Threads of my life

April 2022

So many low importance things keeping me super busy, which is how I like it, I suppose. We've got Buddhist activity, travel, Ukrainian cat news, Pub Next Door update, and plenty of family and travel news.

Let's start with the Buddhists. Long-term readers may remember my Mitra ceremony almost a year ago, when I became a Buddhist in the presence of only 14 people (plus more on Zoom) in a large unfamiliar hall mostly wearing masks. It was not the sort of event I had hoped for, but we really didn't know how long this pandemic would last and I'd already waited a year. But now we had four more people in our group who wanted to become Buddhists, and this time we had a wonderful gathering in our familiar hall with about 50 of their friends and family and the ceremony and chanting and photographs we weren't allowed to have a year ago. It really feels like our little group is becoming properly established at last.

The Ukranian cat news isn't so good. In order to bring the cat to the UK, an application has to be made for a licence and another application for home isolation to try and avoid official quarantine, and I'd left this to UJ who seemed to have the thing in hand. But a month passed and nothing had happened and I decided to step in and give a bit of assistance, phoning the agency responsible to find out what was going on. It turned out that the application had not been recorded and nothing at all was happening, despite the chain of emails that UJ forwarded to me. 

I spoke to them several more times to clarify various requirements - having a microchip and rabies certificate is accepted, but the animal has to have left Ukraine for 30 days before it can be allowed into home isolation, and while this would have been fine while UJ was living in Poland, she had to go back to Ukraine to help her parents, at which point the clock restarted. If she arrives in the UK before the 30 days have elapsed then the cat has to be quarantined for the remaining time, and if she stays in Europe outside Ukraine for 30 days then her visa to enter the UK expires. And now I am away from home for a fortnight, the second week of which I'm on a retreat and therefore not contactable.

I left this with UJ and heard nothing for a couple of days while she returned to Poland to retrieve all her possessions from there and bring them back to Kyiv, and then continued to hear nothing. I filled in all the information about me in the two forms that would be required, scanned them and sent them to her, she has been in touch with the quarantine people to confirm all these facts, and that's where we stand now.

Let's leave that situation there, and talk about the pub next door, where the garden is looking absolutely stunning. They've replaced the railings with solid doors so a photo isn't easy, but there are gazebos, mirrors, fresh paint, planters, proper lighting, and no doubt price rises before the Commonwealth Games starts at the end of July. I hardly go in there at all nowadays, but a few days ago one of the gates was open and I went in to have a chat with a neighbour, who also updated me on the parking situation for the Games, which will depend on a good deal of fair play and goodwill from the residents. I am hopeful that this will work out well.

I have been down to mum and dad twice this week, the first time to take them to a straightforward hospital appointment, and the second time to stay for a day and a night while Lola II took mum to a tea party, staying in a hotel and then visiting Eltham Palace. What a treat. They had a lovely time, as did I, and on the first day dad and I listened to some of Bach's concertos including dad's favourite, the double violin concerto - he often relates the story of how when he was young he and a friend played it in a concert, swapping places when his part became too difficult. Then on the second day we listened to Handel's Messiah and discovered that the CD was damaged and the last few tracks on the CD wouldn't play properly. Still, the music has recurred many times in my head and probably won't go away for some time. That Handel knew how to write a catchy tune.

I went to see a friend with a dog the next day, and then the following day Sister D introduced Lola II and me to the Royal Courts of Justice and the Inns of Court where she used to work in the late 80's and early 90's. We saw bits of two cases being conducted, one an appeal to quash a conviction for working in a cannabis factory claiming the individual was compelled due to trafficking, and the other a landlord and tenant case. They were both very interesting, and we talked about the various aspects of the process - the fact that this is open justice held where anyone can watch the cases but few can afford to access it; the difficulty of using language precise enough to prevent misunderstanding. Afterwards we had lunch, walked around the Inns of Court and its lovely gardens and visited into the Temple Church. It was a lovely day.

I came back to Sister D's house, picked up the car and drove to the campsite where I am now typing this in the office building, about to sign off for a week's retreat.

May 2022

A lot of stuff going on

Bobby (and toy), May 2022

As usual there's been plenty of Buddhist action, including a day retreat in which, among other activities, we started creating a decorated cloth using different types of printing. There were only eight of us there and I'm keen for as many people as possible to make their mark, so we're going to finish it at another session in August. Then on Tuesday the key to our hall wasn't in its usual place and we were unable to contact the key-keeper, so we decamped to a nearby pub for a drink instead. Not so unfortunate, except that next week we have a planned social in a pub, so two in a row. Fortunately we didn't have a visiting speaker, or it would really have been difficult.

I played badminton on Monday for the first time in ages (the Buddhism teacher was away). I haven't been able to go to Thursday badminton for ages either, what with retreats, meetings and other events, but I thought I'd be able to go on the coming Thursday. Then I contacted my refugee guest, who (following a suggestion by Mr M) is likely to be known as Ukraine Jane (although her name isn't Jane). She is still trying to work out how to bring the cat with her, because the bus company she originally found has now changed its mind. I consulted the group I'm part of as a sponsor/host, and got the feedback that a) it's really difficult and b) one family went over to France to pick up their guests and their dog in order to get them into the UK.

When I heard this my initial reaction was that my generosity wouldn't extend this far, but with a bit of time to think, I thought, why not? I spent a bit of time researching and worked out how it could be done, with Jane trying to chase the licence that the cat needs through some bureaucratic British office, and the only day that would work for me was Thursday, so no badminton again. Except that a day is a long time in the Homes for Ukraine scheme, and Jane's parents are going to have to return to Kyiv or lose their jobs and income, and she was starting to think about leaving the cat with them and fetching it later when the licence is certain. Until she found details of someone who is travelling from the UK with supplies in a minibus and offering the return trip to people with pets. So I'm happy with whatever she decides and ready to wait and see if I get to go to badminton on Thursday after all. Then the badminton booker realised it's a Bank Holiday and cancelled the session.

So no badminton on Thursday, and I found out about a different group specifically focussing on this thorny issue of bringing pets from Ukraine. When I joined that one it became very clear that unless Jane gets onto this minibus she's found there's pretty much no other way except going in person to France and bringing the animal back in the car. And even then others have reported administrative nightmares at the port.

A few other things of note: I took up an offer of a free hearing test because everyone in my family who is older than me has hearing loss and I thought it would be interesting. It was carried out in a room off the main waiting area and was almost too noisy to hear any of the test tones, so I don't think I'll be taking them up on any future offers. For what it's worth, my hearing was deemed to be good, so that's nice.

I've been doing more for Mr MXF. I got a lot done on one particular task that involved data collection and organisation, but I stopped doing that and asked Mr MXF to check what I'd done so that if it wasn't quite right I could fix it before going on rather than having to go back and correct everything. While he is thinking about this he has switched me to a new task which involves creating online forms. I went through the phase of not knowing what on earth I was doing, which I find very uncomfortable, and now have grasped the essentials and am quite enjoying it. I like a well-designed form.

Then there was a lot of noise from Pub Next Door's 'garden' - a concrete area with decking which had a marquee when drinking indoors wasn't allowed. I've pieced together what's going on after various conversations with workmen and bar staff - the area has been taken back to bare concrete and the plan is for a new resin floor to be laid, and no more decking. The noise escalated dramatically while they cut tracks in the concrete where cables will be laid for outside lighting, and subsided again for cement mixing. I've become quite friendly with the main builder and we have daily discussions about how the plans have changed. Because the base concrete layer is not level it looks as though some might be paved and the resin area limited to a rectangle in the middle. The marquee is probably going back, and the covered area at the end smartened up.

They also ripped out the drainage that I'd put in at the base of my wall, which showed how counter-productive that had been - rainwater had penetrated behind it and the bricks at the base of the wall were wet. One of the lessons I have learned through the LTRP, which I would do well to remember more often, is that the tradesmen who so confidently diagnose the problem and propose the solution actually know very little more about it than I do.

And pictured is Bobby, my newest boarder from the Guide Dog kennels, who has a naturally sad-looking face. He is a youngster early in his training, but better behaved than most of the other dogs I've looked after. He likes his soft toys but tends to bring me household things that aren't out of reach, and we've had a lovely time so far.

Let the Games Begin!

Birmingham, September 2021

A busy week after the week's holiday, starting with a trip to see mum and dad that incorporated a Zoom interview with Guide Dogs. I thought it went pretty well, and they sent me a lot of information to read afterwards. I will be invited to the centre in person to meet a dog handler next, but haven't heard anything yet. On a subsequent visit to mum and dad I helped them get to their Covid booster jab appointment. The chap who was checking appointment times and supervising the 15-minute wait recognised mum as the person who had taught his daughter 13 years previously. Just like at the cemetery earlier in the year...

I was intending to do lots for Mr MXF this week, but kept finding more pressing things to do, including another walk with the Leamington History Group, taking another 10 bags of garden cuttings to the tip,  and cleaning the house from top to bottom (it really needed it). But I did get round to a bit of work, and by this week I'd really got to the bottom of one of the problems I was having. Progress at last - Mr MXF always seems delighted at what I've managed to do, even if I do get the impression that he would have been able to achieve the same results in a tenth of the time.

Thursday badminton has started again, and hasn't gone too badly despite the fact that a whole lot of members have decided not to return. I'm one of the younger players in the Thursday club, and I think during the prolonged break many older members found better things to do, and they also are more aware of the risks of returning to serious exercise in an enclosed space. In contrast I'm one of the older players in my Monday club, which seems to be thriving, but I'm still doing the Buddhism class on Mondays so can't go.

I signed up to a whole lot of lectures as part of the Cambridge Alumni Festival, including subjects as diverse as punishment in Victorian workhouses, the treachery of Edward VIII (the Duke of Windsor), the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, the latest thinking about Calories, the role of the statistician during a pandemic, the gut microbiome, and the history of computing at Cambridge University. All very interesting, with the oddest thing being the nature of actually listening to a live talk. All programming used to be like this - you can't pause the talk if the phone or doorbell rings - but it's been a long time since I've listened to anything live.

The next phase of the LTRP continues with the pointing of my wall on the pub garden side. While I was away camping, Glf was digging out the old decaying mortar, which generated a vast amount of dust. While in the wilds of Yorkshire with no phone signal I missed several calls from the pub manager followed by a very cross message saying that the dust was all over his pub furniture and he was going to charge me for cleaning it. I managed to get hold of Glf, who was very apologetic and agreed to get in touch with him, after which I got another message from the pub manager asking me to ignore the previous message as he'd calmed down a bit now. Glf was back this week to do the pointing, and it all looks very lovely.

The most interesting thing to happen recently has been my interview for the role of volunteer at the Commonwealth Games next year. It started badly due to the train sitting at an intermediate station for a whole hour ('a fault on the track'), but the kind volunteer at the venue (Birmingham's Central Library) fast-tracked me through so I didn't miss my time slot. 

First there was an exhibit all about the different venues that will be used, with cases showing things like medals and videos showing highlights from the last Games. Then there was a ridiculously over-the-top video which stated that without question the Commonwealth Games would be the greatest event that the world had ever seen and would end all disease and war and bring together the whole nation/Commonwealth in a frenzy of joy and positivity. I'm not joking - at that point I truly thought that if they wanted me to reflect this level of enthusiasm I would have to withdraw my application. 

Luckily the interview itself was much more sensible, and all I had to do was come up with some examples of times when I had e.g. been interested in sport, showed some initiative, communicated within a team, put myself forward for something a bit challenging etc. Running a conference for RNIB, being thoroughly obsessed with badminton and volunteering to be a Covid vaccinator provided plenty of satisfactory material. Then I was measured for a uniform (including hat), had my photo taken, and that was it. I'll find out in the New Year whether I've been picked, and if so, for what role.