Flotsam and Jetsam – Page 27 – The Imperceptible Immigrant

It’s all downhill…

February 19, 2018 by admin

Further evidence (should such be required at this stage) that The Girl and I compliment one another nigh-on perfectly might be gleaned from our respective enthusiasms (and the consequent advocacies for those who strive on our behalves) during periods of Olympian endeavour.

The average Brit (and – yes… such a creature does exist, regardless of the protestations of some of those of a more intemperate and extreme ilk) who – like me – grew up marveling that such a diminutive nation could really have instigated or developed quite as many sports and games as it did (only to then cede dominance in them to other more aggressive and single-minded races) has probably been quite taken aback by the UK’s recent Olympic performances.

In the Summer Olympics at least!…

After the usual period of pre-games cynicism and belittlement many of us rapidly become the secret sports-nuts that we as a nation perpetually breed and find ourselves watching all manner of events on TV that, but a few days previously, we not only had no idea were sports at all (let alone Olympic sports!) but further did not know that Brits practiced them to any acceptable level. When we then win some unexpected (to us at least) medal in said contest we rapidly become InterWebNet experts on the matter and claim that we expected all along that our ‘athletes’ would do well.

The Winter Olympics are, of course, a very different story. Save for a glorious and now long-distant chapter in the history of ice dance (a form beloved of one particular sector of society with a fervour only matched by that appertaining to musical theatre) we Brits have, apparently, no winter sports skills at all* – with the strange exception of events which involve throwing ourselves off mountains clinging to some rudimentary and entirely unsuitable piece of hardware the chief characteristic of which is, to all intents and purposes, its cheapness (and please don’t feel the need to regale me with the actual cost of these chimerical devices)!

It is at this point that The Girl – being Canadian – comes into her own.

To be found, in the main, during the summer games loitering around the back of the stands puffing away at an ‘old fashioned’ rather than exerting themselves on field or track – come the winter Canadians suddenly start taking everything incredibly seriously. Should you suggest to your S.O. that – having won a sack-load of silverware already – it wouldn’t be the end of the world should Canada actually lose the hockey (never ice hockey!) to the US, you are likely to find all bedroom privileges curtailed unceremoniously for the foreseeable future.

Canadians have a passion for all snow and ice based sports that ranks alongside any other nation on this irriguous planet. “Quelle surprise” – I hear you mutter (with a slightly smart-arsed reference to the nation’s bi-lingual heritage) – thinking perhaps to add some gibe about the Canadian climate. Well – the fact that we rarely see snow at all at this end of Vancouver Island clearly does nothing to diminish The Girl’s enthusiasm for all things Winter Olympics – and such zeal is, of course, infectious!

So… Go, Canada, go!

* I refuse to mention Eddie ‘the Eagle’…

Details, details…

February 14, 2018 by admin

I could not resist taking some further snaps of some of details of our recent renovations. I hope that my posting some of these to this forum will not try the patience of the gentle reader too far. This will – I promise – be an end of it!

Finally!…

February 4, 2018 by admin

Some before and after views of our just-about-finished renovation – before we moved back upstairs. Double click on the images for the full effect.

This is our living room:

Here is our sparkly new kitchen:

This is my bathroom… yes, it is the same room:

…and this is The Girl’s:

Master bedroom and entrance hall:

Now to clean thoroughly and to move everything back upstairs again.

Phew!

Time flies…

January 25, 2018 by admin

…like an arrow – but fruit flies like a banana!

Terry Wogan

As I write this post I am awaiting the arrival of a shock (or whatever may be the appropriate collective noun) of electricians who should be the last of the contractors to add their expertise to our long-running renovation. Hopefully by the end of the day all that will remain to be done will be further painting and cleaning.

Glancing back over the scribblings that I posted last January (a mistake I know, but it is fascinating to see how the years vary… or even repeat themselves!) I find to my great surprise that it was exactly a year ago this very day that I visited the North Saanich Municipal Offices to deliver the paperwork for the application for a building permit for our new deck – which was eventually constructed last April and May. That project was just the start of the long process of renovation which has been going on pretty much continually since then.

That set me to wondering as to when it was that we had actually engaged the designer who drew up the plans that formed the basis of said application. Hunting further back on this blog gave me the answer to that as well – it was in September 2016.

The long and the short of it – and the point of this post is of course that the long occasionally feels both short and long (if you know what I mean) – is that by the time we are done this whole renovation project will have occupied us for around a year and a half – which feels both like the blink of an eye and also an eternity!

Needless to say we are eager to crawl – blinking in the bright light of day – out of our current subterranean dwelling place to resume our former lives above ground level.

I am also – naturally – keen to take and to post to these pages a further portfolio of photographs displaying the results of our labours – that we might dazzle the gentle reader with the sumptuous fruits of our endeavours.

Hmmm – that’s quite enough of that, I think…

Not your paintings

January 21, 2018 by admin

“It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.”

Albert Camus

Ho, ho! Little painting related joke there… which is most apposite because much of our time at present is spent with paintbrush and roller in hand – or failing that with filler and sanding block.

The main floor of our lovely home comprises a living room, a dining room area, a kitchen, master and guest bedrooms, two bathrooms, a laundry, several hallways and four sizeable built-in closets… All of which must be painted before our renovation is complete.

As painters we are most fortunate that our dry-waller – who gave us splendid new non-popcorn ceilings – also painted them as he went. Further, our excellent contractor budgeted for his painter to handle the woodwork – baseboards (skirting) and trim. Indeed, he would have done the lot were it not that I felt guilty about our playing no role at all in the proceedings (other than in the financial sense).

So here we are – with several thousand square feet of wall to be prepped (filled, sanded and cleaned), primed as required and given two coats of decent quality eggshell (or pearl for the bathrooms).

In this enterprise we are even luckier to have a dear friend who not only operates a sideline in interior decorating but is quite the most ferociously perfectionist craftswoman I have encountered. When it comes to the laborious, time consuming and delicate operation of cutting in it is my view that she has no equal. Furthermore she seems actually to relish the challenge, leaving to the ‘oily rags’ like me the prosaic duty of wielding the roller – a low-order task if ever there be one!

Even luckier (for us!) she is gifting us her time and expertise – and extensively so – on a quid pro quo basis. There can be no doubt at all as to who is getting the better part of this particular deal.

We are truly blessed!

…and counting!

January 14, 2018 by admin

I was thirteen when the Beatles released Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

As were so many others I was already captivated having heard such extraordinary songs as Eleanor Rigby, Tomorrow Never Knows and Strawberry Fields. Now – on experiencing their first post-touring long-player – I was completely blown away and a lifelong love of the works of Messrs. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr was cemented.

My most immediate and startling memory, however, of the post-Pepper-release period was not directly to do with the Beatles or with the record at all. My school at that time held an annual public speaking competition, involvement in which (somewhat strangely in the light of subsequent events) I contrived to avoid throughout my entire career there. This widely disregarded event took place over two days. On the first each of the competitors mounted – one at a time – the stage in School Hall to recite a poem. On the second day they gave a five minute address on some subject either close to their hearts or the choice of which they coldly calculated would most appeal to the judges and/or the forcibly assembled audience.

On day one of the 1967 competition one of the seniors (a popular prefect – words rarely heard together in those days) stood proudly upon the platform and recited – instead of the usual Tennyson, Wordsworth or Coleridge (or if particularly daring, Byron or Keats) – the lyrics to Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, a song at that point banned by the straight-laced BBC for being quite obviously about the experience of taking LSD. We plebeians in the stalls gasped and looked shiftily at each other and to the masters present, trying to gauge how they would react to their solemn ritual being thus traduced.

The world – naturally – did not end. The staff simply looked bored and did nothing. The popular prefect did not win the contest. We mere mortals, however, realised that something, somewhere had changed irrevocably – and we were right.

What was most remarkable about Pepper of course (apart from the dazzling imagination and unprecedented soundscape on display) was the sheer variety. From LSD to traffic wardens, from Victorian fairground barkers to Indian gurus… all human life appeared to be represented not merely on Peter Blake’s pop-art cover but also within.

For this reason Paul McCartney’s whimsical musing on just what it might be like to achieve three score years and four seemed hardly out of place at all and those of us who could not begin to imagine ever reaching such a decrepit age simply took it as one more example of a fertile imagination.

This week – you will by now have deduced – I turned sixty four!

Mexican miscellany – 3

December 29, 2017 by admin

Herewith a final batch of images from our recent sojourn in the sun during the run-up to Christmas.

Puerto Vallarta has a sizable and most attractive marina which includes a basin large enough for the ubiquitous cruise ships to dock:

On Thursday evenings the marina plays host to a rather splendid market at which it is possible to purchase the wares of local artists and craftsmen, as well as sampling local foodstuffs and – of course – tequila!

In the centre of town there is a lovely church dedicated to ‘Our Lady of Guadalupe’, an image of which also featured in a mural adjacent to our resort in the Hotel Zone.

I promised a photo of a bus! This was by no means the oldest or the most rickety!

I liked the slogan on the ‘Cashola’ ATM. “Say hello to your money” it says – with the clear subtext “Prepare to say goodbye to it again shortly thereafter!“.

Mexican miscellany – 2

December 27, 2017 by admin

Hmmm!

My humble apologies to those who receive these updates via the email feed… yesterday’s posting was done under the influence of the Boxing Day blur and I sadly omitted various steps from the habitual routine by which means I normally ensure that all of the images render correctly. Should you have suffered the resultant shambles (and can give a rat’s arse either way) please do follow this link to view it all over again.

Puerto Vallarta’s seafront is quite naturally a major attraction. The Malecon is a mile-long esplanade that takes one along the front as far as the bridge over the Rio Cuale. This recently renovated pedestrian promenade features a fascinating display of public statuary:

Crossing the river (which at this point incorporates the wooded Isla Cuale in an area surrounded by cafes and cramped boutiques offering the outpourings of local artists and craftsmen) one comes again to the Zona Romantica, the which district borders the sea at the charmingly entitled Playa de Los Muertos:

The rocks that separate the various beaches are home to a multitude of massively shy crabs that can apparently tell when they are being looked at. If one stands with one’s back to their habitat they all shuffle out – sideways – to sit on the rocks, but should one turn one’s head to look at them they scurry away into the shadows at pace…

…except for this one – which isn’t going anywhere ever again!

This chap is not going to be playing the piano again either…

A pretty awesome place to have a massage:

Mexican miscellany – 1

December 27, 2017December 26, 2017 by admin

Our recent trip to Puerto Vallarta – my first visit to Mexico – furnished such a vivid range of impressions that I found it impossible not to be continually firing off shots with whatever photographic device I had to hand. Feeling the urge to share I am going to upload several batches of the resulting images for the gentle reader’s (and viewer’s) delectation.

We paid a number of visits to the old part of town – the Zona Romantica. Here are some images:

We had brunch at a PV institution – Memo’s Pancake House. They make a mean Eggs Benedict!

This is where the PV fat cats buy their cigars!…

…and this store in the flea market made me think of The Eagles!

What do you think – fella? Hmmm! – time for siesta…

A game of two halves

December 21, 2017 by admin

Though I have mentioned The Girl’s connection with Mexico on a number of occasions within these pages I now feel the need to expand a little in that regard. As I have indicated before, Mexico is a favourite haunt for Canadians wishing to escape the rigours of the north American winters. Many of them do so through a similar mechanism as did she – the purchase of a timeshare slot in a resort.

Such a purchase sadly has in common with that of a new automobile the immediate and irretrievable drop in value the instant that it is (metaphorically) driven off the lot. The Girl and her co-purchaser thus found themselves each in possession of half a timeshare, neither part of which has a significant monetary value. It made sense therefore that they should continue to make use thereof in alternate years.

Now, the way that these things work is that – should one wish to visit a resort other than that in which one has purchased – it is possible to trade ‘points’ for slots elsewhere, as did we in Europe whilst we were still living in the UK. It is also possible to accumulate these points.

All of this by way of explanation of the fact that the first week of our stay here was in the delightful resort in the Marina at Puerto Vallarta in which the original timeshare had been purchased, whilst for the second week we have moved a little nearer to the centre of town to another resort for which The Girl has traded points (being for logistical reasons unable to get two weeks in the same location). All one need know is that both are delightful and that the Mexicans are a wonderfully friendly and positive people.

The Pacific coast of Mexico has much to recommend it, not least of course that – in the week before Christmas – the temperature is in the mid-twenties and the sun is shining. This naturally makes the customary Christmas decoration – with its emphasis on snow and sleighs and suchlike – seem somewhat out of place and it has to be said that this is quite unlike any run-up to Christmas that I have previously experienced.

The staff at the first resort held their Christmas party by the beach on one bosky evening whilst we were there. We peeped, fascinated, from our balcony at the merry-making. They had wisely chosen not to go with a Christmassy theme but settled instead on… pirates!

Aaaarrrrr!

Much fun was clearly had…

Another considerable selling point here is the exceptionally good value. Both of the apartments we have inhabited are fully equipped with kitchens (and twin bathrooms!) so we have been able to cater for ourselves, but given that eating out is so reasonable it can be a tough choice to make. Taxis are also very reasonably priced and the fares are fixed and notified before each trip, so there are no unexpected extras and getting around is easy.

Even cheaper are the buses, for which each trip is covered by a fixed rate equivalent to around a (Canadian) dollar for the two of us. The buses themselves are something to be experienced. Not since a visit to India in the 80s has bus travel been such an adventure. The vehicles have an ageless look about them (in much the way that the 50s Beaver floatplanes do in BC, though the latter appear considerably better maintained) and as far as can be told have no suspension at all. As a result the outside lane of each road (being mostly cobbled or paved with small blocks) has a profile not unlike the Rockies!

It seems miraculous that some of these ancient vehicles have not shaken thsmselves apart (or maybe they have and on the edge of town somewhere there is a big broken bus graveyard!). Suffice to say that those with loose fillings should probably stick to the taxis and, though since there appears to be no limit on the number of passengers that can be carried at any time there is little likelihood of ones actually being thrown around the bus, should one take the plunge one should cling on tightly at all times.

I feel inclined to write more about my first visit to this surprising country – and certainly to post more pictures – but my hosting provider has abruptly decided that I may not load further images from here in Mexico. There should – for example – have been a photo of a bus attached to the latter part of this missive…

This will doubtless be a trivial issue to resolve but further postings must needs now follow our return to the chilly coast of BC this weekend.

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