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Regular visitors to these pages – and indeed those who are subscribed to this long-running assemblage of trivia – may have detected something of a stony silence around these parts of late. There has been – it cannot be denied – an absence of posts.

The explanation for this phenomenon is simple. For the first time in around two and a half years the Imperceptible Immigrant and The Girl are off and away… travelling!

On previous such jaunts I have endeavoured to keep the blog up to date as we went; the which was not always easy, particularly when it came to the editing and uploading of photographs.

This time I decided upon a different approach; I would collect images, impressions and experiences as we journeyed, but I would not upload or write anything until we returned.

Well – our sojourn is almost over. In a couple of days we head back to the west coast of Canada. Once there I will again commit to electronic media all manner of impressions of the places to which we have been and of the things that we have been doing.

See you there!

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It should perhaps be unsurprising in such times as these – that is, both when the winter is yet dragging its feet and noisily denying a platform to the incipient spring – and when the pernicious pandemic, still charging ahead at pretty near full throttle, keeps us cowering, heads well down, in our cardboard castles – that our thoughts turn to other and (in our memories at least) more gentle times.

Yes – it is for such ages that nostalgia was invented. This post (and quite possibly the next) will be devoted to the subject of just such wallowage (a word which appears in abundance on the InterWebNet but which may not be located within any dictionary as far as I can see).

At this point two years ago we were excitedly preparing for our last visit to the UK and to Europe (now, of course, sadly different things!). As that was to be our first trip back since moving to Canada in 2015 it is not surprising that revisiting old haunts and re-uniting with loved ones – both family and friends – featured prominently on the agenda.

Having done so within these postings on more than one occasion I am not about to recount yet again our doings on that trip but more to dwell upon the aftermath thereof… the echoes, should one prefer. I wrote at the time of the friends and family with who we had been re-united and I also waxed extremely lyrical concerning the long-lost contacts that were remade – particularly with those with whom I had at one point been fortunate enough to have created music or theatre.

Quite delightfully many of us who re-kindled associations on that trip are still in touch by one means or another – but mostly, it should be said, courtesy of the InterWebNet. Some keep in touch by email – some follow this blog (and on occasion respond thereto) and others have formed or joined the sort of online groups that may be used to share memories of people, places and events from our shared pasts.

Quite apart from the pleasures to be enjoyed by the recollection of the treasured memories that may thus be evoked this does give me – at least (though I suspect others also) – pause to consider just how rich were the experiences that we shared and the relationships that we formed. In my view we were – and still are – lucky, lucky people…

The next post will concern one of those odd little twists of fate that perhaps all lives throw up… (or perhaps not)!

On with the nostalgia…

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Well, here we are at the end of this short retrospective – one year on – of our 2019 trip to the UK and Greece. The Girl and I had a wonderful and memorable visit to Europe – a fine balance between spending time with loved ones and old friends, revisiting a bit of the old country and getting to wallow in glorious antiquity in a part of the world that neither of us had known well.

As is the way of such things, on our return to BC we immediately started thinking about and planning further excursions, little knowing that – along with everyone else – our future travel plans would all have to be put on ice for an indeterminate and possibly indefinite period.

The Girl and I loved Athens and you can read the notes of a year ago and view the photos that I posted here and here.

Finally – a few more images from those taken in Athens:

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

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Back near the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis I wrote a post (pleasantly entitled ‘Make Yourself Happy‘ – fortunately without an exclamation mark) in which I reported on one of the UK national newspaper’s re-posting to their digital site of the ‘live’ minute by minute’ commentary of a favourite footie fixture from some point in the (middle)-distant past (1971 as I recall) – a notion that has, I observe, since been picked up and run with by all and sundry. My observations may have been ‘voiced’ in a tone that the casual reader – someone who doesn’t know me better – might have mistaken for cynicism (Who, me? Never!).

The problem that the broadsheet had accurately and most presciently identified is, of course, that during an extended lock-down – in which none of the usual newsworthy happenings – er… happens – there is nothing much left about which to write – apart from the wretched pandemic itself.

By now even the less fleet-footed amongst the gentle readers of these ramblings will already have figured out where this is going…

Yes – apart from gardening and… um!… well, that’s about it – there is not too much else to write about when one’s existence has been shrunk from our usual mad gay whirl to a really rather limited routine. I am not – of course – complaining. One is – after all – a long time de*d!

So – in the spirit of The Guardian’s enterprising sports editor I intend to replay coverage – in ‘real time‘ – of our legendary trip to the UK and Europe of this time last year (observe the date on the luggage tag in the accompanying photo). I will be revisiting – virtually – some of the places to which we went and some of the friends and family with whom we spent time a year ago. I will also, of course, be revisiting – somewhat wistfully – the Greek islands. Look out for the posting of some of the photos that didn’t make the cut first time round.

Of course, the whole point about keeping a regular blog is that one has an enduring record of what one did in previous years – and of when one did it. As this is all (somewhat rashly) available publicly (as it were) there is nothing to stop the gentle reader from glancing back through the archives to view the postings from a year ago. What I will be doing, however, is looking back through my rose-tinted spectacles with the 20/20 benefit of hindsight.

One of the first observations to make is how jolly lucky we were to have finally settled on traveling last year. Who knows when we might be able to do so again…

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Photo by The Lazy Artist Gallery from Pexels“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”

Jack Kerouac

The Kickass Canada Girl and I have been most fortunate in that during our time together (not far short of a decade and a half now) we have been able to travel both widely and well. We might not have ventured to quite such far-off and exotic places as have other friends of ours, but we have derived nonetheless a great deal of pleasure – joy even – from our joint excursions.

It probably goes without saying that foremost amongst those trips were our Atlantic crossings to Canada. We visited in 2006 (my introduction to both the country and to British Columbia) and 2008. We were back in the summer of 2010 to get married (whoopee!) and again in the spring of 2011 for less happy reasons. Those who have followed this blog throughout will recall that The Girl came to Victoria early in 2012 for a job. In the ten months that she was here and I was still in England we both traversed the ocean several times to see each other before her return to the UK in the November of that year.

Finally we visited at Christmas time in 2013 with the additional pleasure of celebrating my sixtieth birthday at the Wickanninish Inn on Chesterman Beach outside Tofino.

I say ‘finally’, but of course our real final crossing – to date – was in July of 2015 when we moved with all of our goods and chattels from the UK to Vancouver Island.

In the nearly four years since that momentous event we have not ventured in the direction of the United Kingdom or Europe… until now! (For those who have not been following these scribblings – I leave for the UK in two days time).

A dear friend here in BC asked me the other day how I felt about going back to the country of my birth. I told him the truth: I am really not at all sure how I feel about it. I am certainly looking forward to seeing family, friends and acquaintances and it will be good to visit some of the old haunts again. Beyond that I currently feel somewhat ambivalent – a feeling most likely re-enforced by the current political chaos there. I will just have to be prepared for any eventuality and I will – of course – document the experience in full in this journal.

Even more pertinently, perhaps, the friend asked me how I thought I would feel when – after nearly a month away – I returned to Victoria in June. I told him what I expected to feel. We will just have to wait to see how accurate is that expectation.

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