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Will there also be singing?

April 7, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”

Bertolt Brecht, motto to Svendborg Poems, 1939

This poignant motto appears at the head of the last collection of poems published by Bertolt Brecht during his lifetime. He was by then living in exile from Nazi Germany in the town of Svendborg on the Danish island of Funen.

The ‘dark times’ to which he refers are, of course, considerably darker even than those which afflict us now, but a search on the InterWebNet for uses to which this brief motto has been put reveals a plethora of such instances in recent times – starting with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and gathering pace since 2016. The latest of which I am aware was by Chris Riddell for his cartoon on the Corona virus lock-down in the UK for last Sunday’s Observer newspaper.

When I first became aware of Normal Lewis’ wartime memoir – through Francesco Patierno’s film, shown on the BBC toward the end of last year – the current COVID-19 crisis did not even feature on the roadmap of impending concerns. Now, of course, contemplation of conflicts still sharp in the living memory has become something of a pastime – or more accurately a ‘pass-time’, since many of us are unable to follow our preferred pursuits and must needs instead find alternative ways to occupy the time that hangs heavy on our hands. It has become quite the thing to compare our current trials and tribulations with those of the generation that lived through the last world war.

There are good reasons for so doing – though even better ones for exercising finer judgement. We do indeed live in unprecedented times. As things stand we have no idea how this is all going to pan out, or into what reality we might emerge on the other side. When we look back we can discern no other period since the last war in which so many people’s lives were simultaneously thrown into chaos by such a crisis – be that through the direct touch of the pandemic itself, or through loss of employment, income or – even worse – of friends and loved-ones.

Writing about my father’s war-time experience in Italy – contemporaneous with that of Norman Lewis – I suggested that he had subsequently spoken very little about his experiences there. My mother would describe how she went outside to watch the vapour trails over south London during the Battle of Britain, but otherwise she likewise gave little away about how the war had affected her and those close to her.

We know – we think we know – from our readings of history, from novels and poetry and from the many film and TV productions concerning the war and its aftermath – just how broken and fragmented was the world in the latter half of the 1940s. Populations had been destroyed or displaced, the greater part of a generation had lost their lives, families and societies had been torn asunder, economies wrecked and great expanses of the old world reduced to piles of rubble. How could the world – the lives – ever be rebuilt?

Yet many of those who lived through that period chose not to – or simply could not – speak thereof… and the world – as it does – moved on.

In this age of instant and incessant ‘communication’ there is perhaps a case for saying rather less and listening – and thinking – rather more…

…and – yes! – I am aware of the contradiction in so writing.

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Naples 44 – part 3

April 2, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Inveterate lingerers upon these pages will no doubt recall (quoth he optimistically) my posting back in January of a brace of articles on the subject of the slim volume of wartime memoirs by the British travel writer and novelist – Norman Lewis – that was published in the late 1970s by William Collins and to which my attention had been directed in the closing months of last year by the BBC’s showing of Italian director Francesco Patierno’s impressionistic film that was based upon it.

To save further lengthy sentences containing multiple clauses elucidating the matter, let me save a little time by referring the gentle reader directly to those pieces – which may be effortlessly located here and here.

The articles in question contained the slightly embarrassing admission that I had not, in fact, actually read the book – though I had located a copy online and placed an order. This tome duly arrived shortly after my postings and accompanied us on our jaunt to Mexico back in mid February, where it took but a few days to consume, providing much pause for thought in the process.

The book is fascinating; thought-provoking, disturbing, funny and moving all at the same time. It highlights the chaos and insanity of war and the vivid description that it contains of a society that has been utterly upended and thrown into disarray – in which all human life must struggle to find a way to survive and even ultimately to flourish – offers important perspective and guidance on our own troubled times.

One of the things that struck me most about the book was how contemporary the prose feels. It does not to me give the impression of a piece of writing from the middle of the last century, nor yet of the 1970s when it was actually committed to paper. In my view this makes it even more pertinent today.

Should you wish to know more about the book I earnestly recommend this ‘Re-reading‘ piece from the Guardian back in 2011.

If you have read the second of my earlier postings on the subject you will know that one reason for my interest in the book is that my father was most likely in Naples – and certainly somewhere in that part of Italy – at the same time as was Norman Lewis. Lewis refers repeatedly to the Allied Military Government (AMG) that had been established in Italy subsequent to the landings there. I am pretty certain that my father had some small capacity in that organisation.

The reason that I believe this to be so is that I have seen a number of documents and other items from my father’s time in Italy which bore – as far as my aging memory can recall – the imprint of the AMG.

Why could I not simply check this before commencing this post?

Because said documentary evidence is – as far as I know – apparently irrevocably locked in the desk compartment of my beloved Davenport!

 

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Closed in

March 29, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty…”

William Butler Yeats

As the world holds its collective breath – uncertain as to what will happen next…

…if nothing else we may find that we have time on our hands for musing – and a still, small space for so doing in this world normally in such a hurry might well be one of the only positives to come out of this calamity.

So – as a TV comedy character in the UK was once wont to exclaim…”Bear with…”

My parents were both hoarders. Which is to say – when my mother passed away and my siblings and I ventured to clear the house where they (and, for a considerably shorter period, we) had lived for almost fifty years, we discovered not only five decade’s worth of papers, postcards, letters, pirated music scores and so forth, but also – amongst many other items of furniture – every chair that they had ever purchased together… as well as some that they had probably inherited. Some of these items were, frankly, no longer in a usable condition but they had nonetheless been left in situ. When we had finished clearing the house it felt almost twice as big as it had seemed beforehand.

This was not to suggest, however, that my parents collected furniture; and certainly not in the sense that they knew anything much about it or had an eye for an attractive or collectable item. My father’s mother had lived (when I was a youngster) with her sister, my great aunt, in a large Edwardian house not that far from Sevenoaks in Kent. When they both passed away – within a month or so of each other – my father executed their estate. Looking around the house – which had not been updated for many a long year – we were struck by some of the beautiful pieces of furniture that they had obviously accumulated over an extensive period. When I asked my father why he would not, for example, hang on to that lovely Victorian dining table and chairs (it being considerably more attractive than the one that they then possessed) he simply opined that “a table is a table“, in spite of clear visual evidence that that was not in fact the case. When said dining room furniture was eventually sold at auction he expressed surprise at the value that was placed upon it and, indeed, at how much it sold for.

I was at the time living in the very first house to which I was a party to the purchase. This was a most pleasant but tiny Victoria terraced cottage and there was scarcely room to swing a (smallish) cat, let alone to find room for further items of furniture – however lovely. At my grandmother’s house my eye had been caught by a really most attractive Davenport writing desk, after which I soon found myself hankering. I certainly did not want it to go outside the family so I persuaded my parents to hang on to it and also to ‘put my name upon it’ as a potential future inheritance. This beautiful item thus eventually found its way – upon my mother’s passing – to our home in South Buckinghamshire, where it looked quite as though it had always been there.

Naturally the piece followed us, first to Berkshire and then eventually across the pond (and a continent) to the West Coast of Canada, where it now sits proudly in our living room.

There is but one small problem, however. The desktop of the Davenport – though unlocked when the movers arrived in the UK – was firmly locked by the time the item was unpacked in Victoria. The key, sadly, was nowhere to be found. In spite of my best efforts since I have been thus far unable to gain access to the top of the desk… which is annoying!

Now – I can sense a certain impatience out there in reader-land. “Why is he prattling on about furniture (however lovely)?” – I hear you asking. “Is he just going quietly bonkers cooped up in doors because of the Corona virus?“.

Well – there is a connection and all will be revealed – but that may take one – or two – more posts…

What? You had something else to be doing?

 

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Crisis management

March 26, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“There is no longer such a thing as strategy; there is only crisis management.”

Robert McNamara

…which may well be true – particularly at the moment. What most of us are doing would definitely not count as strategy and I’m pretty certain that that goes for many of the world’s leaders as well. Some of them are palpably not even aiming for management…

The world is in a deathly strange place right now – and all is uncharted territory! Nothing that we knew before seems to apply any more.

And then there’s shopping! Not just exotic or even casual shopping – the sort of thing that used to fill rather too much of our time and would produce unpredictable – if not always unpleasant – results. No – I am referring to that simple, routine and essential round of visiting those commonplace purveyors of comestibles – the grocery stores/supermarkets – call them what you will…

It seems likely that throughout the world what was once a familiar ritual (or chore, depending on your point of view) has been transformed utterly into a mysterious and really rather threatening procedure, throughout which one constantly expects the sirens to start wailing, the searchlights to pierce the darkness and those masked agents of authority to swoop out of the shadows to haul one away for some uncomprehended infringement.

I exaggerate of course (though dramatic effect seems somehow superfluous in these dark days) but nowhere near as much one might have guessed before this all started.

Anyway – this is how it goes at our local Thrifty’s…

One aims to get there early – to avoid the crowds. The car park is sparsely occupied which gives one a false sense of optimism. The main entrance to the store – with automatic doors facing three ways – has been reconfigured to allow ingress and egress through two of those openings. A member of staff is on permanent duty there to ensure that people are only going in one direction at a time.

Only a very limited number of shoppers are being allowed in to the store at any point. Shoppers going in queue by one of the doors. This queue snakes round the side of the building and adheres to the spacing set by the big back crosses marked on the paving – each two metres apart. When one reaches the front of the queue one waits to be summoned inside. A trolley is offered and carefully sanitised by the staff member before one is allowed in.

Inside the store everyone struggles to stay two metres apart. We all pass down the aisles in the same direction, waiting for spaces to open up before we enter the aisle.

No bulk foods are available, though staff have  pre-packaged a reasonably selection of what is normally on offer. The fresh meat and fish counters are closed – and again there are more pre-packaged offerings than are usual for Canada (in the UK there is often a lot of pre-packaged fresh fish for example; in Canada there is rarely any – we get it done freshly by the fish guy). There is still a good selection of produce in store and whilst I was there last there were three semis (articulated lorries) outside unloading more supplies.

Every other checkout is closed so that you don’t stand next to someone else and again there are boxes marked on the floor two metres apart to control the queues. If one wishes to use one’s own reusable bags – as did I – one must pack for oneself (again – most Canadians expect the checkout person to pack) and the bags must be left in the cart and not placed on the checkout ‘desk’. The checkout operator sanitised the card reader between each use. I asked her what would happen if the moisture were to damage the reader. She told me they would simply get out another one.

The whole experience had a somewhat surreal post-apocalyptic air about it – as though one were visiting a hospital – or a morgue…

It is good to see everyone abiding by these necessary but completely foreign precautions. Perhaps we can get through this by working together. My fear is that when people realise just how extended this period is likely to be they will lose interest in being responsible.

Let us hope not – for all our sakes.

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Make yourself happy

March 22, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink


“If the reality makes you unhappy, make yourself happy with the surreal”

 Mehmet Murat ildan

We live in unprecedented times – concerning which I feel that I have more to say (though I am not yet ready so to do). For now – therefore – the ever so slightly surreal!

It is a given that the Brits are sports mad. So too are the Canadians of course, though for very different sports. So too – one suspects – are just about all other races that do dwell upon this usually pleasant planet.

Now – in the light of the current COVID-19 crisis and with all good folk very sensibly following the official advice and socially isolating themselves (and if you are not then you should be!) our lives have changed dramatically overnight. Maybe we are working from home. Maybe we are just staying at home. Either way, finding ourselves restricted in what we can and can’t do can be a fretful and stressful experience, particularly as we can currently see no resolution to the situation anytime soon.

With time on our hands and in search of stimulation it is no surprise that at some point – having exhausted other avenues – thoughts turn to sport. Since we must stay home so as not to spread the virus what could be better than hunkering down in front of the TV to watch our own favourite sport.

Except – of course – that in such times of national or international crisis sport is inevitably one of the first things that has to go by the wayside. In just about all sports current programs, leagues and competitions have been postponed or even abandoned. Who knows if the 2020 Six Nations will ever be completed? Certainly the English Premiership has been abandoned – as has the footie! As – of course – have other sports here in Canada and indeed all over the world.

At this point the TV channels – with a view to keeping the customer satisfied – naturally raid their archives to bring us re-runs of favourite matches and contests from days gone by. Nothing very surprising about that, one might think, but I saw something yesterday on The Guardian website that took the whole thing to a new and somewhat bizarre level.

What The Guardian was doing was replaying the classic 1970 FA Cup Final (footie!) between Chelsea and Leeds United. Being a newspaper, however, they were not screening the match itself, they were doing a real-time minute by minute commentary – starting at the same time as did the original match – and including reports of post match interviews and analysis and so forth.

Now – to do this they must have been watching a recording of the match and then typing in updates as though it was actually happening. What boggles my mind is that there are undoubtedly videos of the game available on the InterWebNet – so why would anyone sit watching The Guardian website for written updates on something that not only happened a long time ago, but that they themselves could also just as easily watch online. What is more, this was apparently just the first of a proposed series of such ‘replays’.

Well – I am, sure that there were those who really enjoyed  (or re-enjoyed) the experience – but I can’t help thinking that “There’s nowt so queer as folk!”.

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Sunrise/moonrise

March 18, 2020 in Life in BC, Photos | Permalink

I thought that in these times of danger and all-round ugliness it might be good to post something pretty instead.

For those of us who get up on the early side on work days one of the rare joys of the the clocks going forward is that we once again coincide in the mornings – for a brief period at least – with the rising sun. I can’t resist taking photographs:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid
Not to be outdone the moon has of late also been putting in unexpectedly powerful appearances:

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

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All change

March 15, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Ooooooo-kay!

So – it has been most interesting – and not a little nervous making – watching the walls slowly pressing in towards us. This was not how it was meant to be.

I am of course referring to the ongoing and increasingly immediate COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

It has been hard enough watching the headless chickens (however much one might acknowledge their anxieties) stripping the stores of comestibles, but it is sometimes difficult not to roll one’s eyes. As reports filtered back to me of frantic hordes in Costco loading up their outsized trolleys with toilet paper and emptying the racks in the process I was eyeing up shelves groaning with said same items in our local store.

Of more immediate concern has been the situation at the College. There are but three weeks or so of this term remaining – and I do not teach in the summer term. As governments and authorities have taken each faltering and uncertain step towards total social isolation – shutdown in any other language – so the odds have been shrinking of us getting to the end of term without having to step back from classroom teaching.

Well – now that point has been reached. The College remains open but there is a ban on face to face teaching. What this means is that we have to find alternative methods of delivering classroom teaching materials, running lab sessions and assignments and of handling the all important examinations.

The College is well enough equipped with appropriate technology. We have a slightly eccentric but quite usable learning platform and tools for creating and disseminating distance learning materials. The issue is not with the technology. The problem is with the time and effort that must now be put into converting materials meant for face to face delivery in the lecture theatre to online only form. Given that I had still to finish the necessary items for the last few lectures of this new(ish) course anyway I now have double the work to do.

The likelihood is that not everything will run smoothly. Mistakes will be made. Things will go awry. As the students’ education is at stake – for which they have, of course, paid not insubstantial fees – such things matter.

Finger firmly crossed on all fronts? Here we go…!

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The tide turns

March 10, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

My reluctance of but a few weeks back to talk at all about this year’s rugby has magically dissipated. Naturally this has come about because the teams that I support have had a good weekend. Had Bath not been schooled quite so comprehensively and to quite such an embarrassing degree by Exeter at Sandy Park it might even have been a great rugby weekend.

England were far too much for Wales at Twickenham, rediscovering their form from the World Cup at just the right point. The final scores were, frankly, closer than the game merited, as a result of England being down to thirteen men for the final ten minutes (through their own fault it must be said). On the run of the play overall they should have won convincingly.

Scotland – having come close but failed to register a win in their first two encounters – had finally done the business two weeks ago in Rome. Now they needed to beat the resurgent (and Grand Slam hopefuls) France at Murrayfield. The unbeaten French have started each game in the championship thus far at a gallop and have successfully hung on to the ensuing leads. Scotland, however, rather surprisingly find themselves flaunting this year’s best defensive record in the Six Nations – their parsimony with the points almost living up to the national stereotype. This promised to be a good contest…

…and close it was for the first forty minutes. Then – in classic French style – one of their young and hot-headed forwards reacted to a bit of the customary pushing and shoving by landing a hay-maker on James Ritchie’s jaw. Now, Ritchie is the sort of man for whom the term ‘nuggety’ was coined and he simply shook it off. The Frenchman, however, was duly dispatched for the remainder of the game and the Scots turned in an admirably ruthless performance to beat their Gallic opponents comfortably.

Joy!

The tournament itself, however, is now affected badly by COVID-19. Next week’s ‘Super Saturday’ (when all three matches are normally played one after another) has been reduced to just the first game – the Scotland/Wales fixture in Cardiff. The other matches will be played at some future date (probably in the Autumn – if at all) which means that there will be no actual tournament winner anytime soon.

The situation certainly does lend perspective to what is – and the end of the day – just a sport, but it is a great shame nonetheless. Our very great sympathies to all those who have been and will be affected by the virus.

 

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Waiting for spring

March 8, 2020 in Life in BC | Permalink

Winter lingered so long in the lap of Spring that it occasioned a great deal of talk.

Bill Nye

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid
It has, of late, been particularly wet here on the west coast coast of Canada. Not in the catastrophic flooding/exceptional weather kind of way that some other regions of the world have been suffering, but just a constant and relentless dampness from day to day. The aquifers are doubtless happy – as are the ducks – but as for the rest of us… not so much!

Further, even on days such as today – when the sun has decided to peep through the murk and the temperature has climbed to something approaching acceptability for human life – come eventide it will have again plummeted towards the red (or should that be blue) zone and the nights remain consistently chilly.

As a result our early spring flowers have been caught in two minds as to whether or not to grace us with their bloomin’ presence. The snowdrops have done their thing regardless – but then, that is what snowdrops do.

The daffodils and tulips – on the other hand – have poked their heads out, formed buds and then just stopped… unwilling to burst fully into bloom until the sun comes out in a more meaningful way to provide some proper spring warmth. My worry is that they will just eventually give up without ever bursting properly into flower.

The glorious magnolia featured in these photos is at the college at which I teach. Hopefully this will act as an exemplar to our own rather more timid flora.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

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Back in harness

March 4, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“Happiness is not a horse, you cannot harness it.”

Russian Proverb

A glance at the postings to this journal containing the tag “February” will reveal but two entries – one on the subject of rugby (unsurprisingly) and one – from when we were still resident in the UK – which bemoans the grim nature of said month at a point at which I was obliged to travel a considerable distance to and from work in the dark each and every day.

This latter post contained this observation:

“February is definitely not my favourite month. To those who – like me – are struggling to rid themselves of their ‘winter overcoats’ in this post-Christmas period it will come as no surprise that February took its name from the Latin ‘februum’ – which means ‘purification’. The Roman purification ritual ‘Februa’ – a form of spring-cleaning for the body – was held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. In my case there is still rather too much purification to be done, I fear.”

Well – the good news is that for this year February is done… over… gone! Here we are at the start of March, the blossom is starting to appear and there is a distinct whiff of spring in the air. “Hoo-bloomin’-rah for that”, I hear you exclaim. Given all of the other ills that currently beset the world a little hint of the positive can be no bad thing!

And, indeed, some things are looking up – and for that let us be grateful. The Girl is well on the way to full recovery from the sinus infection that did its best to take the shine off our recent Mexican sojourn – and has rejoined the world of work. My sniffles and snuffles have decided not to develop into a full-blown ‘thing‘ and if we are both fortunate neither of us will have passed anything unpleasant on to anyone else (washes hands yet again to strains of ‘Happy Birthday’! – not the Stevie Wonder version).

In other positive news The Chanteuse, the Studio and I have been reunited for the first time since last August and work of a musical variety has been carried out. She is still going through some tough times but hopefully this will prove at least a little bit therapeutic. It will hopefully also provide us shortly with some sparkly new tracks to upload to our Bandcamp site, to which the gentle reader could subscribe should he or she care to be notified when said new songs are available.

Anyway – for all our sakes let us hope that the spring is not long coming, that plagues and pestilence are taken on and defeated in short order, that those of all persuasions who would simply ravage this poor planet for their own selfish ends are taken outside and given a damned good thrashing – and that the rest of us get on with making the world a better, more peaceful and more pleasant place to live.

See you there!

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