…with apologies to those gentle readers who don’t have the good fortune to live in Victoria BC (or are currently holidaying in Mexico!)…
Click the images for the big picture!
It’s the second week of January. Must be time to take the boat for a spin!
Way back in the early 1990s (long before, of course, I had the slightest notion of even knowing anyone from the west coast of Canada, let alone of emigrating to this blessed spot) I came across a newly published and really quite extraordinary book – in the form of what I later came to know to be an epistolary novel – by artist, illustrator and writer, Nick Bantock.
Griffin & Sabine was the first in what evolved into a set of seven books which document the extraordinary correspondence between Griffin Moss – a London-based designer of postcards – and Sabine Strohem – a mysterious woman who resides on an island in the South Pacific. This communication commences with an exotic card from the southern seas.
Griffin
It’s good to get in touch with you at last. Could I have one of your fish postcards? I think you were right – the wine glass has more impact than the cup.
Sabine
But Griffin had never met a woman named Sabine. How did she know him? How did she know his artwork? Who is she?
The novels are exclusively in the form of exquisite and exotically illustrated postcards and of letters which are tucked into their envelopes affixed to the pages.
I think I was drawn to the original book not only by the sheer beauty of its design and artwork, but also by the magical and mysterious quality of its premise. I purchased a copy shortly after its publication, appreciated its allure and then tucked it away in one of my bookcases where it has languished ever since.
What I did not know then – or indeed discover until recently – was that though Nick Bantock grew up around London and in Kent, in the late 1980s he moved to Saltspring Island, British Columbia (scarcely a stone’s throw from our home on the Saanich peninsula) where he has lived ever since. I might not have discovered this fact even now had not Mr Bantock teamed up with Michael Shamata – the Artistic Director of The Belfry Theatre here in Victoria – to adapt the series of novels for the stage. On receiving The Belfry’s programme for the year and observing upon it notice of this premiere we naturally purchased tickets forthwith for the last show of the run, two days before Christmas.
With some difficulty (in the finding) I dug my copy of the book from our library. I was intrigued to know how this highly unusual graphical novel could possibly be adapted successfully for the stage. It is a challenge that I, frankly, would not myself have dared attempt (even had I the talent so to do!). I am therefore delighted to report that The Girl and I both found the production to be magical and moving and that it somehow managed to avoid all of the most obvious pitfalls that usually befall attempts at the marriage of two such wildly different forms. Let us hope that the production now travels further.
Bravo to Mr Bantock and to all concerned – say we!
“I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward”
Charlotte Bronte
Okay! Here we are – a week into 2019 and how is it looking thus far?… and let’s not have any of that negative thinking, “Doesn’t look any different to me!” sort of thing. Now is the time to accentuate the positive – or at least to look forward to the year ahead in the light of plans in the making and schemes being dreamt up. This is time of year for thinking outside the box – particularly if the box in question is quite such a tatty beat-up old thing as the one in which we currently appear to be stuck.
So here’s what The Girl and I are planning:
After a quick recuperative jaunt to Mexico for The Girl (I am otherwise engaged!) the start of the year will follow a familiar pattern… well, familiar in that it carries on where 2018 left off. The Girl works four days a week (when not gadding about south of the border) and has another three months of her course to complete before she is fully ready to strike out on her own. I have one more term of teaching at my post-secondary college – albeit on a slightly reduced timetable as enrollment is down. It may be that this turns out to be the last term that I will teach, but I have learned from long experience not to make definitive statements about such things. This unexpected return to work has certainly served its purpose and been a lot of fun in the process, so you will hear no complaints from me.
Once we are fully into the spring – however – everything changes. Come the middle of May we are heading for the UK and for Europe. This will be our first visit to those shores since leaving in 2015 so will definitely be a big deal. There are multitudes of family, friends and acquaintances to be visited, as well as places that we would love to see again and experiences that we will want to have. We end the trip with an expedition to Greece for a short recuperative cruise around the Greek islands.
Much, much more information about our jaunt will be forthcoming over the next few months, so – should you have an interest – watch this space. Let’s just hope that the country is still there when we get back!
Once back in BC in the middle of June there is much more to look forward to. At work The Girl steps down to a three day week and starts ramping up her new endeavour. “Bon chance“, say I!
Festival season will then rapidly be upon us and this year for me there will be an additional thespian enterprise to be anticipated. I came to the view at year end that it was high time that I made some theatre again. I have thus booked the Intrepid Theatre Club for two nights in October and I intend to stage one of my pieces there. At this point there is still much to be explored – much to be decided – but 2019 feels to me like the year to once again dip my toe in the water.
There will surely also be more music to be made this year. 2018 was particularly creative in this regard so I have high hopes. Further news on this front will also emerge as the year progresses.
There will doubtless also be other breathless things to anticipate but this would seem to be quite enough to be going on with for now. It is going to be a big year all round.
Let’s hope its a good one…
Let’s make it so!
…just happened?
2018 – that’s what!
The Girl and I spent a very low-key Hogmany last night, staying up barely long enough to greet the new year as it poked its head nervously around the door. Who can blame it? After 2018 was dragged from the room, kicking and complaining, punching the air with all of the self-possession of a drunk going down for the third time, 2019 was pushed and prodded into the limelight, most likely feeling anything but ready.
I am reminded of an occasion many years ago at the Edinburgh Festival. The Youth Theatre with which I was heavily involved had taken a show to the Fringe. Fighting – as ever – for any publicity we could get we had taken a late night slot at the Fringe Club to parade our wares. As we waited nervously in the wings – instruments at the ready – we could hear the previous act going down a storm. As soon as they finished there was a mass exodus from the hall, with hundreds of souls pouring out and heading for the bar. Nervously we tiptoed in. Magically the place was still packed to the rafters, with considerably drunk and extremely raucous revelers, all armed to the teeth with heckles! The less said about our performance the better, but as we left one of the young thespists turned to me and said:
“Don’t ever ask us to do that again!”
OK! So this is traditionally the point at which I look back at the outgoing year and summarise what has happened for us. Given that everything at the moment is overshadowed by the scary goings-on in the wider world it must be admitted that – though the year has thrown up more than a few surprises – we have done pretty well for ourselves.
2018 was always going to be the difficult year for us. When we did our retirement projections well before we left the UK we could see that there was going to be a financial dip, caused in part by the fact that my state pension does not kick in until part way through 2019. The collapse of the Sterling/CAD exchange rate that followed the Brexit vote made things worse, though being able to purchase ahead gave us something of a buffer up to this time last year.
It was clear that I was going to need to earn some extra monies to support our adopted lifestyle. By this time last year I had failed to find temporary or part-time work and it was not clear how I was going to do so. I was most fortunate to land the teaching contract that I did, and even more fortunate that I got another one for the autumn (Fall). With luck I may have another for the coming spring. Of course, none of this had been planned at our point of departure and I really had thought that my working days were over.
The Girl has had a difficult year at work as a result of changes to which I alluded in my equivalent report of this time last year. Change is never easy and as a species we tend to handle it poorly. She has persevered – something that is a most admirable strength of hers – and it does seem that the situation with her agency is now greatly improved. Fingers crossed.
She is not, however, one to sit back and to let things come to her. She has thus spent much of this last year planning her slow withdrawal from the world of work as she currently knows it. To this end she is undertaking a year’s course of study which will equip her to set up her own business, which will then gradually supercede her current role.
With regard to matters artistic it has also been a somewhat varied year. I got to teach a term’s worth of drama to a small but keen group of youngsters up here on the peninsula, but it rapidly became clear that there was no easy route to making this into something more permanent. My efforts in the realm of theatre have thus been primarily been devoted to wearing my Board of Directors’ hat for Intrepid Theatre. I have been able to spend a fair amount of time making music and I am hopeful that developments towards the year’s end might result in a further collaboration in the new year.
2018 afforded us little opportunity to travel aside from the excellent short trip that we made to Montreal during the spring. It is our intention that in this regard – as in many others – 2019 will be different.
Tags: Memories, New Year, reflections
“Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet or fine on Christmas day or Doomsday.”
Dylan Thomas – A Child’s Christmas in Wales
Our Christmas Day constitutional was to Island View Beach. There was no snow and the sun broke through in a most pleasant manner…
Very lovely!
…of the year!
Edward Pola and George Wyle
Yes – it’s that time of year again…
…to friends, acquaintances and gentle readers…
from the Kickass Canada Girl and the Imperceptible Immigrant.
Have a wonderful Christmas and a splendid Hogmany!
Tags: Celebration, Christmas, Photo
“…and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!”
‘King Lear’ – William Shakespeare
The first serious storm of the season ripped its way across the southern end of Vancouver Island yesterday afternoon – tearing dead wood and fresh young fronds alike from the trees, decimating the power grid and scattering bins and other appurtenances to the four corners of the earth…
It certainly seemed that way!
We lost a number of large branches from the trees that border our garden and our power was out for a little over five hours – fortunately being restored at around 5 pm just as it got dark (which it does here later than in the south of England at this time of year).
We were lucky that we got off lightly. The BC Hydro (our power provider) website shows that – 24 hours later – the southern end of the island is still subject to 256 outages affecting 33,777 customers. Our friends in Saanichton did not get their power back until midnight – by which time they were already fast asleep!
Reports suggest that the storm was quite the worst seen in the area for some seven to eight years. Tragically, one person was killed by a falling tree. BC Ferries cancelled 130 sailings on 14 routes and the ferry dock on Penelakut Island was severely damaged. On the mainland a man had to be rescued by helicopter after becoming stranded when the wooden pier at White Rock was broken in two by boats that had been torn from their moorings.
It is the norm in this neck of the woods for the winter storms to start – and indeed to be at their most severe – during November. That did not happen this year (November being particularly mild) which may well be yet another sign of the world’s weather systems being seriously out of kilter.
Bizarrely, however much damage did result the winds proved insufficient to blow away some of the less attractive inflatable Christmas decorations which ‘grace’ front gardens in this part of the peninsula!
Make of that what you will…
For those of us chaps who hail from a certain middle-class background in the UK – ‘bourgeois’ one might call it were it not for the pejorative connotations thereof (the Urban Dictionary includes this definition: “Bourgeois: originally refers to the middle class people in a capitalist society, however now used to refer to posh people!“) – there may be shared trajectory when it comes to the ownership of the necessary apparel and accoutrements for ‘dressing for dinner’.
This may be a little cryptic for some. Let me explain…
When one is a young man and goes up to college – or for some when they first find themselves in the sort of professional environment in which formal entertaining is de rigeur – there comes a point at which a young chap must needs have access to a dinner suit – or tuxedo, should satin be your thing. For most of us at that age and point in life, the purchase of such an outfit is out of the question and the costs of hiring seem similarly prohibitive.
For many the best course of action is (as it was for me) to scout around the many antique emporia with which the UK is blessed, searching for a suitable second (third, fourth, fifth!) hand outfit at a reasonable price. Given that most dinner suits see very little wear in their lifetimes this is an eminently sensible approach. I myself picked up a rather splendid Edwardian DJ many decades ago in an establishment that might have been in Bath – or just possibly in Camden Market in London… I forget which.
This sort of cobbled-together outfit usually does just fine until one slopes into middle age, expanding all the while in more ways than one. Of course, by that point one is usually also rather more comfortable in all regards and the hiring of a tux from a gent’s outfitter becomes just one of the incidental costs of life.
This course of action would probably see one through, were one not – like me – to find oneself in the sort of situation in which the invitations at certain times of year flood in so thick and fast that visits to Moss Bros (or other clothier of choice) become an almost weekly occurrence. There came a point in my middle years when the costs of repeated DJ rentals caused me to rethink the math (as they say in North America) and to accept that it was time to bite the bullet and to purchase my very own dinner suit. It might also at this point have crossed my mind that I could pass the fruits of such an investment on to my son and heir – if I had one – which I don’t…
What I did not anticipate was that at some later point the aforementioned tux would be unexpectedly rendered obsolete. For this some of the blame must be laid at the (dainty) feet of the Kickass Canada Girl, for it was she who suggested that – for our then impending nuptials – I might finally acquire for myself the complete Highland regalia. Once one owns the full eight yards, the Prince Charlie, the Ghillie Brogues, the Sgian Dubh and all the other trimmings one has little need for an alternative formal dress.
Or so I though until a few weeks back! When I offered to assist a dear friend with the hosting of a pre-Christmas ‘At Home’ at her magnificent residence but a short hop up-island, I am not sure quite what form I expected that support to take. It turned out that what she had in mind was that I should dress formally for the occasion in tails (I fore-went the white tie, but at least my black tie was a ‘real’ one: most Victorians seem prepared only to sport the ‘pre-tied’ variety!). Now – I don’t have a tailcoat of my own and had to hire one, but to save money I determined to press into service my old dress trousers (‘pants’ for Canadians).
I had not worn these for over a decade and nor had I tried them on until the day before the event. I hardly need say that I am somewhat more stockily built than I was in my younger days and even after emergency button-shifting surgery I learned over a five-hour period a little of what it must have been like for the ladies back in the days when corsets were worn.
Of such rich experiences our lives are made…
Tags: Attire, Celebration, Christmas, Dressing for Dinner
A necessary adjunct to my last posting:
Tags: Celebration, Christmas, Photo
Where do Christmas Trees come from?
Well – in our case from the Saanichton Christmas Tree Farm!
As you can see they don’t just do Christmas Trees – but that is a big part of their annual turnover.
We chose our Christmas Tree some three or four weeks ago. Here it is growing happily in a rather boggy paddock – with our tag on it.
The farm lends the eager customer a saw and the latter sets forth for the far reaches of the estate to try to locate the chosen tree. There he or she appropriates a lumberjack stereotype for a brief period, being careful to cut the tree at least a foot (two branches) above ground level so that it can regrow for future plaid-clad wannabees. Unlike our days back in Buckinghamshire, when I used to collect our Christmas Tree in Pearl (our classic Mercedes convertible – with the top down!) here in BC it is unceremoniously lashed on top of the Lexus. Not terribly dignified, but ’tis but a short run home!
…and here is it in our drawing room waiting to be ‘dressed’.
Tags: Celebration, Christmas, Photo, Victoria
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