“I’ve been around long enough for people to know who I am and what my contributions are. They know me as more than just an artist. I think they know me as a woman as well.”
Aretha Franklin
“I will always be singing somewhere.”
Aretha Franklin
Speaking of Scouts (as I was in my last post) brings to mind no end of memories from way back in the 60s and 70s. No surprise there really…
There was (and indeed still is, I see) a Scout campsite but a few miles from where we grew up in (reasonably) leafy Surrey in the UK. We used to go there quite a lot for weekends throughout the year and the site was heavily used even back then. It is now billed as a ‘multi-purpose site’ and is clearly open to all manner of youth and educational organisations, rather than just to scouting boys as it was then.
I have a strong recollection of hiking to the site with a reasonably large group, carrying all of our camping gear along what was even then a busy main road on a trek cart. I don’t know how many of these splendid contrivances yet survive but I would not be surprised if it were no longer legal to take one out on the public highway.
Winter visits to the campsite were particularly interesting. We considered that sleeping in the scout tents of the day was just too brutal when there was a thick frost on the ground, but were fortunate in that the site had a cabin (it now has three!) with a big wood stove in it. Many a happy weekend was spent figuring just how much of a fug could be engendered therein by firing up a big blaze and stoking the stove as furiously as we could. Of course, we then had to try to sleep through the ensuing miasma!
As I recall the place was affectionately and unsurprisingly known as ‘Smokey Joe’s‘.
At that age I naturally simply followed the example of my peers and it didn’t occur to me to wonder as to the origin of that soubriquet until I used it as the title for this post. The InterWebNet is slightly less helpful than usual – with most references being to contemporary food joints, cigar lounges and clothing companies – not to mention the Leiber and Stoller based songbook musical, “Smokey Joe’s Cafe‘.
These references are, however, all too recent.
The Urban Dictionary offers an alternative slang definition which refers to a somewhat ‘colourful’ sexual practice that I certain would have been far too young to have understood at the time.
Probably the closest I can get is the somewhat older phrase ‘Smoking Joe‘ which – long before being applied to the legendary Joe Frazier or being adopted as slang for cigarettes – was used to refer to the steam engines that were developed in the eighteenth century to power the nascent industrial revolution.
That at least seems appropriate.
These atmospheric remembrances are particularly brought to mind just now by the fact that – somewhat later than last year but just as unwelcome – the view from our windows has vanished in a haze of smoke from the various wildfires burning not just in BC but also down through the US as far as California. I gather that this year’s smoky cloud cover is unlikely to last as long as did last year’s, but we still cannot wait to see the back of it.
In a post that already features one great heavyweight, let’s end with another:
“Generally when there’s a lot of smoke… there’s just a whole lot more smoke.”
George Foreman
Tags: British Columbia, Memories, scouts, wildfires
My sister and nephew (her son) have both been involved for a good number of years with the Scout movement in the UK. They lead a troop (probably not called that any more) in the area not far from where we all grew up.
I was in the Scouts myself – as a nipper! – and then stayed on to become an assistant leader for a few years back in the early seventies. I learned a great deal from the experience – how to read maps and charts and to use a compass for navigation; how to build things out of ropes, pulleys and spars; how to get by in the great outdoors; how to cook and care for myself in less than optimal circumstances… how to pitch a tent blindfold!
I also learned how not to do a fair number of things – including how not to try camping even in the summer months using just a mountain survival bag and a sheet-sleeping bag. That was fun!
I parted company with the movement because I didn’t like the way the bureaucracy was heading. This is probably covered by ‘Health & Safety’ nowadays – closely allied, of course, to ‘Child Protection’, ‘Risk Management’ and so forth. I expect that there are loads of statistics available that demonstrate just how much safer it is being a young person involved in such activities now than it was back in the early seventies… should one care to look for them. If you sense a touch of cynicism in my tone it must surely just be down to cultural differences… or something!
I do, however, recall being able to decide on a Thursday evening (with a bunch of other guys) that we would head for the Welsh hills for the weekend. On the Friday night we would all pile into the back of a long wheelbased Land Rover and head down the M4 to the Brecon Beacons (or the Black Mountains, or wherever) where we would happily spent the weekend ‘yomping’ up and down mountains and indulging in ‘ham radio’ (youngsters won’t know what that is, of course!). The paperwork for doing that sort of thing now takes considerably longer than does the activity itself.
The final straw came when a group of our Scouts turned up at a summer fete for an annual tug-of-war competition (in which we were defending the trophy we had won the previous year) only to be turned away because we weren’t in uniform. When we pointed out that the Scout uniform was entirely unsuitable for such an activity the man in charge told us we should have changed after we arrived!
I had by then had quite enough of such petty tyrants! Well – I am a child of the sixties!
But where – you might reasonably ask – is all this going?
Well – my sister and nephew recently brought a party of Scouts (girls as well as boys!) to BC, to indulge in the sort of adventurous outdoor activities for which this province is known. Whilst they were here they managed to make time in their busy schedule for a visit to our North Saanich home for a relaxed lunch.
Not only was it good to see them both, but – given that my brother has already visited us here – the occasion somehow completed the circle, making yet another important connection between here and there.
…and to me that feels oddly important…
“A sailor’s joys are as simple as a child’s”.
Bernard Moitessier
A few more images of simple joys…
Here we are, approaching Portside Marina. Lots of expensive hardware ahead. The trick is not to hit any of it!
Nearly there…
And here is Dignity – safe in her slip. Note that she now proudly carries her name on her transom.
I feel sure that I should be able to tell you what the yellow thing on the pontoon is – but I really don’t know. It looks impressive so it must be important.
Someone will most likely volunteer the answer!
One of the many reasons for not swimming off the boat in the marina!
Spotted the other day on the rear bumper of a saloon car headed for downtown Victoria:
Not a new ‘meme’ – I discover – but one that I had not seen before and one which made me fall about laughing.
Should any gentle reader need me to clarify the reference (unlikely I know!) I will most happily so do…
Fnar, fnar!
Tags: Funny
The cure for anything is saltwater – sweat, tears, or the sea.
Isak Dinesen
Some images from the last few weeks in the Saanich Inlet. Dignity and I have had a lot of fun poking around in all of the various and invariably beautiful nooks and crannies.
We would have accomplished more had her sonar transducer not started playing up. The Saanich Inlet itself is several hundred feet deep in most places, but I really don’t fancy trying to get in really close to the shore without being able to tell when we are about to encounter the shelf. Anyway – I think I am going to take the opportunity to upgrade Dignity’s navigation systems and to move them all on to the iThing. Never let it be said that I am immune to progress…
The inlet itself is a remarkable sixteen mile long fjord and one of the best studied marine basins in the world. The further in one goes the more impressive it gets.
Up at the head of the fjord is Goldstream Provincial Park – along with Goldstream marina.
Nearer to our home base in Brentwood Bay there is a smaller and even more gorgeous arm called Tod Inlet, which curls around the back of the Butchart Gardens and is – on summer Saturday evenings – packed with boats waiting to see the firework display. Indeed we did just that – with our dear friends – all those years ago on my very first night in Victoria.
Here we are on our way in…
…and here returning again to Brentwood Bay.
Should some of these photos appear a little – er – one-eyed… do please bear in mind that I have been out pretty much on my own thus far this year. Much as when driving a car it is not a really good idea for the helmsman to be concentrating on snapping pictures whilst supposedly focusing on the many other things happening around him (or her)!
Nice boat though..
“When I forget how talented God is, I look to the sea.”
Whoopi Goldberg
Time for some pictures!
A few weeks back – on my way to the Pride festival in James Bay – I parked on the seafront near Ogden Point overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It was impossible not to be overwhelmed in by the breathless beauty of the sea on that particular morning. As an ever evolving sky created a constantly changing vista I snapped these studies on my cell phone. Unable to choose between them I offer the gentle reader a pallet from which to make your own choice. As ever, double-clicking will reveal the full effect:
…and what do they want?
It is – I suppose – emblematic of the ‘post truth’ world in which we live that I can quite brazenly declare (as I did in my last post) that I will spare you any more of my jaundiced thoughts on the current precarious political state of the western world – only now to bring you yet another post containing just such. In my ‘defence’ I can only plead that I realised that I had not fully covered one aspect of Brexit (and beyond) that was in consequence rather letting the villains of the piece get away with things that they should not (not that they would care!).
But we wouldn’t want that, now – would we?!
I have referred more than once to the small elite who stand to gain hugely from a hard Brexit, at a cost to those more humble souls upon whose hopes and fears they have so crudely capitalised. This coterie of already rich men (some of whom are involved in politics themselves; some in the media; some in finance and the ‘service’ industries) belong to the now much despised grouping that we might for simplicity term ‘neo-liberal globalists’. With the sort of outrageous chutzpah that is typical of their breed they wave the patriotic banner and appeal to the basest instincts of the population whilst they themselves are actually citizens of the world (if of anywhere at all!) who see nations only as opportunities to enrich themselves. In truth they actually have no ties to any nation.
These people do not just want the UK to leave the European Union – they also desperately want the European project as a whole to fail. Their wish is that Europe would revert to being a continent of individual nation states doing bi-lateral deals with each other. This would give them an excuse to drive the UK to become more ‘competitive’ – by means of a bonfire of regulations, the removal of workers rights, the forcing down of wages and the privatisation of any remaining public services (including the NHS and the BBC) – in order that that we (or rather they) might benefit from the sort of cut-price deals that they would be able to strike as a result. Once the nation has been fully stripped of its assets they would simply move elsewhere and start again.
If all of this sounds familiar, then it should be. This is – after all – the same agenda that Trump is pursuing in the US and Bannon et al are hawking to fascists all around Europe.
On the subject of familiarity I would encourage the gentle reader to think back to the last era during which Europe consisted entirely of nation states intent on making deals with each other. That’s right! I refer – of course – to the decades leading up to the Great War. Perhaps a re-reading of the history of how the continent found itself sleep-walking into that most hideous and unnecessary conflict largely against its will might prove timely, though since this year marks the hundredth anniversary of the end of that war one might have thought that it would not be far from our minds. Sadly I have no doubt at all that there are some more extreme individuals involved in the current debate for whom such an outcome would not be entirely against their interests!
How is it that this small group of extremists has managed to sway so many others to support their cause, even amongst those who would themselves inevitably be the ones to lose the most. This is one of the great mysteries of our times – as is the extent of the ‘rabidity’ that these converts display. Their relentlessness reminds me of nothing so much as the assortment of flat-earthers and conspiracy theorists that I have been unfortunate enough to encounter. The Brexiteers, having spent years complaining that British jobs were being lost to immigration – on grudgingly accepting just how badly the economy is likely to suffer in the event of a ‘hard Brexit’ – claim that the damage will be ‘worth it’ even if it means greater job losses than immigration ever caused. This simply makes no sense.
Neither – however – does the debate on democracy. It has been suggested that the current impasse may only be resolvable by means of another referendum. The Brexiteers are implacably opposed – not on the grounds that they might lose, but because in their minds this would somehow represent the denial of their democratic mandate. Surely if one referendum formed a valid part of the democratic process a further one must do also – since it would again reveal the current ‘will of the people’…
But I fear that I am now just going round in circles, which – given the very nature of the whole debate – is hardly surprising.
And with that I will now move on to more ‘important’ matters… summer & boats & music & friends & wine and so forth…
‘Nuff said!
Tags: Modern life, Politics
(Just one – honest!)
Whilst pontificating on the subject of Brexit – and I promise that I will shut up again about it hereafter – there is one other thing that exercises me greatly about the current situation in the UK – and that is the nature, the misunderstanding and the abuse of democracy.
Two years down the line from the ill-thought-out exercise that was the 2016 referendum (at which everyone claims to have known exactly for what they were voting though, of course, none of them can now agree with each other as to what that was) the loudest cries come from the Brexiteers who demand that the democratic will of the people be honoured. Any suggestion that the ‘willofthepeople’ might have shifted somewhat since the referendum is met with sneers of:
“You lost. Get over it!”
It seems that to these folk democracy is a static concept and that having achieved their goal in gaining a slim majority the result is now immutable. For all time!
This is, of course, the favoured modus operandi of despots, fanatics and extremists of all hues – those who fervently demand their right of access to the democratic process – once! Should power be gained history suggests that such democratic rights as exist tend mysteriously and irrevocably to be withdrawn shortly afterwards – usually as a response to some sort of emergency (such as any opposition to those now in power).
I am not, of course, for a moment suggesting any equivalence between the Brexiteers and such fascistic regimes (though you may choose to draw your own conclusions) but I am troubled that in all of this I detect a tone – a mood – of which I had not hitherto been aware. The constant chatter of the many and disparate voices of the more prosaic Brexiteers online and in the media suggest that they believe that, through the referendum, something fundamental has changed – that those like them who had previously felt deprived of a voice have now gained one – that the dis-enfranchised, the ignored and the forgotten now have a hand on the levers of power. It is clearly this to which they refer when they talk of ‘taking back control’ and their dark mutterings against any who threaten to deprive them ever again are intended to chill.
One almost feels that one should call out a warning – so oblivious are these zealots to what is really happening. They seem blind to the obvious fact that they are being ‘played‘ by a relentlessly determined and extreme ‘elite’ who are almost certainly going to be the only ones to emerge from a ‘hard‘ Brexit (should that be what the UK ends up with) better off (in their case probably considerably so).
Further – having observed the emergence of this new mood throughout significant parts of the land, those who are actually calling the shots will certainly ensure that never again is the populace as a whole given the slightest chance to repeat this ‘show of strength‘. Control may well have been ‘taken back‘ – but not by those who currently suffer the greatest democratic deficit.
When what I should almost certainly should not call ‘the great unwashed‘ discover that not only are others going to enrich themselves at their expense, but also that their glimpse at the controls of the mechanisms of state has been but a fleeting one…
…they are not going to be happy!
Tags: Modern life, Politics
I mean… WT actual F!!
I do try – tucked away as us semi-retireds are in this idyllic corner of the planet – not to let myself get too exercised about the frankly bizarre goings on in other parts of the world. Regular browsers of these meanderings may also have noticed that I have been trying in these dog days to refrain from allowing my feelings regarding the current political – er! – climate in the western world from igniting my admittedly short fuse and triggering one of my more intemperate rants on the subject.
Sometimes – however – such a zenlike state of restraint is just too difficult to maintain…
It is bad enough having to watch the orange buffoon re-invent international diplomacy by adoption of the mores of the play pen. Following the roaring ‘success’ of his apparently entirely content free summit with the North Koreans the tiny-handed blob has clearly determined to outdo himself. His recent European tour involved giving NATO a good kicking and then lying about the outcome of the summit, followed rapidly by issuing a (twitter) declaration that the European Union is an enemy of the US! He then trashed his hosts in the UK in an interview with a tabloid rag even before the visit had properly started, announcing that the Prime Minister of that independent state had got it all wrong and that she would be better replaced as leader by the rebarbative (and recently resigned) BoJo – a buffoon even more ludicrous than the 45th president himself.
All of this was, however, merely a teaser for the climax of the tour – an historic summit with Russian Premier Putin in Helsinki during which the orange one happily threw his own country under a bus over Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election (a position from which he has inevitably retreated once again back home). It was all that Putin could do to keep the smirk off his face whilst the cameras were still rolling. Jeez!
And what of Brexit – I hear you whimper? What indeed? Watching the tories tear themselves apart as they lurch from crisis to crisis is usually cause for amusement (as it is with Labour – though somehow never quite as funny in their case) but this has gone way beyond a joke. Having spent now fully two years getting somewhere near the point that they should have been before invoking article 50 in the first place they are now rapidly approaching the terminus with all the velocity of a runaway train and the resultant cataclysmic collision is not just going to hurt the tories as a party – it is also going to cause as yet unimagined damage to the United Kingdom itself.
This worries the hard-line Brexiteers not a jot. They simply force open the throttles and pile on the steam, whistles awailing, pounding ever onward toward their unicorn-inspired ignis fatuus of a low-regulation, low-wage economic playground in which they can all filthily enrich themselves before retiring from the resultant wasteland to live abroad.
At each of their successively more outrageous stunts Prime Minister May – seemingly almost as cowardly as her predecessor – bends over and gives them what they want. What neither she nor they seem prepared to admit is that the parliamentary topography has shifted to the extent that none of the possible options for Brexit is now likely to be able to attract a majority in parliament. Do any of them care? Eyes closed, fingers firmly in ears they simply chant “Na na na na na!” at each other.
Let us be blunt – no-one has the slightest idea what will happen next or how this farce can possibly be resolved!
Thus far the EU has itself had little say in the proceedings – and nor has it yet had to. The image that comes to my mind is that of a championship golfer – or tennis player or suchlike – who, geared up for the big match, watches in amazement as their opponent simply implodes psychologically before their eyes – gifting them an unexpectedly easy win.
Seems Putin is not alone!
Tags: Modern life, Politics
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