The Imperceptible Immigrant – Page 64

Island life – part 2*

March 12, 2018 by admin

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!

Mid term and more

March 8, 2018 by admin

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.

Such stuff…

March 5, 2018 by admin

“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!

Jings!

February 24, 2018 by admin

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…

Woah! Where did that come from?

February 23, 2018 by admin

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…

Solid gold!

February 20, 2018 by admin

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.

It’s all downhill…

February 19, 2018 by admin

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’…

Details, details…

February 14, 2018 by admin

I could not resist taking some further snaps of some of details of our recent renovations. I hope that my posting some of these to this forum will not try the patience of the gentle reader too far. This will – I promise – be an end of it!

Tomorrow never knows

February 11, 2018 by admin

In 2014 John Mann – actor and singer with the Vancouver based Celtic-rock ensemble, Spirit of the West – was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. He was just 50 years old.

Many of us will have had some experience of a loved one contracting Alzheimer’s or dementia and of the subsequent evanescence of personality and the dissipation of a presence that once played a large part in our own lives. Tragic and deeply sad enough in someone who is approaching the natural end of their days, we can only imagine what this might be like for one still in the prime of life, not to mention for those around and close to them who must endure the slow premature declension of a loved one.

Mr Mann’s wife – Jill Daum – is a playwright and her instinctive reaction to finding herself in this grievous position (with her husband’s full support, I should add) was to give in to her subconscious urge to allow the play that she was currently engaged in writing to morph into an examination of what it is like to find oneself in such a situation. The world premier of this brave piece – ‘Forget About Tomorrow’ – took place recently at the Belfry Theatre in Victoria and The Girl and I were present at last Sunday’s performance.

One might fear that such sombre subject matter would result in a worthy but grim night in the stalls, but Ms Daum is – thankfully – a far better playwright than that. She successfully locates (and subsequently mines auspiciously) the emotional motherlode that most writers spend their lives seeking – producing in the process a piece that can move an audience to tears one moment only to have them rolling in the aisles laughing but a few seconds later. The payload of the play is delivered all the more effectively for this skillful balancing act and the audience reaction at the close left no doubts that the target had been well and truly straddled.

Plaudits of course to Ms Daum and to Mr Mann (who contributed two songs – which may well be his last – to the enterprise) as well as to Michael Shamata, who directed with the most assured of touches, and to Jennifer Lines and Craig Erickson who play skillfully and truthfully Daum and Mann’s alter-egos – Jane and Tom. Excellence all round…

For me, however, the highlight was quite possibly the creation of Lori – Jane’s larger than life (how Canadian!) boss – played with considerable panache and dry, dry humour by the splendid Colleen Wheeler. Not only is Lori the source of much of the humour in the piece but she also manages to act as a very necessary counterweight to the emotional drama elsewhere – standing up for the everyman (everyperson?) who represents us in the face of others’ tragedies.

Following a couple of shaky seasons (in our humble opinion) the Belfry has landed three from three thus far this year.

Fight for a ticket!