The Beautiful Game

Apparently

Nov 13th 2023

I have never been a football fan.  It might be something to do with being taken to see Brentford play Southend or Southport or something South when I was a nipper.  The sleet flew horizontally across the ground, it was freezing cold, I was too young to swill beer, I could not see properly and Brentford lost 0-2 in that Boxing Day game.  It was a defining moment. 

At school I used to ‘support’ Arsenal (or was it Chelsea) because everybody supported one team or another, but I never went to or watched a match and couldn’t name a player.  I only ever checked the scores so that it appeared I knew what I was talking about.  Others in my family supported West Ham or Brentford.  I tended to support the opposition but remained ignorant and indifferent of anything to do with the Beautiful Game even when England had a key World Cup match, which let’s face it, they usually lost!

Move on a few years and I am now glued to the screen watching football.  Well actually there is not much football (thank goodness) but Ted Lasso is the unlikely story of an American Football coach being drafted in to run a British football club, the fictitious AFC Richmond, into the ground. It’s hilarious, even if you don’t like football.  It’s up for Emmys again.  The first season aired in 2020, so you may already have seen it, we’ve only just found it.  We’ve just binged to the end of season 1 on Apple TV.

While on sport, the Rugby World Cup ended and England’s defeat to South Africa was a disappointment after playing better than many expected. The quarters and semis produced some of the best rugby I’ve seen in a long while.  

They look a bit different now!

I discovered after the last blog that our two visitors (one from the UK and one from Hopkins Landing, on the other side of Gibsons), played rugby together 50 years ago, not 40.  Since then old black and white pictures have emerged from their 1973 tour, so actually 50 years ago this year.  I bet they never thought they would reconnect 50 years later on the far side of Canada!

Better news for Bath in the English Premiership who, at the risk of tempting providence, seem to be having a better season.  The first in about four years.  They currently lie third in the table behind Harlequins and Sale Sharks.  It’s good to see they have their mojo back.

In less positive news we heard at the end of October that we had again failed to get through the ballot for Permanent Residence.  The fourth year running.  The ballot was drawn from the 2020 (year) residual submissions for Expressions of Interest (EOI) and it's now a very small pool.  We are nervous that next year they will reopen calls for EOI's and we will be back in a very large pool, not least as new applications have not been possible for three years so there is probably some considerable pent-up demand. 

We have now applied to renew our Super Visas, which needs doing every two years up to the ten years we are entitled to stay, and now have to wait 60-80 days before we hear.

The last weekend in October I spent Saturday in Lynn Valley helping Nick rip out their kitchen to allow the

specialist asbestos removers in ahead of the building work to create a large open plan kitchen, living and dining area.  The builders have since moved in and have started the structural work ahead of demolishing the partition walls.  They hope to be back in their home early to mid December.

Remembrance Day saw the choir perform two sold-out concerts of Mozart’s Requiem.  No orchestra this time, just piano which gave the fifty four voices more prominence.  It is the most difficult piece I have ever sung and when we started rehearsing in mid-Sept I thought there was no way we were going to be ready for November 11.

I need not have worried, our inspirational Music Director conducted two amazing performances greeted by standing ovations by both audiences.   It was a moving choral sound. The programme reproduced part of an article by Annilese Miskimmon in the Guardian (widely read over here) on ENO's Lockdown Requiem. The extract is below, the full article here.

With Halloween behind us the first Christmas Tree has appeared at Canadian Tire (think Halfords and B&Q).  No doubt the garden watering systems will be replaced by rows of Christmas lights in the next day or two.  

As well as helping Nick demolish the old kitchen I delivered their new wardrobes which are in place, but not fixed, while the builders complete their work. 

It gave me space in the workshop to finish off a coffee table and bench for friends up the other end of the Coast in Madeira Park.  They acquired some old Red Cedar fence panels that provided the raw material.  I wasn’t sure the wood would be good enough but with some black epoxy filling they came together well.  Oiled and polished they are now ready for delivery.

Fall is later this year and we have only had one frost but the colours are stunning along our section of the lower Coast which has more deciduous trees, mostly Maples of different types. 

The later Fall has meant less snowfall in Whistler, which is a bit of a worry as we are spending Christmas there with Nick, Lizzie and Seb, plus Ros who's coming over from NZ.

The snow is there, but hasn't reached the village yet.  More is forecast this week, but it's going to be tight for Whistler's opening on November 23rd.

Blackcomb Mountain

With Christmas looming I imagine the Panto season is primed and ready for their winter seasons.  There doesn't seem to be the same tradition here.  I note from today's news that it has got underway early in Westminster.

The annual Coast Art Crawl took place over the weekend Oct 20-23 with 260 artists in 188 locations.  After splashing out on a piece of artwork last year we only visited some local artists this year, with me heading to the local woodcarvers who live near us and who exhibited together.  Some quite beautiful abstract pieces.  

 

More pics below.

From an article by Annilese Miskimmon in the Guardian

Mozart knew what it was to experience life interrupted. He was the youngest of seven children, five of whom died in infancy. Of his own six children, only two survived. Death wasn’t an abstract idea but pursued him from birth until his death in 1791 – the most productive and successful year of his life. The Requiem in D minor was his final work; he himself died before completing it. He was only 35.

As a Catholic, Mozart would have attended many requiems – church services for the peaceful repose of the dead. This Christian funeral rite asks an all-powerful God to accept a human soul into heaven.

Mozart set this liturgical text to music for a patron who had lost his young wife to illness earlier that year. But after his death, his widow, Constanze claimed that throughout Mozart’s last painful days he believed he was writing the Requiem for his own funeral. And he was. Even though it had to be completed by his contemporaries, the circumstances of the composition, combined with Mozart’s genius, make it no ordinary piece of music. It has the drama and humanity of his stage masterpieces. His operas wrestle with the beauty and complexity of being alive in the same way his Requiem grapples with the mystery of death. Composed by a man on the edge of consciousness, Mozart willed his last creation into life with his final breaths.

The first performance was given by the artistic forces of the Viennese theatre that had premiered Mozart’s instant hit The Magic Flute only two months previously. Generations of artists have been inspired by the Requiem ever since. Perhaps most notably, Peter Shaffer, in his 1984 play Amadeus, revived a fictional version of Mozart’s cause of death: an envy-induced poisoning by his fellow composer Antonio Salieri. One cannot help thinking that as a man of the theatre and someone who loved a good joke, Mozart would have been amused to find himself at the centre of an operatic murder mystery, and delighted that he had pre-emptively provided the soundtrack for the hugely successful film version

Mozart’s attention to text is what makes his operas so glorious. The Requiem loses none of this magic touch. He takes text made over-familiar to Catholic believers and infuses it with emotion and his own point of view. The first bars of of the opening section, the Introit, are stately, serious and severe. Starting with the basses – who couldn’t sound more melancholy and despondent – the choir sings Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine – Grant them eternal rest, O God. The dark minor key indicates that this may not be an easy ask, but then a fleeting moment of musical hope arrives. In a beautiful setting of the phrase et lux perpetua luceat eis (and may perpetual light shine upon them), Mozart reveals the crux of the piece – a journey from uncertainty into hope. I love that he is too compassionate and impatient to withhold musical redemption for any unworthy sinner.

Mozart the showman couldn’t help letting everything rip on the Dies irae – Day of Wrath. He imagines a very dramatic end of the world and Last Judgment that has enough theatrical fire to function as a huge finale in one of his operas. And in the plaintive Lachrymosa we have perhaps the most beautiful and saddest moment in the whole work. Mozart only wrote the first eight bars before he died; it was completed with Constanze’s approval by one of his students. Herein lies the truth at the heart of the piece – however special a life is, when it ends, everything and everyone else must continue, by imperfectly piecing together what is left.

In the words of Thornton Wilder: “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love.” From the long-distant past Mozart builds a musical bridge, inspired by love. He reminds us we are not alone and wills us to anticipate joy, even in hard times. His most religious work is actually his most human. His Requiem reminds us, as great art can, that both before and after death, we for ever belong to each other.

More pics

Denis Fafard's exhibits

David Evanson's garden installations

Sunset over Van Island

And from the deck

Sunrise

Heron waiting for breakfast on the swollen Chaster Creek where
a number of Salmon are currently spawning