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May Day

Today is the 1st of May.

By rights we should be well into spring by now and heading rapidly towards to the balmy, bosky days of summer.

Here at the southern end of Vancouver Island the weather gods clearly did not get the memo. For the last however many weeks (endlessly, or so it feels) it has been, it is only fair to say, markedly chilly… not to mention damp to boot.

Now – if I were to be strictly fair there have been some quite sunny days and even on (rare!) occasions it has felt just the slightest touch on the warm(ish) side. Such days, however, have simply rendered the disappointment of subsequent, less passable days all the more bitter.

The garden – meantime – has blithely got on and done what gardens do at this time of year – ie. grow prodigiously, regardless of what is happening climate-wise. This is in marked contrast to its response during the winter when parts of it reacted quite negatively to what I thought was not really that bad a fall of snow. Clearly my understanding was based on some of the less appropriate of the fifty words that the Inuits apparently do not have for snow – and this was really quite, quite bad snow. That is certainly the impression given by the number of plants that turned up their toes (interesting metaphor there) and gave up the ghost (alright – stop this now!)…

Anyway – I really should be cutting the grass now instead of writing this…

…well – that’s done – and it didn’t actually rain – though it did think seriously about it!

Where was I?

Ah yes… The winter term at College has finished (there is a theme here!) and the summer term (during which for this year I will not be teaching) does not start for a few days yet. I am off duty until September, so my mind should now be turning to all manner of summer activities… which it sort of is – though a bit of a warm spell would really help things along the way.

Now – I think I have laboured the point quite enough to be getting on with and I do promise that my next post will contain no mention of the weather at all!

What weather?!

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It is that time of year when I customarily release into the wild a couple of postings – one looking back to the year recently ended and the other looking forward to that just beginning. This is a device that I use to measure the accomplishments of the past twelve months against the aims that were set out in the equivalent missives of a year ago – before setting new targets for the year ahead.

In the light of all that has happened over the last two years (most of which has been completely without our control) I have decided to write but a single post this year. This reflects the fact that the pandemic has prevented us from doing many of the things that we would have like to have done, whilst also rendering pointless the pursuit of many flights of fancy in an era which promises to continue to be as uncertain as it has proved thus far.

Here was our basic wish-list from last January – with progress reports in red:

  • To get to see family and friends – face to face! Well – we did manage some, but always with the now usual restrictions
  • To be able to entertain again – just a couple of (admittedly most pleasant) summer occasions in the garden
  • To dine out – again – just a couple of times and with the now customary precautions
  • To see some live theatre – nothing! – zilch! – zip!…
  • To enjoy some live music – one event only – Barney Bentall’s Cariboo Express in November
  • To attend a live sporting event (preferably Rugby!) – you are – as they say – having a laugh!
  • To be able to travel… anywhere – a fraught over-nighter in Kamloops and four nights in Vancouver!…

You might be able to detect the tone of disappointment in my words…

In addition – this time last year I mooted the idea of carrying out some major renovations to our basement. That idea – apart from some relatively minor upgrades (replacing the remaining windows – replacing the alarm system – purchasing a new TV) were killed off by the ridiculous hike in the costs of building materials caused by pandemic-related shortages.

But what of 2022?” – I hear you cry. Well – let us start out with the same list as last year – and see if we can do any better this time around.

In addition:

  • It is our fervent wish that we get to travel to the UK during the coming summer. Whether or not this happens will depend entirely on the course that the pandemic takes on both sides of the pond over the coming months. We are not holding our collective breaths.
  • We will carry out some further domestic upgrades – air-conditioning to guard against future ‘heat domes’ – a new hot water system so that we can console ourselves with even longer baths when things don’t work out as we would wish.
  • Normalised work! The Girl would like to be able get back out into the wider world and to visit clients face to face again – not to mention paying a nostalgic visit to her office! I would like to teach students who can actually see my face as I do so.
  • More music! One positive over the last year is that I have been able to write more than enough new songs for the Chanteuse and I to put together another ‘album’. We are currently recording her vocals on these tracks and we are making good progress. Look for further pronouncements in the coming months.

In general – we both hope that 2022 at least starts to see a (safe) return to some sort of normal.

We wish the same for all gentle readers also…

 

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No sooner has the cold snap moderated itself and the snows begun to melt than we are subjected to yet another ‘atmospheric river’. We are in for another five days of solid rainfall. Who knows if there will be anything left to wash away!

I find myself – slightly to my surprise – teaching once again… though this time a different course (albeit covering similar ground) at the College’s other campus in teaching rooms that I have not previously experienced.

I had seriously hoped that the burgeoning increase in Omicron infections – for which Canada and BC are doing their best to match what is happening in other parts of the world – would result in the College being forced to go back to online only teaching in the short term. Who knows – that might yet happen – but, sadly, we are currently face to face in the classroom.

Like most teachers I much prefer to teach face to face, but these are not ordinary times and I fear that the provincial government has reached the point at which it throws its hands in the air, stands well back and lets the pandemic rip. The hope seems to be that Omicron will cause less destruction than previous variants and will pass through more quickly – leaving us (if all goes ‘well’) with our disease status downgraded from ‘pandemic’ to ‘endemic’.

I sense a great deal of finger-crossing and wood-touching here and not a lot of truly informed scientific opinion involved, but it is what it is. After all – I don’t have to do this!

I am, of course, taking all the precautions that I can. I am double-vaccinated and boosted and I am now wearing only N95 respirators in the classroom. These I have had to source myself (not easily done!) as the powers that be have decreed them not strictly necessary. I am taking no chances! It doesn’t help that all my teaching is now on a single day a week, meaning that I have to keep the respirator on for a straight five hours and more. I can already tell that my poor nose is going to take a pounding – to say nothing of my voice!

To make matters even more complex we are having to accommodate students who can’t – or won’t – come into College. I am thus streaming and recording the classes as I teach them. This adds yet another layer of complexity to something that is already quite a stretch for me.

Oh well! I like a challenge – but there may be limits…

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It is, arguably, a little bit sad that if I look back over the years that I have been churning out entries for this journal, a regular subject of the December offerings has been just how busy everything has been, how tired we are and how much we are looking forward to some quiet downtime over the Christmas break.

I didn’t actually look back to the archive of any previous December’s postings before making that statement. I didn’t have to. I just know that it is true!

The reason that it is a little bit sad is because The Girl and I are notionally retired and should thus probably have time on our hands rather than finding things a bit of a grind. Let’s face it – we are clearly not tuckered out because of our wild round of pre-Christmas socialising. The pandemic has seen to that!

Oh well!

For me the term at College has just finished, the final exam has been sat and marked, term projects have been submitted and assessed and I am just in the process of wrapping things up and recording grades and suchlike. At the point at which in days of yore I might have been enjoying a little post-term social relaxation I am instead contemplating the next term (what here in Canada is pessimistically – if realistically – called the Winter term). The course that I was scheduled to teach has – for the second year running – been heavily under-subscribed (wonderful to be so popular… not!). My Chair has offered me a different course; one which I have not taught before and which would – once again – require that I mug up afresh on another curriculum and set of practices.

Am I getting too old for this sort of thing? Feels as though I might be.

The Girl (who is of course but a youngster) is also finding work something of a grind and – though she has been able these past two years to work almost exclusively from home – there are threats from her volunteer  service that everyone might be dragged back into the office for the New Year.

The Omicron variant may, of course, have a considerable say in how things actually pan out for either or for both of us. How will it all end up? In truth – nobody knows!

So my message to good and gentle readers out there is this: Take good care of yourselves, stay safe and don’t take any foolish risks (in particular not for misguided ideological reasons)…

As Bette Davis didn’t quite say in ‘All About Eve’ – “Buckle up – it’s going to be a bumpy ride“…

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“Respect your parents. They passed school without Google!”

Anonymous

OK – so it is college rather than school, we’ve actually been back for nearly three weeks now – and September 2021 is not long for this world either.

Apart from that… you get the idea!

I promised that I would write something about going back to college – as in actually ‘going back to college’ rather than just starting another ‘virtual’ term from the comforts of my studio at home…

…and here I am!

The College decreed that for the new academic year we should all be back face to face in the classroom and lecture hall. This is entirely understandable, given that students had started displaying (along with gratitude that their health interests were being foregrounded) some discontent that they were not getting the full college experience even though they were still being asked to pay for it. In the light of this pressure the College probably had little choice in the matter.

The decision would doubtless not have been particularly contentious had it not been for the subsequent emergence of the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus. This unpleasantness has inevitably ramped up the risk level again and left us all considerably more concerned as to the best course of action going forward.

Still – face to face it is for now – but with a plethora of precautions to try to keep things safe. Masks must be worn inside buildings – including in the classrooms – and vaccine passports are required for access to sports and some other facilities, though not for the cafeterias and bookshops.

I am all for appropriate precautions and particularly keen to remain healthy myself. There are implications for teaching, however. We are obliged to wear a mask when teaching unless there is at least two metres between us and the nearest student – in which case we can unmask. Two of the spaces in which I operate are large enough that I can – gratefully – go maskless. My other classroom is a pokey little hole in which I have to deliver an eighty minute class once a week. Fun it is not!

My Chair is very keen that we should also make provision for any students who cannot attend classes in person – either because they have had to quarantine or because they do not feel comfortable being in such public spaces. There are – of course – methods by which classes could be simultaneously streamed if required, but this demands additional equipment and configuration which the department – and College – have thus far proved slow to provide. I don’t mean to be awkward, but I certainly have no intention of teaching the classes twice – once for those who are present and again for those who are not.

Oh well! No doubt we will stumble through the term in our usual manner. The odds on the term ending in the same manner that it has begun must reasonably long, I would have thought.

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Fragile

“If only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – The Sorrows of Young Werther

I watched the other day – on the splendid but disturbingly imperiled BBC – the latest in Alan Yentob’s arts strand – ‘Imagine’. The most timely subject of this episode was the delicate state of the arts in the UK (but by extension also throughout the western world) as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The point was well made that the case for spending government monies to protect the arts at a time when the health service is all but overwhelmed and when old people are dying in care homes (as was certainly the case at the start of the pandemic) is extremely difficult to make. It is – of course – always difficult to mount any such convincing justification for the arts in times of crisis and disaster.

Except that – whereas Mazeroff’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ certainly depicts our physiological and safety needs as comprising the broad base of the pyramid, as one heads on upwards towards the top where love and belonging, esteem and self-actualisation are to be found, we once again rapidly discover (as a by-product of our unwanted incarceration through lock-down) that life without the arts, with all their magnificent variety and substance, loses a surprising measure of its meaning.

If that were not case enough for protection of our priceless and precious artistic assets then let us fall back on that ever reliable argument – economic benefit. In the UK alone the arts and culture sector contributes nearly £11 billion a year to the UK economy on a turnover of more than £21 billion per year – supporting in excess of 260,000 jobs. Even given that some £900 million of funding flows each year from central government into the arts and culture, the recuperation from the sector of £2.8 billion a year in tax revenue represents a very decent return.

The UK government has at least recognised the urgency of supporting the arts sector – the which was by and large the first to close in the COVID-19 lock-downs and will in all probability be the last to re-open – and has made £1.5 billion in funding available to keep companies and venues afloat.

All very reasonable as far as it goes – except that the arts is considerably more than just famous actors and musicians, well-renowned companies and grandiose venues. The majority of those who work in the arts and culture sector do so, in fact, as freelancers and as such are not covered by the government’s emergency funding arrangements. Anyone who has even tenuous connections with the arts world (as do I) will know of people whose livelihoods have all but disappeared overnight. If they are forced out of the arts for good a large chunk of the arts economy will disappear with them.

Please do spare a thought for such folk and do whatever you can to support them.

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Onward!

“From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached”.

Franz Kafka

I predicted in my recent ‘Review of the Year‘ post that this effort (a look ahead to the year just started) would either be dealt with in short order (there being nothing much to which to look forward) or really rather difficult to write.

We shall see which turns out to be the case…

Now – I could write a very simple list of things that we would like to achieve this year. It would look something like this:

  • To get to see family and friends – face to face!
  • To be able to entertain again
  • To dine out
  • To see some live theatre
  • To enjoy some live music
  • To attend a live sporting event (preferably Rugby!)
  • To be able to travel… anywhere!

I do realise, of course, that these objectives may well be very similar – with minor variations – for many, many people this year. In the spirit of making a proper effort, however, I will see if I can do a little better in terms of our particular situation.

Extremely blessed as we are financially with the relative security of our pensions (who would have ever thought to be able to write such a thing) and our on-going part-time jobs, the one positive side-effect of not being able to do any of the things on the list above is that we do not currently have any major outgoings. For this reason we have decided to invest a little further in renovations to our home.

Readers may recall that in the spring of 2017 we had our new deck built on the back of the house. In the winter of 2017/18 we tackled the greatest challenge, with the wholesale renovation of the main floor of the house. In 2020 we had the exterior redecorated.

All that remains is for us to do some upgrades and tidying up in our basement. Our main guest bedroom is down there and needs a proper bathroom in place of the lashed-together affair that it currently has. The small kitchenette needs remodeling and upgrading and the family room – that which we re-painted in 2019 – needs to have its purpose properly defined and to be re-jigged accordingly.  We are thinking that we may turn some of it into a small fitness room.

This is all currently in the planning stages with a view to being effected in the spring/summer.

As I say – we are both expecting to carry on working – at least part time. I am not teaching this term (too small an uptake) but may instead teach a condensed version of the course in the spring (summer) term. The Girl will continue three days a week at her volunteer agency and is still seeing clients with her other hat on. I too will continue to make and promote music with The Chanteuse – following whatever course that may take.

As things stand I don’t think we can look further ahead than this. Like everyone else – we wait and watch…

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“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards”.

Steve Jobs

Yes – it’s that time of year again. Time to look back at the good intentions that I enumerated in the equivalent post last January – ahead of the first year of the new decade – and to determine just how well or how badly we did in our efforts to accomplish them.

Now – I hardly need to point out that 2020 did not turn out the way that it was expected to – for anyone… so, when I look down last year’s list I really don’t expect very much to appear in the ‘tick-done’ column.

The first point of business on last year’s list was actually a reference to the fact that we were – at that point – pleased to be playing host to a very long-time friend (particularly of The Girl’s – they having done some of their growing up together in Kamloops) who had been in urgent need of somewhere to live. It was truly a delight to have her with us, as she was until well into the summer. She is now working in Vancouver and we are delighted that she found considerably better fortune as the year progressed.

I mentioned that I was teaching a new course – an introduction to Computer Science – about which I had been quite nervous. As things turned out it went a lot better than I had expected and I found myself rather enjoying it – in spite of the fact that the shutdown with which we were inflicted in March resulted in my having to teach the last three weeks of the course online. I taught again in the autumn – this time entirely online – for upwards of thirty environmental science students whom I never met face to face. Strange times.

I also mentioned last January that we were going to run away for a week in February to Mexico. This we did – and had a lovely re-charging break there – though the COVID-19 lock-down undid a fair bit of the good work that had been done shortly afterwards.

The pandemic has disrupted so many lives – in some cases, of course, tragically – and The Girl and I feel particularly blessed in that we have been affected way less than have many others. We are very fortunate in that our property here on the peninsula affords us a very benign environment in which to be locked-down. I found teaching online to be less of a challenge than I expected, though it did take a fair bit of work in terms of preparation. The Girl works pretty much exclusively from home and that works reasonably well also. She thought at one point that her new business would have to go into hibernation whilst the pandemic lasted, but meeting clients in video-conferences has proved more effective than she expected it to – and she has found herself with rather more work than she anticipated.

I professed the hope, in last year’s missive, that I might get the opportunity to do some more music-making with The Chanteuse. As regular readers will be aware, things turned out to be considerably better than we feared might be the case – and we contrived to record a whole new album purely working online. I will post more news on that front in just a few days from now.

Naturally all travel plans (post-Mexico) went out of the window, something that we don’t expect to see changing anytime soon.

I rather suspect that the companion post to this one – in which I look forward to the year ahead – will be considerably harder to write and probably also considerably shorter, as it is very difficult to tell how things are going to pan out over the coming months.

I will, however, do the best that I can.

 

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I am, as I write the introduction to this post, invigilating the end-of-course exam for some thirty students (mostly of Environmental Science) who have this term been studying Computer Literacy.

I am doing so remotely here in the comfort and safely of my studio, which explains why I can be tapping away at a blog entry on the left-most screen whilst still monitoring progress and responding to any queries on the other two. There is something decidedly surreal about about the process.

Having said that – there is (and has been throughout) something decidedly surreal about the whole undertaking this term.

I feel as though I know some of these students a little, having assisted them a fair bit throughout the course, responding to questions and observations, sharing the odd joke… and, of course, they have listened to me quite a lot – maybe three hours a week.

We have – however – none of us met. I have spoken directly to some whilst trying to help them – but other than the few who have their pictures as avatars, I do not even know what most of them look like. Students prefer to communicate with lecturers by chat or email. At the most they may enable audio so that we can talk – but they don’t do video with staff (unless prevailed upon so to do) and frankly I don’t blame them. They do get to see me (should they so choose) as they voted at the start of the course for my camera to be on.

It is the lot of the teacher – of course – to meet transiently and then to wish good and prosperous lives to a constant succession of new faces. I guess it is one of the things that attracts people to teaching – the opportunity to make human contacts (and to give something useful and meaningful in return). Doing so without ever meeting face to face, however, seems somehow inadequate.

Given the alternatives in this horrid year I am not complaining. I can scarcely imagine how any of this (and a gazillion other things that we maybe take a little too much for granted) might have been effected at all some fifteen or twenty years ago – let alone back in the mists of time (as when I was a student, for example).

It may be going a little far to suggest that we are the fortunate ones.

“Tell that to the young people of today. They won’t believe you…”

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The fourth quarter of the year starts as it always does – with the Kickass Canada Girl’s birthday. There have been times in the past when the celebrations have been really quite elaborate, involving a trip to some splendid resort or reservations at a fancy eatery (or on occasion – both!). We have many happy memories of these celebratory excursions; those to Bath and the Algarve perhaps standing out in particular.

There are other times – however – when something simple at home is the order of the day. In such pandemic-ridden times as these this latter was clearly called for. The Girl seems to have had a good time nonetheless, having seen loved ones and dear friends and having at least been wined and dined on my special homemade pizza accompanied by a rather stonking Chateauneuf du Pape.

Happy birthday to The Girl!

October also means that the first month of teaching is done. We have scampered through the opening laps – acclimatising ourselves to the pace – and we are now digging in for the long haul through to Christmas. There will doubtless be a point – as the climax of the race approaches – at which there will come a moment of truth, when we must needs push through the barrier, discover our true character and determine who the winners and runners up will be.

I think I have pushed that metaphor about as far as I reasonably can…

The nights are – naturally – drawing in (boo!) and the only remotely good thing about that is that, by the time that we are aware of it, we are more than halfway towards the shortest day. Now I know that the winter proper (as Canadians would have it) doesn’t kick in until January and February but – frankly – that is a problem for another time.

I can’t let this moment in time pass without making further reference to Bath Rugby.

Oh dear, oh dear!

Today saw the final round of matches in the Premiership, the which would determine the final four who would progress to the playoffs. Bath needed only to beat the grim Saracens to get through. Naturally, having led for much of the game they contrived to give up several scores as full-time approached – the fixture ending in a draw! This would have been enough to put Bath out, were it not for the fact that one of the other key fixtures – the Sale/Worcester clash – was postponed after Sale suffered sixteen positive COVID-19 tests! That match has been put back until Wednesday, but if further tests are also positive may not take place at all – which would mean that Bath sneak through to the finals instead.

So – three days (perhaps) on tenterhooks and then a hardly satisfactory outcome – whichever way it goes…

Oh dear!…

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