Tag Archives: Politics

Spring ends, damply

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I come to the end of another, personally, inconclusive month. This occasional blog provides me with both motivation and punctuation. When I review events and plan the post, I realise there are things that have been interesting, amusing, and noteworthy. So here goes.

On the 2nd May England went to the polls to elect local government representatives in some areas. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland did not have elections. We live in the district of Broadland just outside Norwich. The only election in our area was for the Norfolk Police and Crime Commissioner. In nearby Norwich there were city council seats being contested, as well as the County Police and Crime Commissioner.

I am a card-carrying Liberal Democrat while Ailsa is a member of the Green Party. As there were no seats being contested in our ward Ailsa got very involved in the Green’s Norwich campaign, mainly delivering leaflets. I was happy to help as it was a productive way of getting a walk in. Some of her ‘rounds’ were long, but it was good exercise and, in the end, was worthwhile.

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Stately Homes, the Theatre, and Global Crises

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Since I last posted I celebrated a birthday. It was not a significant number, although aged over 65, one should be happy to mark all birthdays. I had a pleasant few days, with family being very kind, generous and supportive! Tolstoy said in Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” At present we are happy, long may it last and touch wood. My sister Gill came up for the weekend ahead of my birthday, and Rowan and Ben joined in with many events.

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Family and a Funeral

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In my last post I mentioned we were hosting my half-sister Pat’s dog, Bessie, a small black Patterdale terrier. Pat’s husband, David, had been waiting for surgery and did not want the dog around in the run up to it, or in the recovery period. Bessie was with their daughter, Kate, but needed interim lodging. We collected her at the end of December. The trip was also a chance to see family.

Sadly, David died on New Year’s Eve 2023. Arranging funerals and cremations can be a lengthy process, the facilities are busy in January. The date was set for 1st February in their hometown of Cranbrook. The Norwich contingent was Ailsa, Douglas, Rowan, and me. As Rowan and Douglas could only get one day off work, we had to make a day trip.

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A Very Chilly Spell

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We are well into the New Year and have had an unexpected guest for the past few weeks. This is because of my complicated family. My father (born in 1899 and died in 1989) married his first wife, the daughter of his landlord in London, while he was training as an architect. His first daughter, Patricia, was born in 1931 in Bulawayo. Although he and her mother divorced, he remained involved in her life. He was instrumental in getting her a job in Kenya in social work in the 1950s.

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Cape Town and the Rugby World Cup

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My October seemed dominated by health issues. I don’t want to dwell on them but will give a short update, as it has taken time for me to process the events. The first day in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) was bleak. The man in the bed opposite was hooked up to machines that beeped steadily, and constantly. Additionally, there was a nurse aide sitting watching over him. Over the course of the day the beeps slowed down and eventually stopped. There were no interventions, other than to finally draw the curtains round the bed. Not something anyone would want to witness. I was, I think, the least in need of intensive care and the most conscious of my surroundings. The main reason for my inpatient status was so antibiotics could be administered intravenously.

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Elections and Coronations in Spring

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There were two Bank Holidays in England at the beginning of May. The ‘Early’ May Bank Holiday fell on 1st May. This, briefly, put the UK in step with much of the world, where May Day, or International Workers Day, is always celebrated on 1st May. But it will only be the case for 2023. One week later Monday the 8th May was gazetted as the public holiday to mark the coronation of Charles and Camilla on Saturday 6th May.

Some of the ideas put forward around the coronation illustrate how tone deaf the Monarchy and their supporters are, although it must be said that the press did their best to make up ‘shock horror’ stories. The first example was the ‘Oath of Allegiance’. This will, as part of the ceremony, be sworn by those present in Westminster Abbey. It was suggested that British citizens watching the coronation could do this (swear the oath), from their sofas to create a “Homage for the People”. The Mirror, a downmarket paper, had a headline: “Religious leaders sparked outrage saying those watching on TV can join the 2,000 in Westminster Abbey”. Lambeth Palace, the source of Church of England press releases, backtracked and said this would be an ‘invitation not an expectation’. I should hope so!

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Don’t trust anyone with your WhatsApp messages!

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It is important to celebrate small wins. Last Friday a horse drawing a hearse clip-clopped its way down the road past our front window. I only caught a glimpse of it as it went past, however when we went out later there was evidence – horse droppings in the road. When we were children, and my mother was establishing her garden, on what had been virgin veld in Swaziland, collecting cow pats was a regular weekend pursuit. We would pile into the car and drive along the dirt roads around Mbabane. When cow pat was spotted we would hustle out of the car and scoop it into a sack. I channelled my childhood, collected a bucket, went out, and now we have nutrition for at least a few of the roses!

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Aging is a mixed blessing

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At the age of 66 I do not consider myself to be ‘old’. I believe I am not yet at the point where I have to consider Dylan Thomas’s injunction:

‘Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage ‘against the dying of the light.’1

Equally I am pleasantly surprised to find some advantages to age. In the UK, provided a person has made enough contributions to National Insurance, they are guaranteed a state pension. The age at which one can get it has risen and will continue to do so. It is not a huge amount, and no one should have to live on that alone, although there are people who do. This is made possible by pension credits and free health care through our National Health Service. Aged Britons do not have outrage of their Gallic counterparts, where Macron is facing angry ‘wrinklies’.

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Jubilees and a Slow Start to Summer

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A month ago, I wrote that we were waiting on tenterhooks for the swifts to return, and to see if there were any takers for the nest boxes we had installed. I am delighted to say that the birds arrived a couple of days after the post was published, although there have been no obvious takers for the ‘accommodation’ we are providing. Unfortunately, the swift box that plays swift calls developed a fault. I don’t want to attract swifts with laryngitis, so it was sent off for repair, but that meant we lost a couple of weeks. The sound of swifts is like lost souls wheeling and shrieking overhead, but the sight of them makes up for the sound.

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The end is nigh

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It is many years since I included a ‘round robin’ in with Christmas cards and this, lazily, also constitutes my blog post for December. There is a good reason this year. I have significant news and don’t want to leave people out, or have to write it in all the cards I send.

You may recall in January 2014 I joined the Balsillie School in Waterloo, Ontario as a full time member of faculty. It is complicated appointment. My salary is paid by Wilfrid Laurier University, but I work at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Here I was, according to my letter of appointment, employed to teach two courses per year, and carry out the other responsibilities of a senior academic, including researching, writing and publishing.

About two years ago the University unilaterally, and with very little consultation, decided to change the conditions of service. They were, of course, made less favourable for academics. Of particular concern was the doubling of our teaching commitment. I came here because I had not, in 30 years as an academic, taught (two years of teaching one course at the University of Natal on Southern African Development in 1984 and 1985 had receded to a distant memory). I wanted to see what it would be like to work with and teach MA and PhD students. The idea of supervising a thesis from start to finish was intriguing, and I am happy to report that I did manage to do that with one student.

This new demand regarding teaching made staying in Waterloo problematic in the long term. I neither had courses prepared, nor much guidance on what to do. In addition to more teaching being mandatory my academic cohort was assured, when we signed up in 2012 and 2013, there would be research money available to us, without too many hoops to leap through. This promise evaporated like the dew in the Kalahari in January, although it was not entirely the fault of the university but rather the shocking behaviour of one of the other ‘partners’. In addition to this moving the goalposts, a part of the university bureaucracy was irrational to me. I have every intention of writing about this in due course.

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