Yes, we've heard of him

Elder daughter, who has been resident in England since last October, is discovering the delights of bank holiday weekends.

For this last one, COVID restrictions have loosened enough to allow a visit to my cousins in Lincolnshire.

Let's be clear.  These are delightful cousins.  They are gracious, well-educated, kind, and hospitable.  Elder daughter has visited before on previous trips to the UK.

They moved to Lincolnshire recently, and live in what elder daughter describes as a "gated community" just outside Lincoln.  They met elder daughter at the train, and gave her a tour of Lincoln.  They didn't let her pay for anything.  Elder daughter figures she ended up 60 pounds on this trip, because they also insisted on paying her train fare.  "I can't ever repay them," she moans to us on Skype.  "They'd never accept it!"

There is a small price to pay, however.  My cousins have told elder daughter how astounded they are that she's managed to get a job in London.  After years of working for a major cultural organisation in Hades, elder daughter has taken a full-time job with a heritage organisation in Greater London (after securing interviews with such organisations as the Old Vic, the Royal Academy of Music, The Rose Theatre, and after a job offer from the British Library).  She's done this during a pandemic.  

My cousins are astonished at her grasp of British politics; she has a First Class Honours degree in Journalism and History.  They are amazed that she can navigate England by train by herself.  She is twenty-nine. 

Bless their hearts.

After a wonderful weekend visiting other cousins, sightseeing, catching up, even doing some baking, my cousin asks elder daughter:  "Tell me, is Christopher Plummer a big deal in Canada?"  

Elder daughter assures him that this is so.  She doesn't mention that Christopher Plummer was born in Toronto, raised in Montreal, and was the descendant of a Canadian Prime Minister, because my daughter surpasses me in diplomacy, as in most other things.

And beauty shall reign alone

No doubt the pandemic has robbed me of many experiences, but it has made many experiences possible, simply by the shifting of much of day-to-day life online. 

For example, I'm not a huge fan of queues, and hence, my attendance at festivals is somewhat curtailed.

This past winter, the Victoria International Film Festival, a great progenitor of queues, made itself available online. In the past, I've attended exactly one film at the VIFF. Now, I took in half a dozen films, and that's only because I didn't subscribe earlier and ran out of time. 

The films were available via your computer, laptop, or phone, and could be watched at any time within a two-week period. I could watch half the film, and finish it later. 

I missed being surrounded by a reacting audience, and being able to eat popcorn (the stuff I make at home doesn't quite cut it), but damn, this was convenient. 

 One of the last films I squeezed in was one I wouldn't have ordinarily have chosen (another plus), and it turned out to be my favourite. 

Echo (Bergmál) is a chronological collection of fifty-six vignettes, that take place over the Christmas period in Iceland. 

Some of these scenes reflect Icelandic Christmas and New Year customs: embracing as the bells ring in Christmas Eve, shooting elaborate fireworks for the New Year, visiting family graves at cemeteries lit with electric crosses. 

Other glimpses illustrate the joys and tragedies of contemporary life: the plight of refugees, child custody Christmas arrangements, the loneliness of the elderly. 

The movie opens with what appears to be a very sparse and modern store Christmas tree display. It turns out to be the brushes of an automatic carwash. 

Of the fifty-six mini-dramas that follow, the one that stays with me is that of a young girl, aged about ten or eleven, who arrives at the home of her father and his new girlfriend for a Christmas visit. Waiting for her father to return, she practises a Chopin piano piece that she's prepared as a surprise for him. The girlfriend's daughter, slightly older, greets her cordially; they're clearly meeting for the first time. The older girl asks if she can try the piano piece, and plays it perfectly, as the young girl's face freezes. Her father reappears, and putting an arm around her shoulder and listening with pleasure, tells his daughter that the older girl is one of his most promising students - that's how he met his girlfriend. 

The scene is understated and heartbreaking, as are vignettes showing a calm emergency operator gently talking an unseen eight-year-old through a wait for police, while his parents fight, or a young woman in her twenties encountering her high-school bully at a bus stop, and enduring a painfully awkward apology, before she flees in embarrassment. 

The film ends with a ship's view of a stormy, swelling North Atlantic, while gorgeous choral music plays. Enchanted, I slowed down the credits to find what it was (because I could) - not particularly helpful. I checked IMDb; nothing. 

It took a bit of digging, but I found it: it's the fourth "act" of an opera called Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen, which apparently means something like "The Explosive Sonics of Divinity" (yikes). The composer is Kjartan Sveinsson, who used to be with the Icelandic rock group Sigur Rós. 

The lyrics of this "Teil IV", however, are in German. In English, they mean: "You are the light of the world/ Soon the sun of the day of resurrection will shine on the bright paths where she awaits her poet / And beauty shall reign alone".

Rich in irony (and full of vitamins)

 

During the past year, I've come to see the resemblance between cyclists and wasps. 

I'm not talking about the commuting kind, or those out for a Sunday ride; I mean the jock kind. 

 Our local coffee shop is prone to morning infestations of cycling enthusiasts. They're usually clad in yellow and black; they have hard helmeted heads; they tend to swarm; they buzz -- and they're rather annoying, to be honest. 

During the three months or so when indoor dining was forbidden in British Columbia for what the provincial government called a COVID "circuit-breaker", I found myself huddling in the morning chill at the outside tables, and forced to share space with the wheeler-dealers, who clustered on the patio and talked "jockularly" about their equipment and injuries. 

Once, a couple cautiously mounted the front steps and half-whispered to me: "Have the cyclists gone?"

 "Well, it's Monday," I replied, cheerfully. "They usually turn up on Tuesdays and Fridays." 

"They're just so loud..." they said, in a normal volume, and went to get their coffees.

Particularly galling aspects of sharing space with jock cyclists during a pandemic: a) being athletic, they think they're immune, and hence not likely to social distance; b) if they do practise social distancing, it's only with each other.  I had the opportunity to observe this latter phenomenon several times during the "circuit-breaker".

For example:  One morning, the patio was thoroughly "infested" when I arrived, so I strategically selected a table equidistant from a large cluster of cyclists socializing in the road-side blocks of seating, which have become endemic during the pandemic.  

A forty-or-fifty-something lady with a short blond ponytail poking out of her helmet called out to a gentleman sitting at the crowded table.  He rose, approached her, and they settled on an appropriate distance between them for a prolonged chat, calling over the space between them. Neither of them noticed that they were standing right next to my seat.  Apparently, I didn't count.

I got up, and changed chairs, putting my table between us. This also escaped their notice.

I wasn't listening in to their conversation, but they were socially distanced (from each other, at least), and they were cyclists (and hence, loud), so I did hear some of what they said. At one point, they were discussing a mutual acquaintance who - and here there was some grasping for the correct phrase - "needs something in the way of social graces".  I bit my lip, busying myself with my journals.  It's not often I get such an irony-rich experience.

After more than ten minutes of this long-distance call, Blond Pony Tail bid farewell, and circulated some more, finally riding off with a gal-pal -- on the sidewalk, of course.  I could hear her gears:  clique-clique-clique-clique...

With the relaxation of restrictions, I can now enjoy my mocha and danish indoors, with a nice wall separating me from the wasps.  I can still hear them, but it's more of a comforting buzz.  Winter, alas, will likely bring them indoors.

The hound of heaven

When the late night television talk shows were forced into home studios and zoom calls by the pandemic, it felt a bit forced and weird at first. 

The traditional opening monologues felt bare and raw with no audience laughing, cheering, and clapping. The zoom interviews also felt a bit naked, but they also, over time, seemed more intimate. 

Maybe I shouldn't use "naked" and "intimate" in the same sentence. I mean that the exchanges had the opportunity to feel a bit more genuine: less like an interview, and more like a conversation. 

Or more like an interview, and less like a performance. 

I was talking about Fleabag yesterday, and this morning, I remembered this encounter from over a year ago with Stephen Colbert locked down in his home in South Carolina, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge replying from England, where she was sheltering with her sister. 

At the very end of the relaxed and entertaining session, Colbert ambushed Waller-Bridge with a question about the fox (the animal kind, I should clarify) who seems to stalk the "Hot Priest" in the second season of Fleabag. 

Replying to his own question, Colbert quoted quite hefty bits from a poem by Francis Thompson called "The Hound of Heaven". It's very long, and Colbert didn't quote the whole thing, but watch Phoebe Waller-Bridge's reaction: I think she's reacting in astonishment and wonder. 

Colbert is a practising Catholic, and Waller-Bridge, although not practising, attended an all-girls' Catholic school. And heaven knows, the poem is really Catholic, in its intensity, passion, length... 

And yes, if you watch Fleabag (and you should), it does make a certain degree of sense. It's odd to get this sort of insight from a talk show; I'm not sure it would work with a studio audience.

Watching this clip, and reflecting on the story arcs of both seasons of Fleabag, I remembered the comedian David Steinberg and one of his early routines, when he said, of his interfaith marriage with his Catholic wife: "I teach her all about guilt; she teaches me about shame." 

The chief character of Fleabag (Waller-Bridge), nameless as she is, (as is the Priest), is in a morass of guilt and shame about a tragedy that takes place before the first season and is revealed, shockingly, in the final minutes of the last episode of the first season.  In the final minutes of the second season, she moves beyond the guilt and shame.  I don't think she's being pursued by the hound of heaven; she's remaining an atheist, but I think she has respect for those who are pursued, knowing that the pursuit is a personal one, and does involve a decision.

But you should really watch Fleabag and decide for yourself.

Comedy as Möbius strip - for dinosaurs

In a year filled with disappointments and delays - not mention the more horrifying life-threatening stuff, reported daily - I got two generous dollops of wish-fulfillment this summer.  Both involve Phoebe Waller-Bridge

First, I notice, quite by accident (ain't that always the way?), that the "Hollywood Suite" set of channels are on free preview, as the specialty channels are, from time to time.  I was startled to see that an episode of the second season of Staged was playing.  I've seen bits and pieces of both seasons on the internet, and have been longing to see it for months.

Briefly, Staged stars David Tennant and Michael Sheen (there yer go) as themselves, Georgia Tennant and Anna Lundberg as their wives/partners (which they are), Simon Evans, the actor/director/writer (which he does), and Lucy Evans as Simon Evans' sister (which she is).  Except no one is playing their real selves, y'see, and some actors are playing fictional characters, and some really famous people are playing -- themselves.

In the first season, Tennant and Sheen, find themselves being hurtled into lockdown and their upcoming theatrical production of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author is put on ice (probably for the best).  Their director (Evans, who did write and direct both seasons of Staged, no matter what you're told during the episodes) suggests rehearsing anyway, via Zoom.  We never actually see any rehearsing, but we do see a quite a bit of whining, back-stabbing, and sulking.  It makes for entertaining viewing, believe it or not, and captures the isolation and disjointedness of lockdown.  However, watching bits and pieces on YouTube doesn't prepare you for the truly remarkable mobius-strip quality of the transition from the first season to the second season.

The second season hauls us from the parallel universe of the first season, into an even stranger world where Sheen and Tennant are themselves playing another version of themselves, promoting the first season, and being blocked from starring in the American version of the same.  There is no American version, just as Whoopi Goldberg is not, in fact, an agent named Mary with a reputation for attacking people who cross her with Golden Globe statuettes. (And I hope and trust that Michael Palin isn't anywhere as malicious in real life. Ouch.)

Despite these clues, many Staged fans can be forgiven, I suppose, for having some difficulty separating fact from fiction, especially these days.

Anyway, Phoebe Waller-Bridge does appear during the second season, in what is arguably the funniest episode, but I won't spoil anything in case you get a chance to watch it.  (It involves her bladder. And Pavlov's dogs.)

Counter-clockwise: David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Simon Evans, Cate Blanchett

I've been becoming a bit of a Phoebe Waller-Bridge fan anyway, so this episode clinched it, even though I had yet to see Fleabag, yet another two-season ground-breaking British comedy which I had also seen in bits and pieces on YouTube. Barely had I finished watching Staged, when Fleabag suddenly became available -- at the last remaining video-rental store in Victoria (because I'm a dinosaur, dammit).

Seeing Staged in context was a mind-bending delight; seeing Fleabag as an organic whole (is that tautology?) blew me out of the water.  Watching clips gives you an idea of the sly and wicked humour.  Watching the show in context blind-sides you with the underlying heartbreak underlying all of Fleabag's seemingly inexplicable shenanigans. 

We're never actually told the main character's name, although it was the Resident Fan Boy who pointed out that "Fleabag" could be a play on "Phoebe".  (It turns out that "Fleabag" is, indeed, Waller-Bridge's family nickname, although she's been forced to point out, frequently, that the characters do not resemble her own family.)  Three other characters are also never addressed by name:  Andrew Scott's notorious "Hot Priest" (who doesn't appear until the second series), Fleabag's father (Jim Paterson), and  "Godmother".  

As much as the arcs of both seasons entranced me, enchanted me, and sometimes devastated me, it is Olivia Colman as "Godmother", who actually had me wincing.  I've known women like "Godmother".  We probably all have.

Shudder. (I've never actually been slapped. Not literally. Really wanted to, though.)

Anyway, these two series are going on my Christmas wish list.  Because I collect DVDs.  Because I'm a dinosaur.  (And because streaming services and platforms giveth and taketh away.)

No room for rompers

I'm making my way home from dinner-call at Demeter's, when I see a couple just ahead of me on the sidewalk stop to approach a bush and smell the blossoms. 

Nuthin' wrong with that. The women of the pair, however,  is wearing an ill-advised romper. 

(N.B. All rompers are ill-advised; I once mistakenly purchased one for younger daughter, believing it to be a blouse.) 

The lower quarters of the lady's buttocks are emerging from the leg-holes, which is why they're designed for young women - and even then, they're still a bad idea.  I advert my eyes, and quickly walk past them - the woman and the man, that is. 

They abruptly stand to one side to let me by, and the fellow calls out to me in a loud jocular voice, congratulating me on "beating" them: "No, really, I congratulate you, ma'am!" he persists. 

 I laugh heartily, with a sinking and uneasy feeling that I'm being mocked. (Why? I wonder to myself. At least I'm not wearing a romper.)  I hurry up the pathway to my building. 

 It rather ruins my evening.

Pastels were good enough for Renoir...

 

Slow turning

This evening, for the first time in months, I'm chilly enough to pull my cozy robe on. 

In a slow turn and tilt - actually mind-boggling fast in terms of miles-per-hour - the globe is leaning into the equinox, just a few weeks away. 

Different kind of chill this morning. 

The news came of the death of Charlie Watts, and millions of boomers felt their youth fall further into the wake. 

I'm not any kind of expert in drumming, but you'd have to be absolutely numb to escape the unmistakeable rhythm of a Rolling Stones classic. For me, it's the WHOMP-WHOMP/WHOMP-WHOMP at the end of each chorus of "Gimme Shelter". 

Social media has been sharing this remarkable collection of Watts' isolated drum-tracks. They're mesmerizing. 

However, I've had this song on the brain today, which contains my favourite reference to Mr Watts, 80 years old, but associated with youth forever. When I was a boy, 

I thought it just came to ya' 

But I never could tell what's mine 

So it didn't matter anyway 

My only pride and joy 

Was this racket down here 

Bangin' on an old guitar 

And singin' what I had to say 

I always thought our house was haunted 

'Cause nobody said boo to me 

I never did get what I wanted 

Now I get what I need 

It's been a slow turnin' 

From the inside out 

A slow turnin' 

But you come about 

Slow learnin' 

But you learn to sway 

A slow turnin' baby 

Not fade away 

Now I'm in my car 

I got the radio on 

I'm yellin' at the kids in the back seat

'Cause they're bangin' like Charlie Watts 

You think you've come so far

In this one horse town 

Then she's laughin' that crazy laugh 

'Cause you haven't left the parkin' lot 

Time is short and here's the damn thing about it 

You're gonna die, gonna die for sure 

And you can learn to live with love or without it 

But there ain't no cure

With the classic rock and the wrecking ball

More stuff that was happening when I was otherwise occupied. 

2003? I had kids in school, was struggling to find an appropriate placing for younger daughter and her neurological differences. I wouldn't go back for the world. 

On the other hand, how many rock bands use a tuba for their bass line?

Sus. Very sus.

I wanted to share this because: a) it's funny; b) it's timely; c) it's cleverly executed; d) it's part of a series of videos (hence the "5"); and e) it's Canadian. 

Julie Nolke is a gifted comedian and writer, and despite the centre part in her hair, she's a millennial. 

(She was also born in Calgary, but I won't hold that against her.)

Ambush

Two anniversaries - two life-changing events. 

Two years ago, we brought younger daughter to this condo, and told her we were moving. We braced ourselves; she had told us adamantly since our return to Victoria that she was never moving again.

However, she took the news calmly; we had deliberately timed the tour to take place en route to an outdoor screening of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in Beacon Hill Park, to cushion what we felt sure would be a blow. 

As we departed, unbludgeoned,  to catch the film, we saw a young couple with a dog, and younger daughter suddenly asked: "Can we have pets here?" 

We affirmed this, and she announced she wanted a cat this time, a male cat. 

Male cats apparently are fewer on the ground, so it was a year later that the SPCA phoned us and told us they had the fellow for us. He conquered us quickly and rules absolutely - and stalks us from the closet. 

This evening, I find myself wallowing in apprehension - and it's not because of paws suddenly lunging at me from amongst the Resident Fan Boy's apparel.

Don't these things come in threes? Are we trembling on the brink of another future anniversary?

Laundry room politics

Maybe it was because I started when she walked in. 

Art lessons tend to throw my schedule for helping Demeter into some disarray, because I prefer to get her laundry done in the morning.  This time, it was late afternoon, when I seized the opportunity of an empty laundry room, and raced down.  It was also a warm day, and seeing no one, I slipped off my mask, as I sorted the hot, dry clothes and bedding out of the dryer.

The door swung open, and in strode a young-ish woman with ivory skin, and a shingle of unnatural red hair.  She looked questioningly at me, and I assured her that I was almost finished and added that I was fully vaccinated, slipping my mask back on.

"Do you live here?" she inquired.  The tone was reasonably conversational and was shaded by a slight accent that I couldn't place -- not quite British...perhaps South African? 

I explained that my mother had had a fall a few months ago, and that I did her laundry and meals.  In my mother's building, this information is usually enough to identify me; the residents of the condo  know about my mother's accident of seven months ago.

However, the woman persisted, still very politely:  "And does your mother own one of the condos?"

That's when I realised.  She thinks I've snuck in to use the machines.

I'm not quite sure why the idea of illicit laundry-room users is so prevalent, but it is.  I've never encountered any myself.  Years ago, when I was a relatively newly-wed living in a condo, my sister got cornered by the resident dragon lady, for the crime of doing my laundry as a favour.  I know it is a persistent fear in our current building.

I steadily replied to my gentle but firm challenger that my mother was one of the very first owners in the building.  We exchanged a couple of pleasantries, before I retreated to Demeter's unit to tell her the story.

Demeter told me that the accent I couldn't place is probably Kenyan.  A woman who attended Demeter's high school in Nairobi (many years after Demeter graduated, of course) moved into the building about two years ago.  

I'll address her by name the next time I see her.  That should startle her.

Here we are, extending into shooting stars

We were escorting Demeter home as the light faded, when I happened to glance over my left shoulder. 

Fighting free of the trees, I saw a peach-coloured moon, not quite ripe. It won't be full until Sunday, when it will be a Sturgeon Moon as well as a Blue Moon -- not because of being the second full moon of the month (it isn't), but because it's the third of four full moons within one season. The last one will be the Harvest Moon, which will rise just before the equinox brings the summer to a close. 

We saw Demeter safely into her apartment, then hurried home to see if younger daughter wished to join us on the roof for another look. 

We took the elevator to the fifth floor, and stepped out. 

The moon was largely hidden behind some treetops, and had shed much of its peachy glow. However, shining in scarlet between the trees, I saw Mars rising in the east, and the Resident Fan Boy spotted Venus, in her guise as the Evening Star, brilliant on the western horizon. 

I glanced up, and directly above was the first actual star of the night. I made a wish. 

I don't know how I missed this song in 2012. It was probably because I was otherwise occupied. Spotify has brought it to my attention. I rather love it.

Hippo whip (another story from Demeter)

This morning, at Demeter's breakfast call, she and I were discussing elder daughter's new life in London.

Two of elder daughter's flatmates are pretty blonde South Africans.  Elder daughter likes them very much, but is sometimes uncomfortable with their attitudes towards the service professions, like their monthly cleaner, for example.  The girls grew up in wealthy suburbs, where the home-help do the ironing and wear uniforms -- and, of course, are black.

Demeter was remembering her girlhood in Kenya, where it was expected for the white households to hire Africans.  My grandmother, a middle-class product of Wolverhampton, was leery, but each time a position became available for household work, there was a long line-up of applicants.  Demeter believed it was, in part, because her father, a scientist and the son of a Welsh blacksmith, insisted that the family be unfailingly polite to the staff.  

As a result, Demeter was horrified, when visiting classmates, to observe how they spoke to the servants.

"We would have been punished for being so rude to anyone," she said.

She paused.  "Although there was that one time...."

She was eleven.  Her parents had gone into "town", i.e. Nairobi, and her sister, the middle child, was visiting friends.  That left her alone in the house with her seven-year-old brother, and the kitchen staff.  Most Africans working for my grandparents were Kikuyu, but, at this time, there was a new employee belonging to one of the other dozen or so indigenous ethnic groups of Kenya.  This man got into a heated argument with a Kikuyu called Kamal.  Things escalated and the men grabbed kitchen knives.

Demeter said that she and her little brother were nearly beside themselves with terror.  Thinking only that they had to stop the men from murdering each other, she pulled her brother into a nearby room where her grandfather had kiboko, simple whips made of leather, displayed on the wall.  In a panic, they hauled them down, and drove the men into the garden.  The men didn't need much convincing; they fled over the wall.

When my grandparents returned, the man deemed to have started the fight was dismissed.

"It must have been the man who wasn't Kikuyu," mused Demeter, "because I don't remember his name."

I was intrigued by the idea of the kiboko, so, when I got home, I started googling.  

I got Koboko. It's a Nigerian whip, apparently dreaded by Nigerian children. At lunchtime, I showed Demeter pictures of kobokos, and she assured me the word was "kiboko".  More searching revealed that kiboko is Swahili for "hippopotamus".  Demeter spoke Swahili as a child, yet had never heard this.

"We didn't see hippos where we were."

Finally, I found it:

See, this is the proper use of the Internet...

The unnerving ossifying body I'm in

Damn, it's late.

I'm tired.

I like this song.

 

Wet dream

I've been venturing out under lowering skies without an umbrella. 

I figure I usually have an umbrella tucked in my packsack, and maybe - just maybe - that's why it hasn't rained for weeks and weeks. Or maybe it's because it rarely rains in Victoria between mid-July and the end of August. 

Anyway, I've been walking down the sidewalk, eyeballing the grey clouds and daring them: "C'mon! I'm unprotected! Drench me!" 

In reply, a green, but dessicated leaf plummets and slides to come to rest against my toes with a dry rattle.

Would it count? I ask myself. Could I catch a falling leaf, and wish for rain?

Can't ya hear them singin'?

 I like Sam Cooke as much as the next person.

The trouble is, the next person happens to be a pink lady with a decent enough singing voice, but only a vague grasp of the lyrics.  I'm not even sure she's aware that she's singing along -- well, not so much along, as in sudden jolts, ambushing me with snatches of song.

She came trundling into the coffee shop with a small suitcase on wheels, clad in pastel pink.  Her hair is drawn up into a fluffy pony tail on the top of her head, it's grey, but I'm pretty sure she was a blonde.  She has a blonde vibe.  In a girlish voice, she calls to the barista for the WiFi code, as she sets up her phone and laptop.  I guess she's going to be here for a while.

And the playlist is Sam Cooke's greatest hits -- which she almost knows.  She knows one line of "Wonderful World":  "Don't know much about biology...", and sings it to each verse.  She also knows bits and pieces of "Cupid",  "Another Saturday Night", and "Twisting the Night Away".

Then we're into "Chain Gang".  Pink Lady thinks the back-up singers are chanting "Work!  Work!"

I look down at my own work, and lament the fact that I left the house without my earbuds.  

After a while, I notice she's not singing along, and venture a quick glance to my right.  She's wearing her earbuds.  Small mercies.

Rest in peace, Sam.

Anti-social duties

Today was a day I'd rather been dreading.

Our condo council decided that, the vast majority of owners being double-vaccinated, it was time to re-institute social gatherings, albeit outside in the larger lower parking lot in a huge circle.  We were to bring food to share, but our own drinks.

The council member responsible for organising this get-together teased us for sipping iced coffees from the neighbourhood coffee shop.  

"The notice said to bring our own drinks!" we protested.

"Oh," he laughed.  "You're the guys who actually read the emails.  You take everything so literally..."

I came back unscathed, but feeling vaguely overstimulated, with the uneasy sensation of having revealed too much, or not having observed the protocols of social interaction, and of over-sharing. Or under-sharing.  Or something.

It's not like I was ever particularly good at social gatherings, but after nearly a year and a half, I appear to have lost what little skill I had.

I did have two conversations before retreating gratefully, and possibly somewhat gracelessly back into the building and the quiet of our living room.

The Resident Fan Boy stayed a bit longer, and when he returned, I asked him to whom I'd been speaking.  My face-blindness is not a social asset either.  She turned out to be a hall neighbour, who clearly knew who I was.  We chatted about her job, and of the things I hadn't missed about the pandemic:  not getting colds or flu, and grungy shopping baskets (they've been sparkling clean for over a year).

I haven't missed potlucks, either, but I didn't tell her this.  That would definitely be over-sharing. Or under-sharing.  Or something.

Muggy comfort

Heading through the amber-tinged streets this morning, I turned and saw the all-too-familiar blazing copper penny - for those of you who remember pennies - rising above the buildings.

Victoria has been largely spared the smoke from distant forest fires this summer, so much so that an editor, writing climate-change advice for the Times-Colonist earlier this week, reminded us of the "smoky skies over Victoria a few years back".  I guess he forgot about last September, when the smoke from California, Oregon, and Washington State clumped over Victoria for several days, turning the sun into a merciless, cold, silver disc, and hiking the air quality scale to "10+".  We were never given the actual number, but the air pollution was worse than that which plagues Beijing.

The air quality this time is a "moderate risk" 4; it was 6 yesterday evening.  It's a kind of cold comfort (well, muggy, anyway) that we are grateful to not be Beijing.

Or under a heat dome.  Seven weeks ago, I noticed the cat, splayed on the windowsill of our north-facing bedroom at 7 am.  Never a good sign.

It was a bit like the analogy of the boiling frog - each day, for about three days, it was a little bit hotter, so the night-time was not long enough to cool off, and we'd start each morning at a higher temperature, with a white-hot sun rising into the pitiless light-blue sky.

It was as if Hades had stalked us to the west coast:  the Ottawa-like social isolation brought on by the pandemic, and now, an Ottawa summer humidex in the mid 40's -- unheard of in Victoria. Butchart Gardens closed.  The University of Victoria closed.  Smaller businesses closed after midday.

On our wedding anniversary, I went to escort Demeter back to our place, and was smote by the heat whenever I stepped out of the shade.  It's a short walk, but my mother is 91, and using a walker.  We daren't jaywalk, so we had to make the loop to cross at the signals.  Demeter balanced an old-fashioned coolie hat on her head.  I learned later that, at that time, the temperature - not the humidex, but the actual temperature - was 39 degrees Celsius.  At 6 pm.  On Fairfield Road.  Eight blocks from the ocean.

Nope.  I'll take the blazing penny over a dome, any day.

Dommage

 The Resident Fan Boy took the Lithe Large Cat (he's fourteen pounds, but not overweight) for his annual checkup.  We've had him a little less than a year, and somehow, during the past ten months, he's managed to pick up fleas.

I've had cats all my life, and generally, you can spot fleas.  Not this time.  Furthermore, LLC is an indoor cat, but then, so was our last cat, who managed to pick up fleas, which apparently had been lying dormant for five years in the floorboard of our old house.

Anyway, it's not like we don't know what to do.  In the meantime, enjoy this feline French fantasy from the cartoonist Sandra Boynton, who also provides the vocals, accompanied by such luminaries as YoYo Ma, and Weird Al.  C'est magnifique.

Raising the red flag

 

If you don't live in Canada, you may not be aware that, a month before our national holiday, Canada Day, 215 bodies were found buried in the grounds of the former "Kamloops Indian Residential School". 

All kids, some as young as preschoolers. 

 The crummy thing is, I wasn't surprised. 

150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools between the 1870s and the 1990s. 

Estimates very on how many children died while at the schools, the number is probably between 4,000 and 6,000 - possibly higher. 

How did they die? Tuberculosis, a lot of them. The schools were government-funded and run by churches, so they weren't well-funded, and the children weren't well-fed. They were powerless, and miles from home, and in such situations, predators close in. Many were abused, beyond the draconian school rules. Some committed suicide; some died trying to escape. 

And it was deemed too expensive to send their bodies home, so they were buried in the school grounds. 

"I'll bet your school didn't have a graveyard," said a survivor years later. 

So, in the aftermath of this "discovery" - there were more to come, and they'll keep coming - it was decided to forego the Canada Day stuff. Not that much would be going on anyway, given the pandemic. 

I had my second Pfizer vaccination that day, which seemed an appropriate thing, y'know, protecting my fellow Canadians. The clinic was awash with orange shirts. I had to explain why to an English cousin, when I mentioned this on Facebook. 

The same day, also on Facebook, a friend mentioned that she was flying the Canadian Native Flag (designed by Curtis Wilson of the Kwakwaka’wakw People of northern Vancouver Island). Only she didn't call it the Canadian Native Flag, she just posted the picture, like the one above, and a "Facebook Friend" commented, from her home in Arizona: "Yes, the Inuit flag." 

Oh, crud. Well, you'd think I'd know better than to put my oar in --- and you're right; I didn't put my oar in. Someone else did, but she and my friend explained very kindly, that the word was "indigenous". 

Arizona Lady informed the friends that she'd lived in Five Countries, and why would they think she didn't know what "indigenous" meant? 

And my friend, being Canadian, tried to placate her, and Arizona Lady said: "Well, you all are just so smart..." and logged off. 

It would have been such a better idea to blame predictive text...

Another damn place-holder

I'm working on something, but I've run out of daylight. I took this while walking out the kinks on a Oak Bay lane in the middle of art lesson. Art lessons have drained me this summer; has the pandemic taken my resources?

That's how you and I will be

I had never heard this song, until a couple of weeks ago. 

This is odd, considering that I'm familiar with Billy Joel, and have been a fan of the King's Singers for some time. 

 Looking up the song, I find that it's on the last original album Joel released, and the year was 1993. That explains a lot; I had a one-year-old daughter, and wasn't spending that much time listening to the radio. 

Apparently, Joel began this as a prelude to another song in the style of a Gregorian Chant, before turning it into a tribute to his own young daughter. 

The arrangement here, by Philip Lawson, was created especially for an earlier incarnation of the King's Singer nearly twenty years ago. The current members are singing here, carefully distanced from Voces8, another a cappella British group, founded in 2003, about the same time the King's Singers first began singing this song.

Goodnight my angel, time to close your eyes 

And save these questions for another day 

I think I know what you've been asking me 

I think you know what I've been trying to say 

I promised I would never leave you 

Then you should always know 

Wherever you may go, no matter where you are 

I never will be far away 

Goodnight my angel, now it's time to sleep 

And still so many things I want to say 

Remember all the songs you sang for me 

When we went sailing on an emerald bay 

And like a boat out on the ocean I'm rocking you to sleep 

The water's dark and deep, inside this ancient heart 

You'll always be a part of me 

Goodnight my angel, now it's time to dream 

And dream how wonderful your life will be 

Someday your child may cry, and if you sing this lullaby 

Then in your heart there will always be a part of me 

Someday we'll all be gone 

But lullabies go on and on 

They never die 

That's how you and I will be

The cage it called

This is another song sent to me by Spotify. 

 I don't remember hearing it eight years ago, when it first came out, and the original rock version probably would not have caught my attention. 

 However, this stripped-down piano version had me listening. 

 And the final line stops me cold.

Taking things "litterally"

I really want to make this clear. I've been fortunate, in the aftermath of Demeter's fall last January, that the Resident Fan Boy has taken up a number of my chores.  

In the early days, that was nearly all of them, because I stayed with Demeter during the first week, and went in four times a day after that, to assist with rising and breakfast, lunch, supper, and the bedtime routine.  

One evening in early February, I came home through the dark streets, thinking dark thoughts.  In our apartment, the main bathroom door was closed, and younger daughter's bedroom door wide open, the signal that she was taking her evening bath.

But where was the Resident Fan Boy? The living room was silent and deserted.  I turned right and entered our bedroom to take off my coat, still not seeing my husband.  I started to get a little alarmed.

Around the corner, there he was, on all fours, in the small dark passageway that serves as a walk-in closet, and leads to the ensuite toilet.

My heart nearly stopped.  It was less than two weeks after Demeter's accident, and I thought:  He's hurt; he's collapsing in pain or illness; he's ----- cleaning the kitty litter box....

On all fours.  Having scooped poop onto sheets of toilet paper he'd laid out on the floor.

"What on earth???" I shrilled.

I realized, in a slightly horrified flash, that, in all our years of owning pets - two of which have been cats -- the RFB had never actually sifted kitty litter. (How is that possible?)

Brushing this epiphany aside, I did a quick demo of how I balance the cat-box on the sink, and transfer the flushables with a trowel into the toilet, before sweeping out the cubby, where, judging from the amount of spilled litter, our cat evidently rehearses the burial of our lifeless corpses.

"I wondered how you managed every night," remarked the RFB.

Y'know, he could have asked.

A sucker for a sunset

We've been praying for rain.  However, it's August in Victoria.  It's unlikely to rain much before the end of the month.

And even less likely after a sunset like this, brief as it was.

 

Do not post gentle into that good night

Just this past weekend, something happened that hasn't happened in a long time. A member of Demeter's church died -- and they held an in-person memorial service. 

Imagine that. Someone dies, and family and friends gather together to mourn, remember, and comfort each other. 

I was imagining this last March, when I attended my first online funeral. 

It was for a cousin I'd never met, except online. We got in touch about 15 years ago, because she and I were researching similar branches of Demeter's ancestors in Carmarthenshire. We'd been in regular contact ever since, and I followed her posts on Facebook -- until they became more impersonal, veering into the "inspirational" memes that have become so wearisome on social media. In between these postings, I gathered that doctor appointments and hospital stays were taking up more of her time. 

Finally, one February morning, I awoke to a message from her son, posted on her account, to let her "Facebook friends" know she was gone. She had posted memes and prayers up until a day or so before her death. I contacted her son with the usual inadequate words, and a few weeks later, received the link for her funeral. 

So it was that I found myself rising before dawn, to attend a funeral that, Google Maps showed me, was taking place in a crematorium set off a lonely road near Llanelli. 

Our computer is sluggish, and it took some while to log on. They were in the middle of the first hymn, when I made it, viewing the proceedings as if tucked up into the right corner of the back wall. 

The priest was that most unfortunate of creatures, a Welshman unable to sing on key. Of course, he was the one person who was miked, so it was his voice I heard, accompanied by a pre-recorded choir. 

From my virtual perch in the back corner, I couldn't see if the congregation was singing. There were about a dozen mourners in well-spaced clumps, all masked, all dressed in grey or black, with the backs of their black or grey heads facing toward me. 

It was an antiseptic room with a grey carpet. The windows behind the priests looked out over dull green hills rising to a grey sky. 

I was startled to see a coffin (also grey), because my cousin had died over a month before. Towards the end of the service, held in English and Welsh, a semi-circular gauzy curtain was drawn about the stand where the coffin lay, followed shortly by a taupe-coloured opaque curtain. 

I hope there was some comfort in the hymns and readings, clearly chosen by a family familiar with the Anglican liturgy - my cousin's widower is a Church-in-Wales priest. Bowed and huddled, he was supported out of the room by his two sons as the other mourners followed, and my view into the scene was snapped off. 

I thought about the service my cousin would have wanted: in the accustomed surroundings of her parish church, candles, a real choir, pews filled with family and friends. 

So bleak. So grey. 

Michael Sheen is just finishing a run at the National Theatre in a production of Dylan Thomas' Under Milkwood, which, normally, does not feature the poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night". It seems an appropriate tribute to my cousin, however, whose life had more colour than her muted send-off would imply.

        

Barefaced guys

It was only last weekend that I first started noticing that people were entering my local coffee shop un-masked. After more than a year, it was a startling sight - and I also noticed that, with one exception, the maskless ones were male, and on the younger side. (The exception, of course, was a young female, clearly in the company of her boyfriend.) 

The same weekend, Amanda Vickery, the host of several documentaries on social history, was tweeting angrily about the men - she made it clear these were men - who were riding without masks on the trains in London. Elder daughter, who is in the first few weeks of her job in Greenwich, has similar concerns.

Meanwhile, Demeter was taken for lunch in Sidney yesterday (seventeen miles north of Victoria for those not familiar with our area), a lovely outing, but she was taken aback to see that the staff at the restaurant had uncovered faces.  I haven't yet encountered a single Victorian restaurant or shop, for that matter, which has taken that step.

In Cook Street Village, a few blocks from my doorstep, the tiny plant shop is taking a stand.  Literally.

Seasons Bleetings

As the dog days of summer draw to a close, I suppose we could say this is Lammastide. 

Lammas Day itself was August 1st, but like Christmastide, Lammastide must surely mean the time around Lammas Day, right? 

I think about quarter days and cross-quarter days quite a bit, partially because any family historian with British roots needs to know when Lady Day is. (It's March 25th, and before 1752, it was the beginning of the new year, which makes a difference if you're looking up christening, marriage and burial dates in pre-1752 church registers.) 

However, lately, I've been thinking about Midsummer Day (June 24th). It's probably a mark of how geeky I am, that I think: Well, the middle of summer is surely early August, right? Halfway between the soltice and the equinox? Why isn't Lammas Day called Midsummer Day? This is probably why I shouldn't play Sudoku. 

Last spring, when the plague that has enveloped our planet was just getting started, the National Theatre made about a dozen of its filmed stage productions available online for about a week each. I watched each one, even the ones I'd seen in cinemas, and eagerly awaited one I'd missed -- the Bridge Theatre production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which the NT released on or about June 24th (Midsummertide?) 

In this scene, the Rude Mechanicals are about to rehearse their fractured take on Pyramus and Thisbe, but they need to check if the moon will shine on the following evening. If you've watched this excerpt (and you should), you'll know that the evening they're checking is June 24th. (You might recognize "Mistress Quince", who directs the play-within-a-play, as Felicity Montagu, who plays "Perpetua" in Bridget Jones' Diary among other things.)

While this scene gives a taste of the humour, improvisation, and audience involvement of this production, it doesn't show half the magic of the show.  The fairies, for example, are aerial artists, or have trained extensively for the show.  The music is arranged by Grant Olding, who wrote the songs for One Man, Two Guv'nors (another National Theatre hit). Olding's delightful arrangements of the lullaby to soothe Oberon (yes - Oberon - in this production it's Titania [Gwendoline Christie] who puts her Fairy King [Chris Oliver] under the love spell) is sung by fairy Rachel Tolzman, who describes herself on social media as a trained opera singer and a champion pole dancer.  (Believe me, it explains a lot.)  The lullaby reappears later as a soulful variation, sung by a sultry torch singer  -- who turns out to be one of the most formidable of the Rude Mechanicals, as played by Jamie-Rose Monk.

Most astonishing of all is the beginning of the play, set in a dystopian "Handmaid's Tale" version of Greece, where the Amazonian Hippolyta is encased in a glass cage, facing a forced marriage to the triumphant Theseus.

I, as someone who has loved and watched MND so many times, wondered how on earth they would make the transition from fear and oppression to the light-hearted comedy, how Hippolyta and Theseus would transform into Titania and Oberon. To see how - and it really is remarkable - you can subscribe to National Theatre at Home for a reasonable rate to see this play (until, I believe, Midsummer Day 2022), and a couple of dozen other National Theatre productions.  Different recordings are added each month, and the beauty of the service is that you can return to productions time and time again - which is how I made most of my realisations about this MND, including the key to transitioning out of the rather terrifying and wildly creepy first scene: consent.

I believe the word "consent" is only mentioned in the first scene where Hermia refuses to marry Demetrius.  However the reason, we can relax and laugh is that, time and time again, there is a act of consent.  My favourite is the rather adorable moment when Bottom (Hammad Animashaun) agrees to go off with Oberon, but it needs to be seen to be appreciated.  See it.  See the other National Theatre production available online.  (They do need to make more comedies available; we're still in the midst of a ruddy pandemic.)

Meanwhile, I may ruminate on "In the Bleak Midwinter", and how I think we really should sing it at Candlemas, which actually is the middle of winter.

I won't burden you with that, I promise.

Fast falls the eventide

I'm realizing that, with the extra to-ing and fro-ing to keep Demeter fed, and her blood-sugar levels reasonable, extra stuff like accompanying younger daughter to art lessons is wiping me out, so I really need to get the blog post in earlier in the day.

This didn't happen today, so I'm cheating.  Again.

Being brought up a Unitarian, this hymn actually reminds me of summer.  Summer band, to be exact.  Our director would put us through three or four hymns, for the harmonies.  The harmonies in "Abide With Me" are distinctive, and I was delighted that the King's Singers keep them perfectly intact.

You might want to ignore the lyrics.  They're a little too close for comfort, these days.

But I suppose they always were.

Burning our reserves of courage

Here's something Spotify sent me recently. I really like it. Not sure how comforting it is, but I think that's rather the point. Everybody's saying 

That it's gonna be alright 

But I can't help but wonder 

If it's gonna be on my dime 

We are the powers 

Throwing up against the tide 

Burning our reserves of courage 

And working just to make it alright 

When we know it isn't 

We know it isn't, we know it isn't 

We know it isn't, it ain't gonna turn out right 

We know it isn't, we know it isn't, oh no 

We know it isn't, that's why we gots to fight 

You and I are trying 

But we don't get to decide 

When the man comes for our paycheques 

Don't you tell me it'll be alright 

We aren't the rich ones 

Some of us will barely get by 

They buy diamond studded shoes with our taxes 

Anything to keep us divided 

You know it isn't 

We know it isn't, we know it isn't 

 

For the life and soul of the world we love 

Fight, 'cause the promise is never gonna be enough 

Watching and waiting for answers 

Hoping we might see the light 

You beat it into us like a hammer 

So don't you tell me it'll be alright 

When we know it isn't