They warned me it would be pricey in Brighton, but wow...
I like a good food festival as much as anyone, but they wanted to charge me ÂŁ25/CAD46 just to enter to have the right to spend more on the fancy food itself. Yet there was no shortage of paying customers.
Other eye-watering items:
It looks like I will pay almost twice as much to rent a one bed apartment in Brighton as I paid in St John's to rent a charming Victorian three bed house!
ÂŁ3.50 small bottle of coke at a not-particularly-fancy pizzeria
ÂŁ9.50 for entry to the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery (OK I just noticed it includes free return visits for a year which is rather clever)
ÂŁ97.10 for a monthly local bus pass (though I do feel like I am in bus paradise in Brighton - look at those frequencies!)
I guess I will get used to it - at least the numbers look smaller, and you don't have to add the sales tax to the sticker price...
I am happy that thanks to the hard work of Canada's NDP we have the beginnings of reasonably broad state dental care and (even more slowly) pharmacare. But the baseline support the UK provides in these areas remains well ahead, even if it is not completely free.
I don't have workplace health insurance in Canada - one prescription drug I am taking costs me $120 a month. Each drug prescribed in the UK costs a flat $18. I was considering getting a bit of specialist dental work done here that would cost me $500+ and would not be covered even on the new dental care plan (currently for kids and those 65+). It costs $175 on the NHS.
When I moved to Ontario, Canada I had to get comprehensive health insurance for three months before I was covered by the provincial health plan. On my return to the UK - even for a few months - I can get most forms of health care free of charge right away.
Of course my ability to actually see a doctor or specialist may be limited (as it is here in NL) and at least Canada doesn't have the US healthcare "system", but I'd forgotten just how different the UK and Canadian systems are.
The temperature contrast is not usually this large but unusually cool for St John's is set to collide with unusually warm for Brighton this weekend. The real trauma (on average) comes by late April here in St John's when my heart tells me it "should" be spring but I know it'll be pretty chilly right through to early June... Fortunately that's pretty close to when I plan to be moving back to Blighty for the summer!
Because there are only 11 gates, the airport is close to downtown and the city is oversupplied with roads, I was able to roll out of bed an hour and a half before a recent flight to Toronto departed and still make it to my flight without breaking a sweat!
On the other hand, laughably, if I wasn't able to get a lift to the airport a 15 minute journey would have taken me at least five time as long by public transit or cost me $40 for a cab. Ludicrous...
Leaving Canada for (as I thought) a year abroad in the UK, 37 years ago
For more than 50 years for a variety of reasons I have moved back and forth across the Atlantic to live. Though my parents were Canadian, twice before I ended up moving to London - temporarily. Most recently, my "temporary" stay was 28 years long. Then a decade ago, I moved back to Canada to give my wife and children the opportunity to become Canadians, and to make a new start - first near Toronto where I grew up and then - more or less at random - I "washed ashore" in Newfoundland, where I have spent the last seven years.
My younger daughter is nearly 16, my son has moved to Ontario for university... With my father's recent death I have become the "head of the family" and so after some reflection I found myself wondering where I felt was my home.... and despite my best efforts to settle I realised it is probably England, not Newfoundland. So I am heading back to give England another try for a couple of months in 2025.
I always lived in London while I was there, so this time I am thinking I will take the opportunity to branch out (a little!) and try Brighton instead. So this Tumblr will likely see some more reflective posts, but increasingly 'in reverse'!
My Coronation Tale (or "Why is David wearing tails?")
Though I ended up spending most of my life in the UK, I don't have strong feelings about the monarchy one way or the other, so I hadn't given any real thought to whether I should do anything coronation-related until this morning, when the commemorative artillery barrage began to rattle my windows (those cannons are surprisingly loud!) But the more I thought about it at that moment, the more it seemed to me that fate was drawing me in to the day's events... And it all started with my tails.
Being a singer, I have worn a tux dozens of times, but though I have had a set of tails for decades I have probably worn them no more than two or three times. What occasions call for them, after all? Well, as it turns out, a coronation celebration is one of the few legitimate opportunities. Then as I pondered this I remembered how it is I came to have tails at all. I had inherited them from my grandfather. And why did he have them? Because he needed them to go to the Queen's Garden Party at Buckingham Palace - something I remember him being inordinately proud of.
Moreover, as it happens, I had just moved to my new home, a 19th C merchant's mansion less than 500m from the Lieutenant Governor's residence. So I donned the tails and strolled next door.
I wasn't able to take advantage of the L-G's kind invitation to drop in and watch the ceremony, but I did step in and sign the guest book on behalf of my grandfather, who I like to think would have been pleased. And a security guard was kind enough to provide me with the commemorative stuff!
If this has whetted an appetite for quirky stories from Newfoundland about their interactions with the royal family, I heartily recommend this episode from the comic memoirs of one of our local legends, Mark Critch, recalling the visit of Charles and Diana to the city in 1983.
A coming-of-age story set in St. Johnâs, Newfoundland of 11 year-old Mark, much older on the inside than his 11 years, who uses comedy to wi
I have been taking a (free) @effectivealtruism course and reading The Precipice by a leading EA longtermist thinker. It tends to minimize the possibility that climate change might be an existential risk. I also just listened to an interesting episode of the Clearer Thinking podcast on this issue, where Misha Glouberman was suggesting the projections he was able to find tended to class the consequences of high end climate change as bad but essentially manageable. So in light of the recent release of the latest IPCC "Synthesis Report" summary, I thought I would take a look and see for myself if anything new and alarming there about the more extreme climate risks. Unfortunately, I did...
Something I always thought of as a "long tail" climate risk (in 2014 it was deemed "very unlikely" by the IPCC) has turned into a roughly 50% risk by 2100 in the latest report. I guess this may be old news to dedicated climate change followers but it was news to me...
Specifically, the IPCC now estimates the odds are roughly 50/50 that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) - which includes the Gulf Stream - will collapse before 2100 (pp 19-20). If that happened, an MIT Technology Review AMOC summary suggests,
it could freeze the far north of Europe, driving down average winter temperatures by more than 10 °C. It might cut crop production and incomes across the continent as much of the land becomes cooler and drier. Sea levels could rise as much as a foot on the Eastern Seaboard, flooding homes and businesses up and down the coast. And the summer monsoons over major parts of Africa and Asia might weaken, raising the odds of droughts and famines that could leave untold numbers without adequate food or water.
Back in 2014, the IPCC also said (p. 1079)
Large CH4 release to the atmosphere [due to accelerated emissions of CH4 from wetlands, permafrost, and ocean hydrates during this century is unlikely [0=33%] (WGI AR5 Section 6.4.7.3). Owing to such uncertainties, the existence of a tipping point cannot be ascertained.
Am waiting nervously to find out whether they are officially still not that worried about that potential disaster.
My own personal climate crisis hits home... I am trying to live by my values and trim my carbon footprint as much as I can. I have not flown this year, driving twice to Ontario in my EV instead. But I put my travel and home data into the CoolClimate calculator which is tailored to North American domestic calculations (and endorsed by The Economist) and was pretty horrified at what came out. If it's close to accurate I emit seven times the average person on the globe - and that average includes all emissions in each country including industry.
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions#per-capita-co2-emissions
The big, unsurprising takeaway is that my oil furnace (even given I already use it as little as I can) is by far the easiest remaining thing for me to improve. And now I am looking at new houses...
I like older houses and a personal bonus to me would be that they typically also are heated by oil so I could take an oil boiler out of circulation. But the one I am currently looking at has a boiler that's almost brand new! If I insulated better and maybe put some mini-splits in that would probably make much more economic sense than killing off the oil furnace completely. But keeping it would still feel bad! I am currently researching my options....
Parenthetically, we are still allowing developers to build new housing and other buildings in this province with oil burning furnaces, which I find pretty abhorrent - I wonder what proportion are still doing so?
A little bit of awful that says so much about the world today
There's so much that's obviously terrible about the way the world is and the way it's headed that like many I have chosen to pick my battles and not to get too caught up in it all. But I was really struck by an almost throw-away comment in a discussion about how the poor are suffering the increasing heatwaves in India that I felt shows how even those who want to help can fail to acknowledge the casual cruelties in the global system.
Of course the big picture (wealthy nations failing to help much poorer ones develop sustainably and using developing world pollution to excuse their own inaction) is terrible enough, but it's this exchange that really hit me...
How is Indiaâs heatwave threatening health and livelihoods?
Listen from 14:05:
Presenter: "There are other ways that poorer people are more exposed to suffering. Those with jobs are more likely to benefit from air conditioning. But people who spend the day outside simply have to stop work."
Dr Chandni Singh (Indian Institute for Human Settlements): Kerala has a labour code which says people should not be working outdoors in the hottest times - in the afternoon...
Yes, indeed it does have such a law preventing outside labouring from noon to 3pm, Feb to April in response to rising heatstroke. In normal times, the maximum temperature in those months is 33C/91F and even at night the minimum temperature is 25. And it's humid - the humidex in those months is 50 (!)
Dr Singh: ... "while these kind of strategies are helpful, maybe some safety nets also have to be provided..."
Me nodding along... Sure - if people in dire poverty can't safely work, it does mean governments will have to find ways to boost transfers so they can still afford to feed themselves and their families
"... maybe when people are working on construction sites there are shaded places for them to cool down, provision of water, things like that might help rather than telling people to not work at all."
I mean... even if it's not the hottest part of the day, maybe employers should already have to provide water and shaded places for workers to cool down. But the BBC presenter didn't seem at all thrown by this response. So I thought perhaps this Dr Singh was some kind of radical free market libertarian economist. But no - she appears to be on the side of the angels on this one. She writes IPCC reports. She writes impassioned New York Times editorials like this one.
In a rapidly warming world, the ability to cool and stay indoors is the real divider.
That's what still bothers me. Imagine spending long days in construction work, largely by hand, in scorching temperatures, without an air conditioned home or mall to return to.
The law demands your employer give you a break in the hottest part of the day, but he won't pay you for it and you can't live without the extra income. You turn to a social scientist for help... and recognizing that you'll never get more money out of the government or your boss, they promise they'll try to get the law repealed and get you some more water to drink while you work yourself to death. It's the best they can do.
11:30 I went out. 11:50 I thought âI should be done in a few more minutes...â (top picture) Second picture taken 13:00 - no breaks taken I might add! I also thought I was nearly done then. But when I backed out I couldnât turn fast enough to get around the snowbank on the L and was still stuck. I finally got out at... 14:30! At least it was warm in the sun (well, NL winter warm, around -4). Took off my hat, coat and gloves!
A pair of things I spotted on the same day which made me wonder about St Johnsâ sexy side. Firstly, I did not realise that a well-known strip joint downtown is housed in a historic building that was once the Sisters of Mercy Catholic School for Girls. Secondly, I wondered whether it was wise to have burlesque performances in your college graduation fashion show. Wouldnât it distract from the clothes?
The cheapest available red wine in our state-owned monopoly alcohol retailer (= $13.6/ÂŁ8 with tax). I remember one could get some kind of wine back in the UK for the equivalent of $5. Which is why I switched to beer when I got here.
Yes it is what it looks like - a pizza covered with sponge cookies stuck together with jam. You can eat really well here in St Johnâs, but there are some scary food options!
Ran across this priceless pamphlet in the Avondale Railway Museum but you can view it in full online here: http://collections.mun.ca/PDFs/cns/FF_1009_R4_1910.pdf Have you ever thought of Newfoundland as the âNorway of the New Worldâ? Me neither. But I do indeed enjoy the âbracing, exhilarating airâ and yes we do âescape the burning heatâ of summers elsewhere in North America...
