really… with one glaring and – hopefully – blindingly obvious exception.

Following last week’s unbridled incalescence the temperature dropped a couple of degrees, the heat haze dissipated to leave the sky a cloudless cerulian and a playful breeze tempered even the most febrile of brows.

Friday evening found me in the company of a group of School staff at a buffet reception in the High Master’s garden; a most agreeable way to unwind after the week and a good way to prepare for the weekend ahead. The final weeks of the summer term can sometimes almost overwhelm with their abundance of social events – a last frantic ‘hurrah’ for the leavers and a long slow exhalation for those others for whom – unlike me, sadly – the long school summer holiday hovers tantalisingly on the horizon.

On Saturday I packed a variety of bags and set off in the 300SL for Sevenoaks in Kent. A beautiful leisurely drive – wind very much in hair – through the Surrey hills delivered me to our good friends – who live at another school not dissimilar to this one – in plenty of time for an aperitif before dressing for the main event – a splendid black-tie ball organised by the parents’ association. Though I am not, myself, much of a dancer I am always happy to don the tartan for such an occasion, and the combination of good food, good wine, good friends and good conversation meant that when the 1:00am deadline for carriages rolled around no time at all seemed to have elapsed.

Waking only a little the worse for wear to find an equally lovely day already well under way I bade my grateful farewells and retraced my top-down tracks as far as Guildford, where I was to play my first proper game of cricket of the summer. The ground was up on the downs (I realise that may sound counter-intuitive to Canadians and other non-Brits!) above the town and offered splendid views over the Surrey countryside towards London. The match was played in a suitably amiable spirit, I scored a few runs and the right side won. It was, all in all, a most satisfactory result and I rolled home close to 9pm tired but happy.

One thought, however, nagged at me throughout… one cause for a scintilla of sadness, regardless of the loveliness of the days, of the caliber of the entertainments or of the pleasures of the bucolic countryside. To whit  – what could possibly be the purpose and meaning of such joy if not shared with one’s consort? I have been fortunate enough to have experienced many wonderful things and exceptional times – both in the UK and in BC – but without the Kickass Canada Girl at my side nothing is as ambrosial, as piquant… as exquisite… as it is when she is!

 

Ne’er cast a clout…

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‘…till May be out’ 

English proverb.

Last weekend – on one of the last chilly days of spring before the sizzling summer burst upon the UK – I visited the RHS gardens at Wisley to catch the end of the wistful azaleas and the aggresively abundant rhodedendrons. I took some photos…

Prerequisites

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As you may have gathered from my last post, after nearly 8 weeks of incessant rain, below average temperatures and unbroken cloud cover, the weather in the UK has suddenly and dramatically broken. In a 24 hour period the temperature has soared by 10 degrees (Celsius), the sun has broken through the cloud cover and summer appears to have arrived. The Brits have emerged – blinking – into the light, dug out their bikes, un-garaged their convertibles and are basking as only a people more accustomed to the gloom and the cold can. To the optimists (me, me, me!) this is the start of the long hot summer. To the pessimists it will all be over by next week. Either way – we will make the most of it!

 

Back in the world of bureaucracy, form filling, visas and immigration I am still making slow progress toward the submission of my Canadian permanent residency application. Before I can bundle together all the necessary forms, photos and other supporting evidence and forward them to the Kickass Canada Girl for submission there are two further documents that must be acquired – the Police Certificate and the medical report.

Applying for a Police Certificate is relatively painless and all the necessary details can be found on the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) website. All that is required is:

  • The completed application form.
  • Two proofs of current address – recent utility bills or suchlike.
  • A copy of my passport – showing photo, signature, expiry date, nationality and any extension pages.
  • A colour passport photo – endorsed by a responsible person (the ACPO site provides a list of those professions that meet the criteria).
  • A second form completed by the endorser of the passport photo.
  • The correct payment.

The Police Certificate costs £35 if one is not in a hurry – or £70 if one is!

Acquiring a medical report is – sadly – less straightforward and considerably more expensive.

The medical examination can only be carried out by a ‘designated medical practitioner’ – and the list of such in the UK is not extensive. I chose a clinic reasonably close to us in Maidenhead. To make an appointment for my examination I had first to fill out and submit, by email, a ‘Booking Request Form’. The clinic then phoned me to make an appointment. They informed me that I would need to bring the following when I attended my medical:

  • A completed application form – the clinic’s own ‘Immigration Medical Registration Form’.
  • Documentation regarding existing medical conditions and details of any prescription medication.
  • My passport.
  • One other form of identification – incorporating my current address.
  • 3 colour passport photos.
  • Any prescription glasses or contact lenses.
  • Credit card details.
  • A completed Canada immigration form ‘IMM 1017 Section A’.

This last item is the cause of some controversy. The details given on the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website suggest that for those applying for permanent resident status sponsored by a family member  – as I am – and with the sponsor in Canada and the applicant elsewhere, should use the form that is in Appendix C of document ‘IMM 3901E – Sponsorship of a Spouse, Common-Law Partner, Conjugal Partner or Dependent Child Living Outside Canada – Part 3: Country Specific Instructions’ (for Western Europe). The clinic demurred and said that I should instead bring ‘IMM 1017 Section A’. I said that I would bring both, at which they enquired as to whether my ‘IMM 1017 Section A’ had been stamped. I replied that it had not – since I had downloaded it from the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website.

The clinic receptionist then suggested that I should contact the Canadian High Commission in London. I agreed that this would be a good idea – if for no other reason than to obtain a definitive answer.

I phoned the Canadian High Commission. I was bounced around a stack of automated menus before being finally spat out back where I had started. Apparently one cannot call the Canadian High Commission – one must use email. I then followed the complex chain of links on the website to which I had been referred, and found the email submission form – along with a list of conditions under which it could be used. Apparently it is possible to email the Canadian High Commission on visa matters only after submitting one’s application. If one is eager to check that the application is correct before submission, one can neither call nor email the Canadian High Commission to verify that this is the case. Something tells me that if I were to submit the wrong form they would be only to keen to tell me so. What a pity that they cannot do so in advance!

Regardless…

My medical examination – for which I must pay £250 plus any extras deemed necessary – is fixed for the end of next week. In the meantime I think I will go and bask in the sun for a while…

Best work day of the year!

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“Summer Dress

The Surmaster would like to announce that from now on pupils will be allowed to wear summer dress. This means that ties do not need to be worn with shirts. However, if pupils wish to continue wearing jackets or pullovers then a tie must be worn. If a t-shirt is worn under your shirt it must be plain white only.”

 

Hooray! My favourite work day of the year. The announcement of Summer Dress means that I don’t need to wear a tie again – until September!

 

As the Canadians are wont to say – ‘Awesome’!!

Testing, testing…

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There is a certain nervous tension in the air ‘chez nous’ this weekend. Both Pearl and I are in need of examinations.

For new readers I should explain at this point that Pearl is my rather lovely Mercedes 300SL, about which you can read more here. It is widely held that – for chaps of a certain age – owning a convertible is a sure sign of mid-life crisis. If that is the case then mine must be one of the longest on record, given that I have not only owned Pearl for more than 10 years, but she also is my third rag-top. Perhaps my life is a perpetual crisis… On the other hand, if this is indeed mid life, then I should be in for a good long innings!

I digress…

I am in need of a medical examination as part of the application process for my Canadian permanent residency. More on this – quite probably much more – in my on-going series of posts explaining the whole process in gruesome detail. Let us – for now – focus instead on Pearl.

It is that time of year at which Pearl’s MOT test falls due. I feel sure that vehicles in Canada are subject to a similar testing regimen – indeed I have no doubt that such is the case the world over. In the UK the test was instigated in 1960 by the Ministry of Transport – hence the origin of the name. We no longer have a Ministry of Transport, but the name survives in acronym form as the title of this annual inspection.

When first established the test was applied to vehicles aged ten years and above. By 1967 it had been modified into roughly its current form, applying to all vehicles that have achieved their third anniversary. This reminds me of the witty comment made by Michael Flanders – the vocal half of Flanders and Swann – during their 60s musical comedy review, ‘At the Drop of a Hat’.

“Hello again. We had to look outside during the interval, see if our car’s all right. It’s getting a bit old, it’ll have to be tested soon. You know they started these tests for 10-year-old cars, they brought it down to six, now five, they’ll bring it down to three. There’s even been some talk of having them tested before they leave the factories.”

I grew up on Flanders and Swann, largely as a result of my mother’s affection for them and for their satirical songs. They were an unlikely duo who had been at Westminster School together before the war, but who hadn’t really started working together until they met again once the war was over. In the meantime Michael Flanders – who once had ambitions of becoming an actor – had contracted polio and was confined to a wheelchair. Donald Swann wrote the music and played the piano, and when they discovered that Flanders’ humorous introductions went down as well as the songs they adopted the review format that was to make them famous.

Their humour was gentle, witty and intelligent – all the things I like in comedy. I was immediately impressed by a duo who could base a song on the first and second law of thermodynamics – who wouldn’t be – but the clincher for me was an elegiac lament called ‘The Slow Train’, which – by incorporating the idiosyncratic names of many of the bucolic English villages and hamlets that had their railways stations sundered from them in the early 60s as part of the wide-ranging cutbacks imposed by the pillaging Dr. Beeching (the first Chairman of the British Railways Board) – contrived to say something heartfelt about the loss of a minor but important part of our heritage.

“The Sleepers sleep at Audlem and Ambergate.
No passenger waits on Chittening platform or Cheslyn Hay.
No one departs, no one arrives
From Selby to Goole, from St Erth to St Ives.
They’ve all passed out of our lives
On the Slow Train, on the Slow Train.”

 

I digress – again!

Pearl is now some 26 years old and getting through the MOT test is no longer the formality that it once was. To be fair, she does live in a dry garage – under a cover – for much of the year, and does a relatively low mileage mostly in dry, sunny conditions – but I reckon she has earned that. Anyway – when it came to it she sailed through with flying colours.

Let’s just hope my medical goes as well.

A word from our sponsor

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There is quite enough to be done in putting together an application to become a permanent resident of Canada without having to think too much about the hoops through which one’s sponsor has to jump as well. I rather thought I would leave that side of things to the Kickass Canada Girl, who not only relishes a challenge but is also jolly good at this sort of thing.

This doesn’t seem quite fair, however, to those eager readers who are keen to know how the whole process works (huh?!) so I have reconsidered and taken a peek at the document checklist that the sponsor has to fulfil prior to submitting their part of the application.

There are 15 items on the list!

Fortunately they are not all required in every circumstance. Here is a quick run-down of those that I believe the Girl will need to include:

  • Completed ‘Application to Sponsor’ form.
  • Completed ‘Sponsorship Evaluation’ (my understanding is that – if I had children – she would need submit a ‘Financial Evaluation’ instead).
  • A copy of the receipt for the fee.
  • Completed ‘Sponsor Questionnaire’
  • A photocopy of one of – Permanent Resident Card, Canadian Citizenship Card, Canadian birth certificate, Canadian Passport.
  • If previously married or in a common-law relationship, one of – proof of separation, divorce certificate, annulment certificate, death certificate (of former spouse, naturally!), declaration of severance of common-law relationship.
  • An original ‘Option C Printout’ of the last ‘Notice of Assessment’ for the most recent tax year (or other acceptable evidence of employment income).
  • A letter from her employer stating period of employment, salary and regular hours per week.

That doesn’t seem too onerous and once the Girl has this little lot sorted out she can add to it the considerable pile of documentation that I have to provide. She will then submit the whole shooting match to Citizenship and Immigration Canada and we can sit back and await the outcome.

More on my part in the proceedings next time.

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