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A riot of relaxation – (day two)

June 17, 2016 by admin

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

Robert A. Heinlein

Day two of our sojourn in Vancouver found us proceeding hot foot to the Arts Club Theatre for a matinee performance of the musical, ‘Billy Elliot‘.

The Girl had wanted to see the show before we left London but – what with one thing and another – the chance so to do had passed us by. Discovering that it was on in Vancouver at a time that coincided with the Canada/Japan rugby international seemed an opportunity too good to miss and we duly turned the occasion into a spiffing long weekend.

We enjoyed the show greatly… in my case considerably more than I expected to. The acting, singing and dancing were to a high standard and if some of the cast struggled a little with the County Durham accents then we were mindful of the fact that many Brits also find it a tough one to crack.

After the show there was just time to scamper back to the hotel to change for dinner. We had made reservations at one of Vancouver’s premier seafood restaurants – the Blue Water Cafe. A quick search on the InterWebNet will reveal just how highly thought of is this Yaletown eatery and it will be of little surprise that the Girl and I now think of it equally highly. The food is utterly splendid and the service exemplary – carried out by a team that clearly loves its work. Should you find your good-selves in Vancouver you really should not hesitate to make a reservation.

The wine cellar alone – curated by young Texan, William Mulholland – has won a basket of awards and features quite the best selection of fine French wines that I have encountered in Canada. We reluctantly eschewed the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Richebourg Grand Cru for somewhere north of $4,000 and settled for Mr Mulholland’s recommended Pouilly-Fumé instead. At a fraction of the price this splendid Loire white – not that easy to come across in Canada – suited the scallops and halibut well, and a postprandial malt from the equally impressive range on offer left us feeling dangerously mellow.

Not so mellow, however, that we were unable to effect a visit to IKEA on the way back to the ferry the following morning! IKEA has much in common with the modern airport terminal in that it matters not where you are in the world – if you are in IKEA you could be anywhere! I am almost minded to suggest that a visit might be in order for the ex-pat suffering a mild case of homesickness… The Richmond branch is, for example, totally interchangeable with that at Brent Cross in North London!

A riot of relaxation – (day one)

June 14, 2016 by admin

Your hair may be brushed, but your mind’s untidy.
You’ve had about seven hours of sleep since Friday.
No wonder you feel that lost sensation.
You’re sunk from a riot of relaxation.

Ogden Nash

To Vancouver for a weekend’s worth of hedonism!

The primary reason for the trip was the first of this year’s summer rugby internationals – between Canada and Japan. This match had the added interest of being the first ever game of XVs rugby at BC Place – a stadium more familiar with Canadian football and soccer.

We stayed in an old haunt – the YWCA Hotel – which is within a stone’s throw of the arena. As you can see from the accompanying photos (which were taken from our room on the ninth floor) it seemed almost possible to lean out and touch the ‘place’.

There is nothing fancy about the ‘Y’ but it is a most effective place to rest one’s head at a very reasonable rate if the object of the exercise is to live lavishly out and about in Vancouver rather than to treat the accommodation itself as the destination.

As for the rugby, the game was most enjoyable – for the Kickass Canada Girl and I as well as for the other 10,250 odd who turned out to see the spectacle. Rugby is still only just starting to grow as a sport in Canada and as much of the attention is focused on the VIIs game – particularly with the Rio Olympics (now featuring, as it does, 7-a-side rugby) on the near horizon – this was a pretty good crowd.

Here are Canada warming up before the masses arrive for the match.

Japan are considerably higher than Canada in the world rankings and – having registered a famous victory over South Africa in last year’s World Cup – they might have been expected to record a straightforward win. As things turned out Canada would have had them beaten had they within their ranks possessed a decent kicker. They succeeded, however, in only one out of six attempts at the posts and that is no-where near good enough at this level.

The final five minutes of the match provided a fitting climax and – regardless of what had gone before – almost led to a Canadian victory. Needing two scores to win they camped out on the Japanese line and finally drove over with about a minute left on the clock. They wasted no time with the attempted conversion but set about winning the ball from the restart. They then kept the final move alive deep into injury time, driving further and further into Japanese territory until the whitewash was within reach.

The crowd – cheering itself hoarse by this point – believed for a moment that a famous comeback had been effected and the match taken, but the referee judged that the ball had been held up over the line and Japan won by two points.

Phew!

After the efforts of our vigorous supporting – and having had a post-match drink with a Kiwi rugby friend in an extremely noisy hostelry thereafter – our tender vocal chords needed soothing treatment from a nearby ‘nitro’ ice cream bar after the game.

At this fascinating establishment ice creams are made on demand on the spot, using copious quantities of liquid nitrogen. Sauces to top the resultant concoctions are presented in plastic syringes embedded into the ice cream.

Cool!

False memory

June 10, 2016 by admin

I found myself the other day musing on the subject of false memory. I will explain momentarily why I should have been so doing, but I should first clarify that I am referring to false memories themselves and not to ‘false memory syndrome’ – which is rather different. On the latter Wikipedia offers:

False memory syndrome is a condition in which a person’s identity and interpersonal relationships center on a memory of a traumatic experience that is objectively false but that the person strongly believes. Note that the syndrome is not characterized by false memories as such. We all have inaccurate memories. Rather, the syndrome is diagnosed when the memory is so deeply ingrained that it orients the individual’s entire personality and lifestyle—disrupting other adaptive behavior.

Nothing disruptive in my case – just ‘inaccurate memories’. In a 2013 article for ‘Time‘ Tara Thean wrote:

The phenomenon of false memories is common to everybody — the party you’re certain you attended in high school, say, when you were actually home with the flu, but so many people have told you about it over the years that it’s made its way into your own memory cache. False memories can sometimes be a mere curiosity, but other times they have real implications. Innocent people have gone to jail when well-intentioned eyewitnesses testify to events that actually unfolded an entirely different way.

I have long been aware that certain memories from my very early childhood are demonstrably false. Having spent the first six years of my life in what is now very definitely a suburb of the London metropolis I am convinced that I can recall the infamous ‘pea-soupers’ – those sometime lethal London smogs. That the ‘Great Smog‘ of 1952 – as a result of which some four thousand people are thought to have died – led in the ‘Clean Air Act of 1956‘ to the banning of the burning of all but smokeless fuels within the capital, suggests that any memories that I have of such events are probably incorrect, particularly as I – born as I was in 1954 – have no other clear memories before the ages of four or five.

Much the same must apply to my ‘memory’ of having seen horse-drawn milk floats ‘when I were a nipper’! As far as I can work out they pretty much all disappeared shortly after the war to be replaced by electric floats. It may have been that there were still horse-drawn rag and bone carts when I was young, but I’m not sure why I would transmute one into the other.

The reason for my recent reverie concerns a slightly later – and in many ways more puzzling – false memory. I was watching – a few days ago – a BBC documentary on the 1966 Football World Cup. (Now – who won that? Gosh – it is so hard to recall!) The reason for the broadcast was – of course – the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of that momentous occasion.

Now – I didn’t watch the 1966 final. It would be yet a good half decade before my parents agreed that we could have a TV, though I could – of course – have watched it elsewhere. I was instead, however, otherwise engaged on the day.

My memory is that I was attending a combined boy scout/girl guide camp at a local campsite that particular weekend. The memory – in which others present were listening to the match on transistor radios – has been quite clear in my mind across the intervening years. I can even vaguely recall the celebrations when the game was won.

Except that – none of that was true! Whilst watching the documentary it quite suddenly – after all this time – occurred to me that I would have been only twelve years old that summer. Those joint scout/guide camps were – understandably in view of the the mores of the time – only for boys and girls at least three or four years older than I then was. I was obviously at some scouting event, but it clearly wasn’t that one…

Odd to think that, whereas as one grows older one expects childhood memories to become less clear, in cases such as this it is the past memory that proves to have been faulty.

Maybe there is hope for us old farts yet…

A truth universally acknowledged

June 5, 2016 by admin

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good lawn must be in want of a croquet set“

Oh dear! Not only should I apologise for carelessly bastardising the sainted Jane, but very definitely also for choosing such a tired and inappropriate gambit with which to open this post in the first place. In my defence (should such be possible) it is a blazingly sunny early June day and I am simmering gently the summer’s cauldron (thereby also misappropriating XTC!) that is our glorious garden (yard – whatever!) and frankly it is just too damned hot to come up with anything better!

Where was I?

Oh, yes! Croquet!

For reasons that are simply too tiresome to go into now we arrived from England last year in possession of a box of composite croquet balls. No mallets! No hoops! No stake… In fact none of the other essentials of the noble game whatever.

Having – however – a lawn of appropriate dimensions (albeit one that has a distinct slope to one side and whose surface comprises rather more moss than it does grass) meant that the urge to be able to play a round or two grew slowly but steadily to the point at which it could no longer be denied.

Warned off by the (occasionally) helpful pundits on the InterWebNet I chose not to purchase a cheapie croquet set from Canadian Tyre, but instead did my research and located a source of ‘decent’ (if expensive) mallets and other accessories. Forthwith did we then invite friends from near and far to spend the day with us, with a view to engaging in a little light barbecuing and the christening of our croquet lawn.

The gentle reader will hardly need me to report that when came the day in question we were subjected to the one twenty four hour period of foul weather that has been experienced in these parts for the last several months. Rains deluged upon the lawns – winds whisked detritus from the trees and deposited same all over my lovingly prepared greensward.

“Ah!” – you cry (particularly should you hail from merrie England) – “But surely you didn’t let a little thing like the weather put you off?”

Of course not – don’t be silly! Croquet was played and – at the risk of immodestly blowing one’s own brass instrument – the honour of the home team was well and truly upheld.

The following day the sun returned to its rightful place in the cloudless skies and all was again well.

Mind the gap

June 1, 2016 by admin

About a month ago I posted to this journal two missives – to be found here and here – in which I summarised the results of our researches into the opportunities for drama and theatre study and practice for young people in and around the Greater Victoria area. In the second such I promised that I would comment further as to what I perceived to be the gaps in that offering and had I not – as is ever the way – been overtaken by events (‘dear boy!’) I would already have fulfilled that pledge.

As was explained in the first of those posts, the provision throughout the secondary schools of Victoria and the Saanich peninsula would appear to be uneven. It is fair to say that private schools probably do rather better than do public (in the Canadian sense) schools – as is the case in the UK – and though there are definitely some institutions which are exceptional in dramatic terms, for others it is very much more of a lottery.

Outwith the school sector itself there are a number of professional organisations offering acting and stagecraft classes and other theatrical activities. These are – however – almost without exception commercial enterprises that charge termly or annual fees. These costs can quickly add up to a significant amount and, whereas for younger children such are normally borne by parents, when it comes to teenagers they may well be expected to make a contribution themselves.

It must be clear from the above that a significant proportion of the teenage population of Greater Victoria might well find themselves disenfranchised from such a valuable resource – either through not attending the right school or by not being able to afford these extra-curricula classes.

As far as I can determine there was no real echo in Canada of the Youth Theatre movement that spread rapidly across the United Kingdom (and some other parts of the world) during the 1960s and 1970s. There are, naturally, blazing exceptions, but by their very presence they merely illuminate the lack elsewhere.

Though the movement in Britain comprised groups established under a plethora of different contexts – some appended to mainstream theatres – some commercially run – some funded by the local authorities (municipalities) and so forth – it very rapidly became clear that these energetic bodies – often run by enthusiastic volunteers – offered so many benefits to young people in terms of personal growth, social development and the promotion of creativity that support for them quickly became widespread. Every self-respecting district, county and metropolis offered some sort of financial support to one or more of these groups – if only by making available some empty space in which their arts could be practiced.

That I am an enthusiast for the work done by these splendid bodies need hardly be mentioned. I spent upward of two decades as a facilitator at one such, wearing such a wide range of hats that I might have attempted the establishment of a millinery! As is so often the case with such voluntary work I am very sure that I got as much – if not more – from the whole adventure as did the cavalcade of youth that passed through our doors.

Which might – of course – go a long way to explaining why I am now trying to start something similar here in Victoria.

Black and white

May 29, 2016 by admin

“Colour television! Bah, I won’t believe it until I see it in black and white.”

Samuel Goldwyn

Not in this case a nostalgic look back at the cinema of a bygone age – nor indeed a reference to the school colours of my erstwhile employers…

…but in this case a brace of ‘his and her’ automotive conveyances!

I made reference but a few posts back to the fact that the Girl was in the process of having to change her mode of transport in the light of her renewed need to commute – with a view to keeping herself safe and sound in the face of the somewhat erratic driving habits of some other users of the ‘Pat Bay’ highway here on the Saanich peninsula… this being – of course – a move that I endorse whole-heartedly.

Those who know the Girl will also know that she is not one to hang around when the mood is upon her. Sure enough on Friday last we drove up-island with a view to investigating a low-mileage pre-owned (so much better than ‘second-hand’ or ‘used’ whilst not being quite as wince-inducing as ‘pre-loved’!) automobile. As is the way of such things, after a long day of negotiation and paperwork she drove back to Victoria in a brand spanking new one instead! Rest assured that she came away with a particularly good deal…

For those interested in such things the vehicle is a shiny new Mazda CX-5 with all of the bells and whistles. This thing is practically frothing with technology, all of which is in the service of keeping the occupants as safe as possible out in the jungle that is the modern metropolis. If you are of the persuasion that will not rest until you know all of the details then you should consult the Girl for the full run-down – or avail yourself of the wonder that is the InterWebNet to carry out your own researches. All I know is that this thing certainly has more computing power on board than did the entire fleet of lunar modules (apologies for the extremely dated – though still germane – reference).

This leaves the Girl with a couple of vehicles to sell. She has of late been driving the little Miata in the summer months and reverting to the ancient Honda Accord when the weather turns inclement.

The CX-5 will now cover all the bases.

Fun and games

May 23, 2016 by admin

I experienced an interesting echo of Britain’s colonial past this recent long holiday weekend. The occasion was my first visit to the excellent and hugely popular Victoria Highland Games.

That this was the one hundred and fifty third such informs us not only as to their date of origin but also as to the continuing popularity of the event. As was our colonial forebears’ wont around the globe the original intent of the festival would have been to recreate a much loved element of UK cultural life to ease the longing for home of the expats upon whom the empire depended.

Here – a century and a half later – I found myself standing on a grassy slope in Topaz Park, looking across a greensward teeming with pipers, drum majors, highland dancers, heavy lifters and hammer throwers (caber tossing was on a different day!) toward the smoky Sooke hills in the background and experiencing suddenly the strongest recollection of sitting on the grass bank at the Pitlochry recreation ground in Perthshire back ‘when I were a lad’, watching the proceedings of a ‘Highland Night’.

It worked a hundred and fifty years ago… it works now!

Some pictures…

In the clan society section I found that my own – Clan Donnachaidh – has made a reappearance after some years missing from the west coast. I signed up – naturally!

Everything in the garden…

May 20, 2016 by admin

Idioms

“Everything in the garden is rosy”

(British English, saying) “everything is fine”

Oxford Learners’ Dictionary

A couple of weeks back I posted some snaps of the pleasant surprises that our recently acquired garden (yard!) has been bestowing upon us.

Sadly, not quite everything in our little corner of paradise was as gorgeous as those images may have suggested. There was one rather sorry strip just below our patio – about thirty feet wide by ten feet deep – that could only be described as ‘scrubland’.

This patch – which incorporates a fire-pit – may at one point have been graveled. Much of that covering had long since disappeared and whatever it was that remained clearly provided the perfect habitat for every possible variety of weed and couch grass known to man (and a few others for good measure).

As the spring progressed the presence of this eyesore became increasingly irritating until even this minimalist gardener could stand it no longer and decreed that action must be taken.

I spent a considerable portion of two days earlier this week removing the top surface of this blasted heath and winkling out as much weed root as I could bear to do. I discovered that not only was a fair chunk of our garden irrigation system just under the surface of this patch, but that it had several leaks, a couple of redundant spurs and was not laid in the optimal locations. All this was speedily remedied before I levelled the area and laid and pegged down a porous membrane across the whole patch – in the hope of at least keeping some of the weeds and grasses at bay.

Then it was hotfoot to my local supplier of aggregates – Peninsula Landscape Supplies – to order three yards of half inch clear crushed aggregate. I did this at around one o’clock on Thursday last and was delighted when it was delivered to our door shortly before three o’clock that same afternoon. Splendid service!

The dump pickup dropped the load as close to the patio as possible, but that was a good twenty five yards away. It was then down to me – armed only with a plastic wheelbarrow, a shovel and a rake – to transmute the resultant mountain into the rather splendid gravel strip that can be seen in the attached photo – and all before the Kickass Canada Girl arrived home from work!

If I tell you that three yards of aggregate weighs in the region of four and a half tons, you might understand why my body feels today rather as though it has been hit by particularly large truck.

I suspect it would have been considerably worse had I not been attending weights classes twice a week since September last. I knew that there was a reason for so doing…

Can’t drive; won’t drive!

May 16, 2016 by admin

Since the Kickass Canada Girl went back to work recently she has had – yet again – to take on something of a commute. Nothing much by way of comparison to that which either of us endured back in the UK, but tiresome nonetheless. Much of it is along the main arterial route down the Peninsula into the centre of Victoria – Highway 17 (or the ‘Pat Bay’ as it is ‘affectionately’ known). This journey should take only around 20 – 25 minutes. That it has – of late – been taking considerably longer is in the main down to some Victorians being apparently unable to drive safely along the highway just as soon as the sun shines.

The Pat Bay is not the perfect road by any means. Much of it comprises two lanes in either direction and, whilst the southern stretch is adequately equipped with the sort of interchange with which we are familiar in the UK, north of Royal Oak, unfortunately, the intersections revert to being flat crossroads with traffic signals.

The problem is that some of those acclimatised to keeping their feet down on the southern section seem unable to reconcile this with having to stop at the lights further north. Even worse – if a green light can be seen at an intersection up ahead that seems like a good excuse to keep the power on. There is – of course – the possibility that the signal has only just changed to green, with the vehicles ahead still accelerating away when some monster pickup barrels into the back of them doing something quite illegal.

The Girl has of late come home grumbling of extended delays a couple of times a week. I had myself to pull over and let three police cars, two ambulances and a fire truck get past to deal with a shunt only this afternoon – and today is Sunday!

This has all – rather sadly – forced the Girl to rethink her means of transport. In England the cute little MX-5 can more than hold its own in traffic. Over here – fun as it is on the curvy stuff when the roads are clear – it doesn’t take much for the diminutive roadster to vanish into the blind spots of ‘semis’ (‘artics’ to UK readers) and pickups alike… particularly given their jockeys’ penchants for tailgating.

A larger – and safer – vehicle may well be required… at least while she is yet in employ.

As for me – there are definitely unwanted echoes of the traffic conditions I used to encounter on the M3 on the way into London every day.

Not what one looks to find in paradise!

Hillsborough

May 13, 2016 by admin

You might have thought that my recent post regarding the outcome of the second inquest into the causes of the deaths of the ninety six victims of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster would be my last word on the subject. I suspect, however, that there will be yet more to come as the saga continues to unfold over the years.

This truth was brought home yet again last night in harrowing fashion as I watched Daniel Gordon’s two hour documentary – ‘Hillsborough‘ – made for the BBC and ESPN. The first version of this brilliantly judged work was completed nearly two years ago and shown in the US and – subsequently – in New Zealand. It could not at that time be shown in the UK for legal reasons; for fear that it might prejudice the outcome of the second inquest which had then just begun.

The film has now been extended in the light of the outcome of that inquiry and can now finally be seen in the UK and elsewhere. Should you yet feel uncertain as to the import of these recent events – or should you even perchance still harbour some misconceptions as to the truth of what really happened on that dreadful day and throughout the intervening twenty seven years – I urge you to take the time to watch this chilling memorial to the suffering of the families whose loved ones did not return home from that intended day of celebration.

Though I have been reading about the tragedy since the day that it happened, even so I learned things from this film that I had not previously known. This merely demonstrates anew just how much the authorities tried to keep hidden over the past two decades and more.

For example, I did not know that there had been another not dissimilar crowd control problem at an FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough – some eight years earlier. On that occasion the crowd at the Leppings Lane end had been allowed to spill out of the stands onto the border of the pitch itself to avoid the crush. When – during the post mortem to that event – it was suggested that there had been a lucky escape and that modifications might be required to prevent future injuries or deaths, the ground’s owners and engineers dismissed the suggestion and did nothing.

Indeed – in the intervening years matters were made very much worse as a result of the FA’s misguided attempt to combat the hooliganism which seemed endemic to the game during the 1980s. The standing room terraces at the Leppings Lane end of the ground were turned into pens by the construction around them of fences of spiked iron railings. When lightening did indeed strike a second time the supporters were unable either to escape onto the pitch or sideways along the terracing as had previously been possible.

In another unfortunate circumstance the vastly experienced police superintendent, Brian Mole, who should have been in charge of the crowd control operation on the day of the disaster, was moved to another district a couple of weeks prior to the event. This followed a ‘hazing’ incident some months before in which a young police constable was one night subjected to a mock abduction by masked gunmen posing as armed robbers but who were in fact colleagues from the constabulary. Those concerned were disciplined firmly and Mole – though having no involvement himself – was moved.

His place was taken – at two weeks’ notice – by a man who not only had little experience of supervising such major events but also clearly had little understanding of football or of the habits and motivations of its followers. David Duckenfield was responsible for the two key actions that shaped the tragedy that followed and the appalling campaign that succeeded it.

First, he took the decision – when the crush of Liverpool supporters trying to get through the totally inadequate number of turnstiles at the Leppings Lane end looked to be getting out of hand – to open one of the exit gates to allow a large body of fans through to relieve the pressure outside. This was done without first having either sealed off the immediate entrance to the two already packed pens which was directly in front of the exit gate, or of ensuring that there were an adequate number of stewards or police inside the ground to direct fans to the still mostly empty pens to either side.

Then – as the inevitable tragedy was still being played out immediately beneath the windows of the control box in which he was located – Duckenfield lied to Graham Kelly (the FA representative at the ground) telling him that drunken ticket-less Liverpool supporters had broken down the very exit gate that he had himself ordered to be opened. Kelly naturally believed what he was told by the senior police official present and wasted no time passing the information on TV commentators and journalists. Thus was born the false myth that the supporters were to blame for the deaths of the ninety six, which was then seized upon by those in charge of all of the authorities concerned as a means of covering up the truth as to the multiple liabilities for the fatalities.

Daniel Gordon’s documentary is not an easy watch but it is an essential one if we are to fully comprehend this recent period in our history, for it has implications far wider simply than those for game of football or for this one appalling, tragic, but completely avoidable incident.