Tags: Drama, Youth Theatre
Back in the icy UK the Six Nations championship achieved its annual climax on a thrilling final day of gripping rugby matches. As is the way with this epic challenge some of the participants had reason to be well content with the progress of their campaigns whilst others did not. This year some of those who ended up in the latter camp were not, however, the sides that had been predicted so to do at the outset of the tournament. Nor – clearly – did they themselves expect such an outcome.
For the first time in many a year the Celtic cousins – Ireland, Wales and Scotland – finished the tournament in first, second and third places (respectively). I say ‘many a year’ – I’m not actually sure if this has ever happened before. All power to them, say I!
Many congratulations to the splendid Irish, who not only won the championship on the penultimate weekend but went on to record what is only their third ever Grand Slam. The Welsh may have been slightly surprised to have lost two matches but still to have ended up second in the table (or – knowing them – maybe not!).
For the Scots – third place from three wins represents their best finish for some years. They will not be content with their away record nor with the lack of precision which resulted in a fair number of points being left out on the field. They have made great strides, however, and play an attacking brand of rugby which is admired by supporters of the game of all hues. The manner of their victory in the Calcutta Cup in particular was to be cherished.
As for the remainder of the sides – well, perhaps we will draw a discreet veil over them for now…
As disclosed in my last post The Girl and I were in Vancouver last weekend for the Canada Rugby Sevens – and a thoroughly good time was had (and not just by us!).
Weekends away inevitably involve the taking of photos and this one was no exception.
Here is the UFO fleet over Saltspring! No – not really of course… just a shot taken through the ferry window on the way to Vancouver on the Friday evening.
BC Place always looks pretty after dark:
What of the rugby, I hear you cry! Well – it was a great tournament with some excellent rugby, played in a fabulous indoor stadium which engendered a lively party atmosphere throughout. There were some surprising results: Spain beat Samoa 25-0 in the knockout stages, for example. The final was – quite unexpectedly – between Fiji and Kenya. The Fijians won, which was a truly good thing as it appeared that some 25% of those present in the stadium were from the south sea island and their support was fervent throughout.
Most surprising team to watch were the US who put the All Blacks out to make it to the semis, largely on the back of a couple of the fastest sevens players I have ever seen; one of whom – Perry Baker – is an ex pro-(American) football player who retired at 25 because of a knee injury. He is now one of the best sevens players in the world. Extraordinary!
Current championship leaders, South Africa, could not get past the semis and Australia bowed out in the quarters – as did England. The Scots did not make the knockout stages but made up for it by winning the Challenge Trophy:
Once the show had ended on the Sunday evening we headed once again for Tsawwassen – tired but happy – to catch the late ferry. I snapped this sequence from the car:
Tags: Celebration, Photo, Rugby, Vancouver
On the 9:00pm ferry from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay – en route home after a weekend in Vancouver at the Canada Rugby Sevens (of which more later)…
Though clocks have already gone forward in Canada it is yet early in the year and the light has gone completely by the time we and a hoard of other contented rugby fans are ensconced in the cafeteria, snarfing down much needed victuals after a long and rousing day of cheering ourselves hoarse and singing lustily.
We have not even noticed that our moorings have been slipped and that we are heading out across the Georgia Strait when the purser comes the Tannoy:
“Would the owner of a black Chrysler 300, licence plate xxxxx, please return to the car deck. You’ve left your lights on.”
BC Ferries run a tight ship (see what I did there) and do not care to have their schedules imperiled by a car or truck with a dead battery holding up the unloading.
We all snigger a bit at the poor sap who has left his lights on…
Five minutes later the purser is back on the horn:
“Correction to my previous announcement concerning the owner of the black Chrysler 300, licence plate xxxxx. The lights aren’t the problem. The engine’s still running!”
Incredulous guffaws fill the cafeteria. How embarrassing is that?
Five minutes later the purser is on again. In spite of the previous announcements it is clear that forgetting to turn his car engine off is only one of this particular driver’s shortcomings. He is, perhaps, deaf as well – or at least has his head wedged firmly where the sun don’t shine!
Full of sympathy for the poor schmuck we naturally all fall off our chairs laughing…
There are no further announcements. Either the recalcitrant owner has finally engaged his brain and put in a belated appearance or BC Ferries have simply decided that enough is enough, broken into the car and silenced it!
I guess we’ll never know…
*Part 1 here, by the way!
Tags: British Columbia, Modern life, Rugby
Organising myself to pen entries for this eclectic journal has proved a challenge of late, largely because so much of my time is going into the two days a week that am I teaching Computer Literacy to post-secondary students at a local college.
Since I am teaching an existing course I am – thankfully – spared the necessity of creating a curriculum from scratch, or of having to produce the considerable quantities of material involved. I am obliged, however, to acquaint myself each week with all that is necessary for the delivery of two classes, for two ninety minute lab sessions and for homework assignments. I must – in addition – mark all submitted coursework and maintain office hours on campus so that students may avail themselves of my good services should such be required.
Had I started on this endeavour with a little more lead time than I did I might have been able to prepare further ahead. As things stand I am having to pick up each week’s material just ahead of time and to run through it all at home on the days between taking it into the classroom. I am as a result probably actually working nearer three to three and a half days a week.
This week I have had also to devote time to the ‘delightful’ task of preparing (thankfully not from scratch) a Mid Term Exam paper, which my doughty band of apprentices will be facing tomorrow. Stout-hearted they may be but they are also a somewhat motley crew. Who knows how it will turn out?!
I must admit to finding myself – somewhat to my surprise – rather enjoying teaching again. Putting to some good use forty years of acquired knowledge in the realm of information technology does compensate to a degree for returning – however temporarily – to a field from which I had gratefully retired. As things stand I will certainly consider doing another term in the autumn (fall) and maybe one more next spring… if they will have me. That would probably be enough however, even though I would firmly expect such subsequent terms to prove a considerably easier ride.
Though we are just passed mid term at the college my first season of theatre workshops at our neighborhood academy of arts is approaching its final week. I realise – looking back – that I have thus far written but little about this, probably for fear of jinxing the project. I promise that I will make amends in a future post.
For now I can report that though our troupe of young thespists is yet small they are all clearly keen to be with us and have thrown themselves enthusiastically into the sessions. Further, both they and the academy have indicated that they want more, so a second term is being planned and is scheduled to start in April. This will hopefully all build slowly until the point at which it takes on a life of its own and sails off happily into the sunset.
Tags: Drama, teaching, work, Youth Theatre
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on”
William Shakespeare
I have always dreamed vividly!
Such is – I would hazard – true of many people. Indeed, it is likely that the only real variation is in the intensity of the dreams themselves and in how much of them we can remember upon awakening.
Now, I don’t have much truck with the analysis of the meaning of dreams – certainly not in the ‘if you dream of falling/flying/marrying your mother etc that means xxxx‘ or like manner – though I do have a certain amount of time for Jung’s thinking on archetypal symbols. The business of dreaming itself is of considerable interest, however. I am fascinated by the repetition within dreams of images and memes that date back many decades. Why should those particular notions seem so constant when many other similar ones have faded?
I am also curious about the structure of dreams; of the way in which disparate elements conflate and apparently incongruous situations merge into one another. I find myself wondering (as have many others, of course) what mechanism could possibly be responsible for such apparently ‘real’ sequences and as to what purpose they truly serve.
The other night I dreamt that The Girl and I were in Edinburgh at festival time. We have both separately visited Edinburgh (many times in my case) but I have not attended the festival since the mid 90s. In the dream we had entered an old church which was clearly in use as some sort of venue – a common enough experience during festival time – and I was aware that we were on our way to meet other people. Down at the front of the space there was a group of young people and it was clearly they with whom we were to convene.
It rapidly became apparent that they were all once members of the youth theatre that I helped facilitate back in the 70s and 80s in the UK and I realised (as one mysteriously does in dreams) that they now held regular reunions in Edinburgh during festival time. It was good to meet again people that I had not seen for decades and the occasion was a joyous one. What was odd about the encounter (though not so strange in dream terms) was that these young people were all exactly as I remember them… they had not aged at all!
The Girl and I – on the other hand – had certainly done so!
Now that’s somewhat spooky!
Tags: dreams, Memories, Youth Theatre
My apologies in advance. I am aware that for some readers of a… er… sensitive disposition, this may be just a little too soon! Oh well…
I have not – contrary to my custom at this time of year – made any mention thus far of the Six Nations Championship. (I have not – in fact – mentioned rugby at all of late, though in part that is because Canada have been having such a shocker – failing to qualify for next year’s world cup unless they can win next November’s last-gasp repercharge competition).
The reasons for my unnatural reticence are not hard to discover. Following Scotland’s excellent summer and autumn results against Australia and their close run encounter with the fearsome All Blacks, many commentators were guilty of getting rather carried away with their potential for the altogether more serious northern hemisphere championship.
True to type Scotland went to Cardiff three weeks back for the opening encounter with Wales and were – to put it bluntly – humiliated. Mercurial fly-half, Finn Russell, played poorly and the team lost by a disappointingly large margin. Russell was not much better the following weekend at Murrayfield against France, though wiser heads helped the team to keep its nerve in the face of a fast French start, clawing back enough points in the second half through penalties as the Gauls tired badly to win the game by a narrow margin.
At this point in the tournament there is a brief hiatus – a two week break before the third fixture. This gave the pundits plenty of opportunity to speculate widely as to the likely outcome of today’s Calcutta Cup fixture against England at Murrayfield. Last year at Twickenham the English had done to the Scots what the Welsh did this year – only more so! Much was written and posted about how the Sassenachs – in pursuit of a Grand Slam and eying a record third championship title in a row – would target the hapless Russell and embarrass the Scots, extending to more than a decade the gap since the latter had beaten them anywhere.
I feel that I hardly need write more – and indeed those interested should head for the sports pages for the full story. Needless to say, the Scots made the English look ordinary, Finn Russell turned in a Man of the Match performance and Scotland won a famous victory 25 – 13!
I will certainly be celebrating (more so because a depleted Bath also beat Sale by a point at the Rec in the Premiership) – and if Canada could follow last week’s storming win in the Americas Rugby Championship against Brazil by sneaking an unlikely away win in Argentina this afternoon… then I would be a very happy boy indeed!
Slàinte mhòr…
Tags: Celebration, Rugby, Scotland
Flurries, they said… flurries!
Fair enough – it is the last week in February and we have not thus far – at the southern end of this fair isle – seen any snow at all (unless we missed some whilst away in Mexico!)… but I for one was certainly not expecting this little lot! I thought the only white stuff we were going to see was via the big screen from South Korea…
Oh well! I feel sure that spring is just around the corner…
Tags: British Columbia, Photo, Weather, winter
Of course, the very day that I post a fairly flip piece about the Winter Olympics – and about Canada’s passionate though surely understandable love affair therewith – along comes a performance to take away the breath, to steal the heart and to show up as jejune any paltry attempt at humour.
I refer of course to Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’s stunning recapture of their Olympic ice dance crown four years after their disappointment in Sochi and their subsequent (but clearly premature) retirement.
Pushed all the way by training partners, the French couple Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron (who set a new world record score in the free dance) Virtue and Moir faced having to set a record themselves were they to retake the top spot. As the scores flashed up to reveal that they had indeed done so the Kickass Canada Girl virtually leapt off the sofa – and was clearly moved to tears.
I was in no position to offer succour as I was myself busy blubbing like a baby. In my case this was less to do with the colour of the medals or the perfect justness of their win, but was entirely elicited by the impossible beauty and passion of their performance, dazzlingly choreographed to the ‘Moulin Rouge’ version of ‘Roxanne‘.
I could not help but be taken back in time to 1984, watching the grainy TV images from Sarajevo of another Olympic ice dance final as Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean stole our hearts to the accompaniment of Ravel’s ‘Bolero‘, taking a straight sweep of perfect 6.0s for artistic merit and changing the sport utterly in the process.
Wow! Many congratulations to Virtue and Moir (and to all involved) and a hearty ‘thank you’ for the great pleasure that you bring to millions.
Tags: Canada, Celebration, Sport
Further evidence (should such be required at this stage) that The Girl and I compliment one another nigh-on perfectly might be gleaned from our respective enthusiasms (and the consequent advocacies for those who strive on our behalves) during periods of Olympian endeavour.
The average Brit (and – yes… such a creature does exist, regardless of the protestations of some of those of a more intemperate and extreme ilk) who – like me – grew up marveling that such a diminutive nation could really have instigated or developed quite as many sports and games as it did (only to then cede dominance in them to other more aggressive and single-minded races) has probably been quite taken aback by the UK’s recent Olympic performances.
In the Summer Olympics at least!…
After the usual period of pre-games cynicism and belittlement many of us rapidly become the secret sports-nuts that we as a nation perpetually breed and find ourselves watching all manner of events on TV that, but a few days previously, we not only had no idea were sports at all (let alone Olympic sports!) but further did not know that Brits practiced them to any acceptable level. When we then win some unexpected (to us at least) medal in said contest we rapidly become InterWebNet experts on the matter and claim that we expected all along that our ‘athletes’ would do well.
The Winter Olympics are, of course, a very different story. Save for a glorious and now long-distant chapter in the history of ice dance (a form beloved of one particular sector of society with a fervour only matched by that appertaining to musical theatre) we Brits have, apparently, no winter sports skills at all* – with the strange exception of events which involve throwing ourselves off mountains clinging to some rudimentary and entirely unsuitable piece of hardware the chief characteristic of which is, to all intents and purposes, its cheapness (and please don’t feel the need to regale me with the actual cost of these chimerical devices)!
It is at this point that The Girl – being Canadian – comes into her own.
To be found, in the main, during the summer games loitering around the back of the stands puffing away at an ‘old fashioned’ rather than exerting themselves on field or track – come the winter Canadians suddenly start taking everything incredibly seriously. Should you suggest to your S.O. that – having won a sack-load of silverware already – it wouldn’t be the end of the world should Canada actually lose the hockey (never ice hockey!) to the US, you are likely to find all bedroom privileges curtailed unceremoniously for the foreseeable future.
Canadians have a passion for all snow and ice based sports that ranks alongside any other nation on this irriguous planet. “Quelle surprise” – I hear you mutter (with a slightly smart-arsed reference to the nation’s bi-lingual heritage) – thinking perhaps to add some gibe about the Canadian climate. Well – the fact that we rarely see snow at all at this end of Vancouver Island clearly does nothing to diminish The Girl’s enthusiasm for all things Winter Olympics – and such zeal is, of course, infectious!
So… Go, Canada, go!
* I refuse to mention Eddie ‘the Eagle’…
Tags: Canada, Celebration, Sport
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