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Life as we know it

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Lest we forget

June 6, 2014 in Life as we know it | Permalink

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Laurence Binyon – ‘For the Fallen’

 

Today is – you will not need to be reminded – the seventieth anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944.

This major anniversary is rendered more poignant by almost certainly being the last such on which any number of those involved on the day itself will still be alive. This pivotal event from our recent history will slip increasingly quickly into the mists of the past, to become – as has the subject of the other major anniversary this year, the start of the Great War – an event that is now only revealed to us through the history books and to which we can no longer discern a direct connection.

I was born in 1954 – a mere ten years after the events being commemorated today. At that point the memories for my parents’ generation were still razor sharp and the now familiar process of ‘reassessment’ had not yet commenced. So much has changed throughout the world since that day.

No matter how vivid are the accounts that we read – or how searingly accurate the computer-generated movie images with which we are assailed – it is now simply impossible for us to truly comprehend what it must have been like for those who were actually involved. I – for one – am most grateful that I have never been called upon to make such choices – such sacrifices.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidThere is a connection with the School. Montgomery was an old boy – and when the community decamped to leafy Berkshire to ride out the Blitz the school buildings were requisitioned by the military. The Board Room was used for much of the planning of the British part of the invasion and the final conference at which the decision was taken to launch the attack was held there.

The buildings that housed the School in 1944 no longer exist – the School having moved across the river in the late 60s – but the map used by Monty and the commemorative plaques installed after the war are still extant in the current equivalent space.

These artifacts provide a lasting reminder – lest we forget…

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Free from

May 22, 2014 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidLast Saturday afternoon found me – somewhat reluctantly – sharing the unlovely plaza that is the arrival hall of the prematurely senescent Terminal 4 at Heathrow with a heaving Babelian mass of humanity. Alternating increasingly irritable pacing with lounging louchely against a pillar I awaited the arrival from Paris of a brace of Canadian girls. In spite of the fact that the marginally more kickass of the pair is in proud possession of British Citizenship, they were still forced to negotiate – at considerable length – the bureaucratic inefficiencies of the UK Border Agency – along with the effusion of seven continents.

When the pair finally made it landside they were hungry. They demanded curry!

Now – my mother (bless her soul!) was a woman possessed of an extremely limited culinary repertoire. She maintained an even more restrictive diet herself, eating like a sparrow and having no truck with herbs, spices and other such fancy distillations. As a result I reached the age of majority equipped with what can only be described as a totally untutored palate.

This state of affairs was not to change until my early twenties – the point at which I got married and left home. My former wife sighed, tutted inwardly and took in hand my belated education in the cuisines of the world. Latterly – of course – the Kickass Canada Girl has generously taken up the baton with regard to this noble task (along with that of all of my other foibles and eccentricities) and has matured me into a dedicated epicurean. There really is now very little that I do not eat, appreciate and enjoy.

Or rather – there was…

In the middle of the night subsequent to our culinary expedition to the sub-continent I became what – for fear of distressing those of a sensitive disposition – can only be described as – unwell! Of itself this would mean little, except that something similar has now occurred on the last few occasions on which I have dined thus. It is difficult to avoid the implication that I am no longer able to stomach curry. Worse – this follows previous reluctant recognition that the consumption of duck eggs now also seems to leave me internally incapacitated.

What we are talking about here is – of course – an acknowledgement of the fact that I am getting old! My formerly robust constitution is beginning to creak a little – my once indomitable digestion is showing signs of becoming somewhat more finickity.

This is only to be expected, of course, but I certainly don’t intend to go quietly. Though I will at least try to be sensible, when it comes to the foods that I love… all bets may currently be off.

Needless to say – this does leave me somewhat apprehensive for the future…

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Lost content

May 18, 2014 in Life as we know it | Permalink

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/trawets/523630550/">trawets1</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">cc</a>On re-reading my recent post – ‘Blue remembered hills‘ – I realised that I had not expressed to my satisfaction that which was on my mind when I composed same. This is a not infrequent occurrence for me as it happens, but on occasion – this being one such – I feel moved to revisit a topic… to give it a second shot, as it were.

The seed for that particular post was in the photograph that accompanied it – the which I took over the bank holiday weekend on the West Sussex/Surrey borders whence we had gone in search of azaleas. Whenever I find myself gazing at a vista comprising ever distant ranges of hills – each hued in an increasingly translucent azure – I am reminded of those lines from Housman’s ‘A Shropshire Lad‘ most commonly known as ‘The Land of Lost Content‘. There is to this – of course – no surprise and I feel sure that many another stargazer would float reflectively down a similar stream.

There has been a fair degree of conjecture as to the subject and meaning of Housman’s verse – this segment no less than any. Its enduring appeal may – quite naturally – be in fair measure attributed to its ambiguity. On one point – however – there can be no equivocation… this particular poem is concerned with Loss!

I suspect that my fascination of recent decades with Loss – which along with Longing and Love (as I have ventured previously) comprise the three great subjects of all art – is in no small way connected with my advancing years. Those of a similarly cogitative nature will quite probably also find themselves at some point thus contemplating the infinite.

Some read Housman’s lines as a lament for a passing pastoral idyll – the mythical ‘golden age’. ‘A Shropshire Lad‘ was published in 1896 but did not really catch the public’s attention until the turn of the century, by which time the second Boer war was well underway. The work’s depiction of the premature deaths of young men clearly struck a chord and its popularity only increased further with the outbreak of the Great War – many soldiers reputedly carrying a copy into battle with them. At a time of great change – the thinking runs – it is hardly surprising that those caught up in the maelstrom should needs cling to the certainties of the past. As the mechanised beast of the war machine devoured Europe, longing for a lost arcadian utopia made perfect sense.

Those critical of this view claim that such a paradise never actually existed – that this ‘chocolate box’ view of pastoral life was a myth and that in truth rural life for many really was – to quote Hobbes – ‘nasty, brutish and short‘.

An alternative reading of this ‘lost content‘ is that it refers to childhood – and more particularly to the blessed state of innocence with which those formative years are commonly associated. Denis Potter dealt this view an irrevocable blow in his 1979 BBC television drama for the title of which he ruthlessly appropriated Housman’s own phrase – ‘Blue Remembered Hills‘. This classic – if somewhat dyspectic – work required adult actors to take the roles of a group of children, demonstrating in the process that savagery and intolerance are by no means the exlusive preserve of those of us supposedly old enough to know better.

What does that leave us with?

Well – whenever I am brought up short by some breathtakingly beautiful vista of varigated cerulian and those lines of Housman’s insinuate their way into my brain – it is not the loss of childhood innocence that I lament (for though I have no complaints about my early years I certainly have no wish to revisit them) and nor is it a rose-tinted yearning for some mythical golden age – and that even though I grew up in the magical decade of the sixties! Rather it is that the distant azure horizon speaks to me of all of the choices not made, of all the opportunities let slip – and that however wonderful life actually is (and mine is particularly blessed) it is our human nature to regret that we can only select from the astonishing palette of life a limited number of possibilities… and all the rest must be forever lost as the flood tide sweeps them away into some far ocean.

Time to turn away from the view – to count one’s blessings – and to focus on that which is…

 

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Blue remembered hills

May 9, 2014 in Life as we know it | Permalink

I am one of those people for whom a vista – a distant prospect – is of considerable import, whether I be in my own home or off traveling. For as long as has been possible – in other words, ever since I could afford so to do – I have chosen to live in a domicile with a view.

I feel sure that someone, somewhere, has written a learned treatise on just why human instinct seems – for most of us at any rate – to be thus inclined. I would be surprised if this disquisition did not posit the survival instinct as probable cause – the desire to live on a hilltop that one might better recognise approaching danger.

The poet’s cynosure might lie elsewhere – perhaps on the notion that gazing upon a distant panorama is in fact emblematic of our longing for the unobtainable – for that which is beyond our reach – and that the resultant wistful longing tugs at our heart-strings in a manner that we find strangely gratifying.

As I say – I am sure that there have been studies of this phenomenon. I – however – could not find one and you will have to make do instead with one of my favourite poets…

Into my heart an air that kills,
From yon far country blows.
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain.
The happy highways where I went,
And cannot come again.

A. E. Housman

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

 

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Bridging the gap

May 3, 2014 in Life as we know it | 2 comments

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidBeing in a marriage that spans continents inevitably results in a slightly uncomfortable disjoint, by which those involved effectively lead two different lives – one on either side of the divide. Two distinct groups of family and friends – two strands of shared history and experience – two evolving tapestries documenting unfolding life stories.

Every so often – however – the delicate tracery of a bridge emerges, spanning the gulf between these two worlds – crossing the oceans.

At Christmas the Kickass Canada Girl and I packed up our daily existence and took a stride across the Altantic to immerse ourselves into the richly flowing river that is life in British Columbia. We have – of course – been making such pilgrimages together at irregular but frequent intervals for the last eight years, and we are – also of course – intending ultimately to turn that stride into a giant leap – transporting our ongoing history to the other side of the ocean. Subsequent to that event our transits will be in the opposite direction – revisiting friends and family on this side of the pond.

On occasion others also assist with the weaving of this trans-Atlantic skein. Such is the case now, as one of the Girl’s best girl-friends from Victoria flies in tomorrow to spend a few weeks with us. We are very much looking forward to entertaining her and showing off the countryside as it awakens in the emerging English spring.

Welcome to the UK!

Spare a thought for me, though. Two kickass girls under the same roof might prove too much even for me!

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Sagrada Familia

April 13, 2014 in Life as we know it, Photos | Permalink

Those readers who are ‘au fait’ with the glorious city of Barcelona will doubtless – at some point or another – have visited Gaudi’s yet to be completed masterpiece – the Sagrada Familia. Regardless of one’s spiritual persuasion (or indeed one’s lack of such) it is surely impossible not to discern in this extraordinary endeavour substantiation that man can indeed on occasion rise above his baser nature to create something which touches upon the numinous.

With its foundation stone laid in 1882 and the project handed to Gaudi a year later, this expiatory church was little more than 15% complete at the point of the architect’s death in 1926. Funded entirely by donations and hampered by the Spanish Civil War – during which the workshops containing many of Gaudi’s plans and models for the cathedral were destroyed by fire – it is estimated that the halfway point in construction was only acheived as recently as 2010. Modern building techniques and an influx of funding following the Barcelona Olympics have – however – enbled the setting of a hopeful target completion date of 2028.

It is simply not possible to walk around this singular monument without wanting to take photographs of it. It is equally impossible (for me at least!) to do the edifice justice. The exterior is probably well know by all. These shots are of the interior:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid…and just a couple of the exterior:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

 

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Moving Half the Mountain

April 3, 2014 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Image from en.wikipedia.orgI watched last night on the BBC a deeply affecting documentary film by Helen Langridge entitled ‘Moving Half the Mountain’. At the centre of the film was the story of the building of what became commonly known as the ‘Death Railway’ in Burma during the Second World War.

Those of us who grew up with Alec Guinness in David Lean’s epic “Bridge on the River Kwai” (based on the eponymous French novel by Pierre Boulle) will be broadly familiar with the subject, should this be only because – having been absorbed by the film – we engaged in further research to establish the real truth behind this regrettable chapter in the history of mans’ inhumanity.

It is not – however – the narrative itself that imbues this impressive new documentary with its power to move. That comes – as it so often does – from the testament of those directly involved –  from the thoughts and memories of the British and Japanese soldiers that survive still – and who agreed to be interviewed for the film.

The British had been caught up in the cataclysmic events that lead to the disastrous fall of Singapore in February 1942 and were subsequently marched up the Malaysian peninsula and into Burma, where they were ill-used by the Japanese as slave labour to build a railway linking Burma and Thailand. Forced to work in appalling conditions it is believed that a total of some 100,000 men – including more than 6,000 British servicemen – perished in pursuance of this objective.

Of those that survived the ordeal many have never spoken in depth about their experiences – even to their loved ones. That these men have chosen to do so now is a result of most of them being in their 90s, some having even achieved their centenaries. It would be a further tragedy were their testaments to be lost without being heard.

Affecting though they may be – however – their stories are not the most telling element of the film. What really moves is the demeanour of the survivors themselves. Almost to a man they demonstrate a degree of forgiveness, of acknowledgement, of coming to terms with their experience – that is humbling in the extreme. These men had come face to face with the very worst of which mankind is capable, and their survival – and subsequently fulfilled lives – leave us a lesson the we would do well to heed.

In the light of some of the more unpleasantly revisionist thinking that seems to be prevalent in this centenary year of the outbreak of the Great War, I would strongly recommend the viewing of this excellent film to any tempted to make glib judgements as to the expediency of warfare.

 

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The music of time

March 7, 2014 in Life as we know it | Permalink

758px-The_dance_to_the_music_of_time_c._1640For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected, so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity.

Anthony Powell – A Dance To The Music Of Time 

The weekend recently past found the Kickass Canada Girl and I (‘me’ for the purists – though that sounds wrong, wrong, wrong!) engaged at two very different events (home and away – one might say) which – between them – gave considerable pause for thought. It does no harm at all on occasion to step back from the hurly-burly to contemplate what this existence might truly mean and how all is ultimately connected.

This post might as easily have been entitled ‘The Circle of Life’ but the chance to reference Poussin’s wonderful painting (“A Dance to the Music of Time” – a particular favourite of mine) was too good to pass up. The statue therein of the double-headed god Janus is particularly pertinent in this instance.

The first of the weekend’s events was the memorial service for a very long-standing acquaintance – my oldest-friend’s wife’s father – whom I have known for more than four decades. He was, of course, of my parents’ generation – of whom in our circle only a very few now remain. He enjoyed a good life and the occasion was very much a celebration thereof rather than being overly solemn. None the less, such acts of remembrance always invite a degree of introspection regarding the transience of our existence – this one being no exception.

The occasion was also – however – a rather lovely gathering of family and friends ordinarily these days spread far and wide. It was a great pleasure to meet again so many good acquaintances with whom we only seem to coincide nowadays on feast days such as this.

The following day we ourselves hosted a long planned gathering of friends, some of whom had also been present the day before. This convocation had a considerably lighter tone and was – as far as could be discerned – greatly enjoyed by all those in attendance (thanks in no small part to Lidgates of Notting Hill and their wonderful pies!). Amongst those present was the lovely friend at whose wedding in Hong Kong the November before last we had been guests. The couple have recently added a brand new member to our extended circle; the devastatingly cute four-month-old inevitably being the centre of attention throughout the evening.

Between them these two events pretty much epitomised the aforesaid circle of life. The passage of old life passing as the tender buds of the new start to unfurl; connections re-kindled in friendships established over the decades; new faces welcomed and – mayhap – new affinities inaugurated; acquaintanceship initiated between companions previously unmet. We rejoice in the sharing of reminiscence. We celebrate the discovery of ‘ontologia exotica‘. We revel in our anecdotage. Life is affirmed. All is as it should be…

Such gatherings have a tendancy to foment the philosophical. I watched as the Kickass Canada Girl headed for the buffet deep in conversation with my ex-wife! Oldest Friend leant over to me:

“You’re in trouble!”, he opined trenchantly…

Well – I probably am now!

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Now we are six(ty)

February 5, 2014 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidIt is not far short of a month since I passed the significant (for me, anyway!) milestone that was my sixtieth birthday. I am now officially ‘getting on a bit’!

The gentle reader may have noticed – however – that apart from describing in a frankly unnecessary degree of detail the celebrations that accompanied the event I have made very little reference to what it is actually like to have crossed the great divide into a seventh decade. Though I have now achieved an age that would once have been considered ‘pretty good going’ – in this day and age to have done so is merely commonplace.

Truth be told I have written nothing because being 60 has felt little different to being 59 – which in turn felt no different to 58 – and so forth…

That this may be self-evident is clearly no help at all to anyone who has arrived here as a result of Googling the InterWebNet nervously for signs of an after-life in the detritus of the boomer generation. I will therefore make what observations I can – however prosaic they may be.

The first thing to say is that once one has passed one’s sixtieth anniversary – in the UK at least – one is suddenly eligible for free stuff!

I take regular medication for inherited hypertension. It will be very nice no longer to have to pay for my prescriptions (three off – every two months)… at least until we move to Canada, where – the Kickass Canada Girl assures me – I will be charged even more than I had once to pay here.

I am also a long-time contact lens wearer and – as a result of one of my habitually curmudgeonly fallings-out with my erstwhile optician – I had recently to sign a new contract with a different chain. For this purpose I was required to take a fresh eye test and I was delighted to find that this also was free of charge.

Until fairly recently I would have been able to get a free bus pass as well – but I learn that the powers-that-be have decided that this was far too straightforward a service to be gifted to mere mortals and have thus of late complicated it to the nth degree. To qualify now one has to live in a certain part of the country, to have been born under a particular phase of the moon and to arrive at the answer ‘5’ when asked to subtract the number one first thought of…

Well – something like that! I will not – apparently – qualify for mine until I am sixty five years, two months and twelve days old – and I certainly don’t intend still to be around here by then. Those who know me will doubtless snort derisively at this juncture and point out that the issue is moot since I wouldn’t be caught dead on a bus in any case!

One change – however – is significant. I am now a pensioner! At my previous school my retirement age was 60 and my pension thence – though relatively humble – has now come into effect. I thus received my first pension paycheck at the end of last week. Now that was a momentous event.

The real changes – though – will not take place until I finally retire…

Roll on the day!

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Conspiracy theory

January 21, 2014 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Sagrada_Familia_01Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

You have to hand it to the Universe!…

On any given evening last week – following our reluctant return from Victoria – the Kickass Canada Girl and I were to be found musing as to the timing and destination of our next expedition.

The first time I experienced this particular phenomenon it came as something of a shock. I am by now – however – well used to the fact that the Girl habitually cures herself of the post-excursion blues by immediately instigating the planning phases of our next trip (or two!) regardless of whether or not the scheme is feasible, practicable or – more importantly – affordable.

In this instance we were attempting to get through the immediate post-Canada low by contemplating the possibility of a little ‘budget’ jaunt to some European (or other!) destination for a couple of days in early spring. A cheap winter break in the Canaries mayhap? Or perhaps a weekend in Bath (The latter usually more expensive than the former!)? Conversation turned idly the fact that the Girl has never been to Barcelona – which is a pretty lovely place to be at that time of year. Hmmm! What to do?

We sighed deeply. If we were honest with ourselves we would have, reluctantly, to admit that in all probability – and in spite of our week of extensive musing – very likely none of these pipe-dreams would come to fruition.

And that might have been that…

…were it not for the fact that on that very Friday afternoon the Head of Drama at the School collared me in the cloisters (!) with an unexpected enquiry. ‘How did I feel about spending a few days in Barcelona over Easter’? Needless to say I practically bit his arm off!

The Theatre Studies boys are visiting Barcelona for a week’s study trip to a performing arts college there. The Head of Drama is in need of additional staff cover for half the week. We get one air fare paid – accommodation for three nights – food for half the week and some additional expenses. The Girl and I rushed to our nearest coffee shop to get onto the InterWebNet (still no broadband at home – grrr!), booked another flight for her and found a hotel in the city itself for a few days after my duty is done.

Hey presto! A spring break in Barcelona at half the cost…

Are we not lucky dogs?!

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