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Retirement

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All the news…

April 30, 2016 in Life in BC | Permalink

Image from Pexels…that’s fit to print!

New York Times masthead

Time for a quick catchup on some news from Victoria.

For the Kickass Canada Girl and I (wrong – but so right!) life sometimes seems to comprise such a constant stream of happenings and doings that our nascent existence here in BC evolves more rapidly than can reasonably routinely be communicated to those who are not fortunate enough to live at this end of the island.

To remedy this unfortunate situation herewith a brief parade of news items in no particular order.

Though I am myself a confirmed retiree – and delighted so to be – it was always a matter of some conjecture as to whether or not the Girl was entirely done with the world of work. After six months in which she greatly enjoyed a sort of trial run at retirement she perhaps unsurprisingly decided that she had more to give.

Following a couple of half-hearted applications for not entirely suitable positions the ideal opportunity finally offered itself. The Girl made a serious application – turned on the afterburners at the resultant interview and – to the complete lack of surprise on the part of all who know her – watched the interviewing board’s eyes light up not just with regard to the position on offer but also with a view to future elevation.

She is now working four days a week appraising the needs of clients of an extensive volunteer service that provides support for the elderly (and others) to enable them to live independently.

Hoorah for the Girl! Well done…

In my end of year post of December last I made reference to the legal matter that has resulted in our having to put in abeyance any immediate plans to renovate our house in North Saanich. Our initial hope was that the mere presence on our team of the big guns – in the shape of our hot-shot lawyer – would send the vendors scurrying to the negotiating table. Sadly they have thus far eschewed doing the decent thing and it has been necessary to serve the papers for a civil claim.

Hmmm! Matters grind on at glacial pace – in all regards save that of the ever mounting fees payable…

As also referenced in a jolly post but a couple of weeks back, my ‘Boating Essentials’ course reached its conclusion with yet another multiple-choice exam. To my intense chagrin I was yet again defeated by a single question in this test, though I did score well above the required pass mark. We then rounded matters off with a two day course on ‘Marine VHF Radio’, for the use of which it is obligatory to hold a certificate. I finally conquered my multiple-choice demons and registered a perfect score.

I can, however, take no credit for this happy state of affairs – that going instead to the Brentwood Bay Power Squadron. The preparation of students for examination by their training team is second to none and they have the awards to prove it. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole kit and caboodle and was most impressed by all concerned.

All that remains is for me to find a suitable boat…

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Life in the afternoon

February 14, 2016 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Afternoon in Naples - Cezanne“A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.”

Carl Jung

In the final part of my brief series on the subject of home-sickness posted in the run up to Christmas last year I concluded that the malaise to which I had briefly fallen prey that November had been caused in the main by feelings of a loss of significance – a lack of purpose – and of the concomitant confusion concerning my place in the world. I further opined that the topic of ‘significance’ was itself… er… significant and that I would needs return to it in some future disquisition.

Now seems as good a time as any so to do.

As noted in the aforementioned post my emigration to Canada was not the only important event with which I was occupied last summer. I had also reached the end a forty year career in education. I consider myself to have been massively fortunate to have had the opportunity to work in two of the UK’s leading public schools (public in the English sense here) and I felt toward the end that in my primary career in IT (primary in the sense that it was that for which I was most highly rewarded) I had gone about as far as I could go. I had acquired something of a reputation amongst those peers whose opinions I most respected and had little need to prove myself further.

The English public school is an ancient and complex beast – particularly those amongst their number that focus on boarding. These institutions have fashioned an uniquely self-contained and multi-layered culture which incorporates not only the academic, the sporting and the artistic, but also their own individual ethos and mythology. Some go so far as to insinuate into the English language their own vocabulary.

Those who work for these august bodies can choose to hold themselves aloof from such aeon-aged Weltanschauung – or they can cheerfully subscribe thereto. It will surprise no-one that I opted for the latter course, throwing myself into as much of School life as was feasible for one who lived several hours’ drive hence.

I was also for a decade a resident (being joined there in ‘mid-term’ by the Kickass Canada Girl) of a small village in South Buckinghamshire – the sort of rural idyll in which everyone knows everyone else’s business in rather too much detail. I by no means ranked amongst the luminaries (and there were a fair few of them!) but most of them knew who I was.

I served the village for a number of years as secretary to its cricket club. To those for whom the notion of ‘village cricket’ stirs thoughts of amiable amateurishness – or perhaps summons up images redolent of bucolic quaintness – I should point out that within the appellation itself the words ‘village’ and ‘cricket’ get equal billing. Whatever the standard of the play and the good nature and friendliness of the participants, membership of such a club does expose one to all of the pressures and pomposities attendant to rural politics and personalities.

This whole slightly convoluted explication is by way of an illustration as to how the structures that I had (mostly) sub-consciously adopted to support my life in the UK had successfully furnished me with a sense of belonging – a sense of purpose. I knew my place. Nothing out of the ordinary in that, of course… we all do pretty much the same. Reaching the end of a working life can, however, lead to a dislocation from this sense of place as, of course, does moving to a strange country. Doing both at the same time virtually guarantees it and having to start afresh to rediscover one’s sense of worth from scratch can be intimidating. In my case one of the side-effects was my brief bout of home-sickness.

As might be determined from those pre-Christmas posts my response to the malaise was to indulge – as is ever my wont – in a little navel-gazing. Interestingly the topics to which I have alluded above were not the ones that featured most strongly in the resultant retrospection.

Those that were – however – must wait for next time.

 

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Year ending…

December 30, 2015 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson Reidyear-end also year·end (yîr′ĕnd′)
n.
The end of a year: the value of the account at year-end.
adj.
Occurring or done at the end of the year: a year-end audit.

It is at this time of the year that the Girl and I habitually sit down and look back over the events that have unfolded throughout the preceeding twelve months. It is always good to take stock of what has (or has not) been accomplished and to use this as spur to encourage us onward toward the nascent season ahead.

It need hardly be said that the year just ending has been – to put it mildly – epic! We have retired from the world of work. We have sold up and closed down our existence in the United Kingdom. I have become a Permanent Resident of Canada. We have moved across an ocean and a continent. We have purchased a house. We have instigated the lengthy and complex process of setting up a new life here on the west coast of British Columbia.

Given that all of this is the culmination of a five year project it would not be at all surprising were we to be somewhat overwhelmed by the massive changes that our little lives have undergone. In the event the happenings of the last couple of months have added a momentum of their own which has imbued the end of the year with yet another unexpected twist.

I have already alluded in cryptic manner to an issue that has arisen concerning our house purchase that has required the intervention of the legal profession. As the matter is ongoing I cannot at this stage tell all. Suffice to say that there is an issue with the property that was not disclosed at the time of the sale – though it was known about. Given that considerable expense will now be required to resolve the matter, we are seeking – and are most hopeful of achieving – a suitable settlement with the vendors.

Then – a week before Christmas – we suffered a bereavement. When the Girl’s mother died when she was in her early teens, her mother’s best friend – an honorary aunt – stepped in and effectively raised her from that point on. Such was the robust nature of this exceptional lady that – though well into her eighties – we believed that she might live forever. She was always exceedingly kind and generous to us and we will both miss her terribly. For the Girl this is, naturally, a particularly difficult time.

The Girl was grateful that – by catching the 5:30am flight out of Victoria the Sunday before Christmas – she was able to reach the hospital in Kamloops (her birthplace) in time to say goodbye. She returned to Victoria on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, we entertained on Christmas Day and – early the next morning – took the ferry to the mainland and drove back into the snowy interior of BC for the memorial service. The Girl is joint executor to the estate and we will have to stay in Kamloops for a while helping to sort everything out.

All in all, not how we expected this momentous year to end. Regardless we wish all gentle readers a very Happy New Year, and a prosperous – not to mention hopefully calm – 2016.

 

 

 

 

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Homesick blues 3

December 15, 2015 in Life as we know it | 4 comments

Image from PixabayThis is the final epistle in a trilogy of posts concerning homesickness – particularly as it affected this recently retired immigrant (albeit an imperceptible one!) from the UK to the Pacific Northwest. The first two parts – should you wish to consult them – are easy to locate, but for those who prefer to follow links rather than navigation can be found here and here.

Though the end result may be pretty much the same, feelings of homesickness can come in many different guises. The ever helpful InterWebNet offers much useful guidance to aid the identification of the causes and thus assist reasonably rapid recovery. I found these discovered items – presented in no particular order – to be useful:

This article on gritandglamour.com – entitled ‘Getting over Homesickness‘ – draws attention to the parallels between homesickness and the grieving process.

“The brain on homesickness is much like the brain on grief—the stages and emotions are remarkably similar, and that makes sense. You are, after all, mourning the death of your former existence to a large degree.”

The article also contains a useful set of links to other related resources.

The importance of allowing oneself to grieve those things that have been lost is also the theme of an article entitled ‘One thing no HR Manager will ever tell you when re-locating‘ on a website called medibroker.com. Of course, the need to grieve that which has been lost is not by any means exclusive to expats – it is an essential skill that we must all needs acquire – but emigration can bring a number of such losses into focus at the same time.

I also found this article – ‘Homesickness isn’t really about Home‘ by Derrick Ho on the CNN website – to be most helpful.

“It (homesickness) stems from our instinctive need for love, protection and security — feelings and qualities usually associated with home, said Josh Klapow, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Alabama’s School of Public Health. When these qualities aren’t present in a new environment, we begin to long for them — and hence home. “You’re not literally just missing your house. You’re missing what’s normal, what is routine, the larger sense of social space, because those are the things that help us survive,” Klapow said.”

This was particularly apt in my case since I wasn’t just missing the sights snd sounds of home. Though I do – of course – miss friends and family, at this point in our lives our get-togethers and gatherings have in any case become rather few and far between. Also, although I do love my mother country fiercely the end of November does not present it at its best and such ‘delights’ as are to be found at that time are not the stuff on which I dream when I fantasise about its bosky beauties. My brief bout of homesickness clearly had other causes.

It did not take much soul-searching to identify what these causes might be. As the gentle reader is doubtless aware I am not just a recent immigrant – I am also a recently retired immigrant. To the other losses with which I have had to come to terms on moving to a new country must be added those associated with reaching the end of my working life. Such include the loss of the status that paid employ provides – the loss of a sense of structure to my life – the loss of a regular routine… in fact one might go so far as to suggest the loss of a sense of purpose.

I have spent much of the past few years telling anyone who would listen that I had no fears concerning retirement. I was eagerly anticipating being able to devote most of my time to artistic and creative endeavours once I no longer had to endure the daily trudge to and from London.

It is still very much my intention that this will be the case, but it seems that I underestimated the extent to which the opportunities that my previous working existence provided enabled me to exercise my creative muscle. Teaching drama at the School – directing plays there and at my previous school – availing myself of an outlet for my play-writing and composition… all of these will take some replacing and I duly mourn their passing.

The key element in this particular round of homesickness was thus mostly to do with the feeling of a loss of ‘significance‘. That is in itself a big topic which will require further examination – and which will in turn lead to further discourse on this forum.

That is – however – quite enough for now…

 

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Life lessons

August 25, 2015 in Life as we know it | Permalink

imageThis post has been a long time coming.

Regular readers will need no reminder of the tortuous genesis of our Canadian adventure. Should the casual passer-by wish to catch up on the history of our struggle to divest ourselves of our UK property – of the Kickass Canada Girl’s abortive 2012 attempt to establish a new career in Victoria – of our brief long distance relationship and of my delayed retirement… all of the necessary information may be gleaned from the archives to this blog.

I will simply refer all other gentle readers to this post, dating from the end of April of this year. This missive – lurking under the banner “A lesson in patience” – had as its theme the notion that the entire enterprise had been an extended education in endurance.

It turns out that in this regard I was somewhat off-beam!

The post contained the following paragraph:

“As the deadline for our departure for Canada approaches with all the subtlety of a runaway train we must keep our faith, our belief in our good fortune and our fingers firmly crossed. The universe is surely planning for everything to pan out just right – at just the right moment.”

At the point of posting the Girl and I had both made something of psychological leap, deciding that we would no longer fret and strut regarding our lack of progress but determining instead that we would retire and move to Canada in July come what may! Had we not found a purchaser for our Buckinghamshire apartment – or had my Permanent Residency at that point not been approved – we would go regardless and make of the emprise what we might.

It is now a matter of history that within forty eight hours of this missive having been penned we received – and accepted – a reasonable offer for the apartment. Within little more than a week of that milestone my application for PR was also granted.

The sale of the apartment was completed a mere week before we departed on our trans-Atlantic jaunt, just in time for a six-year high in the Sterling/Canadian dollar exchange rate to gift us a bonus of around $145,000 on what we would have had, had the property been sold when we first attempted so to do.

Our good fortune in finding our dream house in Victoria has been documented sufficiently recently that I need not repeat myself here. Suffice to say that faith in our fellowship of the fortunate few, which had been somewhat eroded over the last year or so, has been dramatically restored.

What might all of this mean?

Well – there is no denying that a great deal of patience has been called for over the last four years. The ultimate lesson – however – is surely rather that one should trust in the universe to provide what is needed – when it is most needed. One may – of course – ascribe this fortune to whatever higher force one deems appropriate. Personally I just think that we are just lucky, lucky buggers!

End of story…

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Ta-ra!

July 4, 2015 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

The_End_BookWell – that’s it! After forty years of continual employment I am no longer a working man. For the first time in my life since I commenced my education at the age of five (with perhaps the exception of school summer holidays) my existence has no clearly defined structure. This might take a little getting used to.

The obvious question – to which I am immediately subjected – is naturally:

“How does it feel to be retired?”

The answer, of course, is that I have no idea. I left work on a Friday. It is the weekend. It could – in fact – be any weekend, except that I don’ t have to go to work next Monday.

Still – I could be on holiday, and indeed I have no doubt that this is going to feel like being on holiday for quite some time, particularly as we head for British Columbia in just over two weeks time.

Have no fear. I am going to post on the subject of retirement. Probably extensively! But not now – not just yet…

This all needs to sink in for a while.

“Bear with…” – as the slightly dated cultural reference would have it…

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Songs of farewell

June 30, 2015 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Troop_ship_farewell_(000304-01)Towards the end of the morning on Friday last the academic year finally futtered to a close, the boys executed an Alice Cooper-esque exit from the premises and the teaching staff – dazzled by the prospect of several months of much needed downtime and recuperation – wasted no time in scurrying en-masse out of the School gates and – in some cases – directly to the airport.

I have known – by acquaintance at least – some of these individuals for getting on for a decade and I doubt if I will see many of them again. With a very small number of exceptions no goodbyes were exchanged. They were in a hurry to get away – I was busy trying to sort out an unexpected and unwanted communications problem.

I have no complaints…

A little more than a month ago – in conversation with my line manager (the Chief Operations Officer) – I expressed a fervent wish that I be able to avoid as much as possible of the usual round of farewells – dinners, speeches in the Common Room, mentions in despatches – and all other such discomforts.

“Good luck with that!“, was his assessment of my chances.

By my own criteria I have been remarkably successful at avoiding the worst of it, though a fair amount of ducking and diving has been required so to effect.

I can sense that some might be horrified by my attitude in this regard – indeed, a few have expressed such to me directly. I entirely understand that denying others an opportunity to express appreciation can actually be quite selfish, and it is not something of which I am particularly proud. Perhaps I should have ‘cowboy-ed up’ (as the Girl is wont so say) and got on with it.

I have no doubt that my experience as a child of any appreciation of achievement being expressed in only the most restrained of fashions was a generational one and I certainly hold nothing against my parents in this regard – but I can’t help thinking that this has probably played its part in my subsequent discomfort on finding myself the object of approbation. I know that Mother and Father were proud of some of the things that I did, because I have since heard through third parties that this was so.

I believe that my judgement is reasonably sound when it comes to determining which of the things that I have done have been of value, whether that be in my chosen profession or in my artistic endeavors. I find it very difficult to accept praise for things that I do not think have been done well.

In one extreme but illustrative example of the sort of difficulties I encounter I was once a small part of a production which received for its final performance an extended and – in my view – well deserved standing ovation – for completely the wrong reasons. The audience applauded the manner in which we dealt with an incident on stage rather than the quality of the performance. This upset me to a disproportionate degree.

The intensity of my feelings of embarrassment upon being the object of eulogy is apparently not confined to that which is said – but also can arise from that which is not… whether that be by the omission of reference to achievements of which I am quite proud, or through knowledge that some present do not actually agree with the sentiments that are being expressed… in which situation I have found myself in the past.

As will be clear from this diatribe I really am quite conflicted over this business, which should go some little way to explaining my preference for shying away from the whole kit and caboodle.

But then – maybe I am just over-thinking things…

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One…

June 18, 2015 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Image from Pixabay

 

…day more this week…

 

…week more this academic year…

 

…fortnight more until retirement…

 

 

Come on! You can do this…

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Ticking boxes

June 17, 2015 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

Image from PixabayThe antithesis of my love of language is a complete loathing for jargon in all its forms. This antipathy can manifest in different ways, from sitting in the back row at a product launch playing ‘Jargon Bingo‘* with colleagues, to getting into trouble at a high level meeting for snorting derisively and rather too publicly when one of the great and the good insisted that we must ‘get all of our ducks in a row‘. I won’t go so far as to claim that that faux pas cost me the job but I was gone from that worthy establishment within the year.

As you might imagine, ‘box ticking‘ registers fairly highly on the list of management-speak activities that sets my teeth on edge. Box ticking – however – is what the Kickass Canada Girl and I have been engaged in as we attempt to effect our egress from the country without forgetting anything important.

These things have we done in the past few days – in no particular order:

  • Cancelled the landline at our Berkshire apartment for our day of departure
  • Cancelled the broadband circuit at our Berkshire apartment for our day of departure
  • Ensured that we would not be liable to pay Council Tax on our Buckinghamshire apartment
  • Ensured that we would not be charged over the odds for gas and electricity at our Buckinghamshire apartment
  • Booked hotels for the nights between moving out of the Berkshire apartment and leaving for Victoria
  • Arranged an appointment with the bank to discuss our legacy financial arrangements in the UK
  • Spoken with Her Majesties Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to clarify how to get my tax coding changed after retirement
  • Responded to further queries from our purchasers solicitors regarding the sale of our Buckinghamshire apartment
  • Booked carpet cleaners for the Berkshire apartment subsequent to our moving out

This I have not done – though not for want of trying:

  • Cancelled my mobile (cell) phone contract. The contract actually runs until November 17th and would cost more to bail out of than to continue paying until then. However – it can only be cancelled by giving 30 days’ notice by phone, which means remembering to call Vodafone on or around 17th October – by which time we will of course be in Canada. Bah!

Still much to do!

 

* ‘Jargon Bingo’ appears usually to be called ‘Buzzword Bingo’ on the American continent. Same game!

jargon

Oh – I forgot ‘Brand Essence’…

Doh!

 

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One month…

June 6, 2015 in Moving to Canada | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid…until I retire!

Actually it is a little less than a month, being a mere four weeks… or twenty working days…

A rapid (and doubtless wildly inaccurate) calculation suggests that over the last forty years I have worked somewhere around nine thousand and two hundred days. And now I have only twenty to go!

Further – there are only six weeks left until we leave these shores and head west.

So – how is it all going?

In many ways things are going well, though there is no point in pretending that for either the Kickass Canada Girl or for I will the run in to our final days at work involve anything much beyond hard work and barely suppressed panic. Any notion of a gentle wind-down complete with much appreciative backslapping and ‘take it easy old chap – no point in busting a gut now‘ bonhomie was swiftly disabused by our respective managements on realising that some three quarters of a century of accumulated knowledge and wisdom was about to walk out of the door and that – for a variety of reasons – the ensuing skills-transfer and handover was probably not going to provide the well-oiled succession that might have been hoped for.

No matter. This too shall pass!

Other issues at the UK end are more promising. As previously reported my Canadian PR has been confirmed – our movers have been booked – our finances are as organised as it is possible for them to be.

You may have observed that I have – quite intentionally – remained remarkably reticent regarding the sale of our Buckinghamshire apartment, for fear of hexing the enterprise. I am not about to uncross my fingers – or indeed anything else – at this stage, but we do continue to be cautiously optimistic that all will be well in this regard.

At the Canadian end promising progress is being made. Our dear friends in Saanichton have already booked season tickets for us at The Belfry Theatre in Victoria and – on a completely different note – have also passed on to us details of a couple of possible contacts with as yet unlisted houses for sale. I for one continue to believe that all of this stuff will shake out just right at just the right time.

It is now up to the universe – in the words of Captain Jean Luc Picard – to “make it so!”.*

 

* Incidentally – I found on the InterWebNet a discussion on the origin of this distinctive phrase. It turns out to be considerably older than one might expect and is most likely naval in origin. Here it is in Herman Melville’s ‘White Jacket’ of 1850:

“The captain’s word is law; he never speaks but in the imperative mood. When he stands on his Quarter-deck at sea, he absolutely commands as far as eye can reach. Only the moon and stars are beyond his jurisdiction. He is lord and master of the sun.

It is not twelve o’clock till he says so. For when the sailing-master, whose duty it is to take the regular observation at noon, touches his hat, and reports twelve o’clock to the officer of the deck; that functionary orders a midshipman to repair to the captain’s cabin, and humbly inform him of the respectful suggestion of the sailing-master.

“Twelve o’clock reported, sir,” says the middy.

“Make it so,” replies the captain.

And the bell is struck eight by the messenger-boy, and twelve o’clock it is.”

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