jumping through hoops to get rehab

You never really learn how things really operate until you have to deal with them yourself.

All I want is some decent rehab programme, something to make sure I can walk again without a limp after ripping the body’s largest tendon and rendering my right leg useless for the time being.

My regular doctor was telling me enthusiastically last week about a clinic where I could get a full morning programme of daily physio once the 6-week no-touch rule is over and I can finally take off this dead-weight brace it’s been so fun to drag around.

But when I went Monday to the specialist surgeon to whom he’d referred me to have the stitches removed and we later talked about physio, all he was able to offer me was a referral for two half-hour sessions a week.  The absolute bare-bones minimum available.  In Germany’s two-class healthcare system, if you’re a private patient you get silver service, no questions asked.  If you’re on statutory cover – in German gesetzlich – well, take a number, eh?  Nothing new there.

So this morning I went back to my regular doctor and told him of the enormous gap between what he was talking about and what the specialist gave me.

“Hmmmm…. let me do some quick phoning around and I’ll call you back in later,” he said.

Twenty minutes later he tells me the deal: in order to get rehab, I have to go first apply for it through the bureau that deals with pension issues.   Pension?  That’s the rapidly dwindling sum I’ll get when I retire, isn’t it?  I thought this was medical.

“It is,” he explained, “but your healthcare provider is responsible for your time off work.  They pay for that.  Your rehab is paid for by the pension people.”

The things you learn.

So he gives me a referral for a rehab clinic, reminding that I’ll first have to call the Hamburg pension administration bureau, who will set the ball in motion.

Knowing that sounded just a little to easy for words, I ask for and receive a direct number to call, some tips on what to say, and a merry send-off home.

The number they gave me was not in service.

Digging the right number out of the Internet, I wait on hold for the usual 10 minutes before speaking with a woman who informs me that my pension is administered not in Hamburg, but by the federal office in Berlin.  When I ask for the number in Berlin, thinking this is probably a routine thing,  I get an answer as cold as this late winter and probably as much as I should have expected: you can go find it yourself.

So I dig out the number soon enough and call the Federal Pensions Office and jump through the usual number-choice hoops before speaking with a woman who guides me through pages and sub-pages to the right forms to download and fill out.

There are seven separate forms totalling 17 pages.   Many repeat the same questions in a different way.  Some don’t apply to me, but I have to check a box anyway.  One ominous one involved giving my bank account details to permit them to extract any fees I might have.  No mention of what these fees might be for, or how much they are.

I don’t know why it has to be this complicated, but I suspect they do it this way to turn off those people who are intimidated by officialdom.  There must be a percentage out there who give up before even trying.

After filling all the forms that pertain to me, I have to take the bundle to my doctor to fill out stuff that pertains to them, then take that bundle to my healthcare provider who will fill out more little boxes, then I get to go to the post office and send the bundle off to Berlin.

Right now I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes so long to get approval, I’ll have long since passed the point at which rehab will do any good.

Cologne on high alert as Germany expat bloggers gather

by Dirk Dajerk

COLOGNE (CP)  A special task force has been set up in the western German riverside city of Cologne to prepare for what officials are calling “a catastrophe waiting to happen” as Germany’s band of English-speaking expatriate bloggers prepares to descend on the city in late October.  Police have already booked reinforcements from neighbouring Bonn and Aachen to help cope with the threat.

“They trash practically every place they visit,” moaned Cologne police desk sergeant Pensell Puscha.  ”Just look at what they did in Dresden.”

Now generally known as the “Dresden Disaster,” in public safety circles, the 2007 bloggers’ meetup/donnybrook at the eastern German city on the Elbe is now used in training sessions as an example of how not to prepare for a visit from Germany’s English-speaking bloggers.

“Dresden was hit totally by surprise,” said Cologne city counsellor Bieriz Mylaff.  ”By the time we called in for extra help, the rioting was totally out of control.  We’re definitely not going to let that happen to us.”

The annual bloggers’ meetup has grown from an informal gathering eight years ago of five online droolers desperate for the real-life company of anyone willing to tolerate for more than five minutes their tedious whining about the trials of expat life to an unwieldy gaggle of at least 25 who plan the event down to the last triviality for months in advance on three different platforms: their own blogs, an event website and discussion board, and now Facebook, that death of all blogs.  That’s not to mention the usual slurry of time-sucking drivel on Twitter.

“You’d think they could just decide they’re going to get together somewhere and have a few beers, but no-ooo,” lamented Cologne police detective Slyck Dyck. “From the morning after the last meetup ends they start planning the next one.  They plan side trips with Umlauts.  They plan Friday night dinners and guided tours the next morning.  They kick back for the afternoon, but that has to be planned, too.  They gather for a Saturday evening dinner and then go out to a frickin’ gay bar!  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

“Then they all have this thing they call brunch when they’re all hung over on the Sunday.   They even make allowances for kids, the annoying little brats.”

The choice of Cologne as a meeting point and the timing itself has been the subject of controversy ever since both were decided months ago in an online poll.

“Cologne?  Nothing but a massive pile of bricks, bells and gargoyles surrounded by whackos, clowns and an ugly shopping centre,” lamented one blogger from Hamburg.  ”I haven’t even considered going there for years.  That part of Germany is so full of whores, they outnumber the cars!  Even the neighbouring city of Bonn has decided to take action, setting up parking meters so the city can recoup a few losses on the clean-up.

“And while we’re at it, what about the timing?  Why hold it at the end of October? It’s damn near winter!  Didn’t we decide a few years ago to hold it closer to summer so we could at least have half a chance to enjoy a warm evening or two?  November in Dresden, we had to burn buildings just to keep from freezing to death.”

Critics are also pointing out the dangers of just walking around Cologne, citing the tendency of entire buildings to suddenly collapse in on themselves, swallowing up irreplaceable manuscripts by, among others, Karl Marx and Heinrich Böll –  along with the odd human life or two.  They’re calling for safety checks to ensure visitors won’t end up in some sort of black hole.

Feeling stung by the criticism, organisers are scrambling to reassure attendees as well as the general public.

“We’re gonna have like, fun and stuff, so they should just lighten up, you know?” said one organiser.  ”Besides, if they don’t like it they can just stay home.”

The Cologne engineering department is taking no chances as the group is set to storm the upper reaches of their famous cathedral sometime on the Saturday. “We’ve installed structural reinforcements, so we’re reasonably confident the building will withstand the extra burden of the lot of them humping up those stairs to the upper reaches,” said chief city engineer Helmut Askew.  ”We’ve also taken the precaution of installing audio reminders at every level suggesting they look up from their smartphones once in a while at the amazing artwork surrounding them.”

Participants are expected to hold a vigil in memory of one member who has been to every meetup since the beginning, but will no longer be attending.  J, or J for short, has finally decided that Germany – or at least Bonn – indeed does suck, and has voted with his feet accordingly.

J’s absence will most be felt on Saturday evening when the evening’s traditional gay bar outing will take place.

“He never really used to know whether we were in a gay bar,” said one blogger, “and so we had to remind him that yes, indeed, we were in one, even though he might not have realised it at the time.”

Other absentees include Eurotrippen, holder of much of the blame for the 2007 Dresden Disaster.  Having lived the expat life for a number of years, Eurotrippen and brood returned to the States in 2009 to become ex-expats, then returned to Germany not long after to become ex-ex-expats, but are now back in the States, finally having decided that the status of ex-ex-ex-expat is what they enjoy the most.  For now.

Any illusions the gathering is attended by all of Germany’s English-language blogging scene will be shattered by a brief Google search.  Perennial hold-outs include the culprits behind Observing Hermann, Planet Germany, Charlotte’s Web, Ich werde ein Berliner and some guy in Cologne itself who calls his kid His Holiness.  The Irish Berliner, voted in an informal poll of one as Germany’s most outstanding blog, is a newcomer to the no-show crowd.

“Well, that’s a good thing,” said one Cologne officer. “The damage would be much worse if they showed up, too.”

The Irish Berliner

I’ve been reading a great new blog called The Irish Berliner, written by, as you might suspect, an Irishman living in Berlin.

He’s a freelance journalist also doing an internship at the dreaded Bild Zeitung, but don’t hold it against him.

His writing is enthusiastic and refreshing and his latest post is the coolest thing I’ve stumbled across in a long time.  Imagine tooling around a real museum of history, pulling open filing cabinets and rummaging though the old Iraqi embassy in the former East Berlin 20 years after they beat back to Baghdad.   Oh, and dodging the cops to get inside.

He’s done it all, brought back words, pictures and a how-to-get-there. 

Brilliant.

Vancouver: the most beautiful city in the world

A long time ago just as this blog was getting going I wrote about why I left Vancouver, a city consistently rated among the planet’s most desirable cities and site of the 2010 Winter Olympics, which start in less than two weeks.

One commenter says he agrees with the taxi drivers who, recognising my foreign accent and asking me where I’m from, tell me I must be crazy not only to have left Canada, but also its brightest pearl.

It will be 20 years this fall that I packed everything I couldn’t sell into a Honda Civic to begin a four-day drive to Quebec which changed my life forever.  Much of Vancouver has also changed since then, but one thing’s for sure: it’s still the most beautiful city in the world.

If you have a high-definition monitor, bump this video up to 1080p and push it to full screen.   If you’re prone to homesickness – you know who you are – be prepared to be moved to tears between timecode 1:36 and 1:46.

Thanks to Lilalia at Yum Yum Café.

It takes a village to take care of an old lady

Small-town Canada is changing, but the old spirit of helping each other out lives on.   Living as we do half-way across the world, that’s at least some comfort when things go wrong and we can’t be there.

As she told me on the phone last night, my mother was walking on the main street of the town she lives in half-way between Vancouver and Whistler four days ago when she misjudged the curb, fell forward, smashed her head on the ground, broke her glasses, and ended up with a black eye and scrapes on her arms and knees.

Two men who were there came over right away and got me on my feet again, she tells me. I haven’t been picked up by a man in years!

That’s because you don’t hang around in the local bars, I tell her.

Yeah, I know, she says, and laughs a bit.

Then she adds:

I was on the way to the post office to mail that package for (the little red-haired girl’s) birthday when it happened.  One of the guys stayed with me and the other went back to his truck for a first aid kit and they bandaged me up.  Oh, and two ladies who saw it all from the insurance company office on the corner came out and were quite upset.  They stayed and made sure I was all right, though.  They helped me get to the post office, and then one of them drove my car home for me.

They even drove you home?

Sure, they were really worried about me, because with the broken glasses I couldn’t get back into the car and drive anymore.

The German justice follow-up: you have to pay a little more

You might recall my friend S, whose story of a run-in with a bunch of hick-town vigilantes two weeks after he arrived in Germany a couple of years ago provoked dozens of comments and feedback on justice, or lack thereof, in this country.

Though he had to pay thousands of euro in fines and court costs, his story didn’t end there.  Turns out that the guy who jumped onto his car and then fell off as my friend was trying to get away from the lynch mob turned around and sued him in a civil case for a few hundred euro for damages for pain and suffering.

A few days ago I showed up in court to lend my friend a little moral support.  In contrast to his opponent, S. was alone,  representing himself because he could no longer afford a lawyer.

Without going too much into the details of nearly two hours of testimony, the other side had three witnesses who all said that S. was speeding like crazy through their neighbourhood.  They claimed that he could have driven around the man, but chose to try to run through him instead.  They also claimed there was nobody else around the car at the time.  All confirmed the man claiming damages was injured on his arm and leg when he fell off the car.

The fact the man had some scrapes and bruises is not in dispute, but their statements went completely against my friend’s testimony.  S. says that before he drove away from the scene, his car was surrounded by neighbours, one of whom tried to pull him out of the car, another who tried to wrench off a side mirror.  That’s when he decided to get the hell out, but that his way was continually blocked by the guy who first jumped on his hood before falling off and getting injured.

So the judge split it somewhere down the middle.  She said the guy claiming damages shouldn’t have been anywhere near the path of the vehicle, so he was partly responsible.  And S. shouldn’t have driven away, so he was also to blame.  He should have tried to get help…without, of course, offering any idea how anyone sitting alone in a convertible surrounded by an angry mob is supposed to do that.

S. has to pay a little over 400 euro for damages and court costs, or about one-third.  The complainant’s legal insurance will pay the other two-thirds.  The judge and the guy’s lawyer said he could of course appeal the decision, but that if he lost, his costs would be many times greater, and he’d have to carry them all on his own.  Because he’s got zero income, they worked it out so that he will pay out the €400  in drips and drabs over the next few months.

My friend was disappointed about the outcome as we hashed it out over coffee and a bite to eat after.  He said: the guy’s got a pretty good little business set-up, eh?  Shake down a few vehicles, get your friends to bullshit for you, get the insurance company to pay the costs.

Though I was sympathetic, I told him, look: it might not have come out the way you wanted it to, but sometimes you just have to pay a price for getting people out of your life and putting bad things in the past for good.  At least it’s less than they were gunning for.

A couple of observations:

The guy would never have taken this to civil court for the piddling amount he was suing my friend for if he didn’t have legal insurance.  It just wouldn’t have been worth his while.  Is legal insurance a good thing?  Not in this case.  It simply clogs up the courtrooms with minor cases that should have better been left to die.

And as my friend S. says, this whole thing isn’t about who’s right and who’s wrong,  it’s about how much money you can negotiate.  I agree with him.  In the end, all it came down to was the money.

By the way…

I realise that not many bother to read comments, but one of the more than 50 that my first post on this attracted was a bit of a hair-raiser.  Read about commenter Keith’s story of German justice here. I tried to convince him to let me feature him in a post of his own, but he didn’t want to.

Questions I never got asked

Are memes dead? If yes, hooray! It’s safe to go blogging again.

I took part in memes once or twice, but cringed while doing so.

Not because I think they sucked like so many chain letters that promised good luck if passed along and eternal damnation if you didn’t, but because the questions posed either didn’t interest or didn’t apply to me. Many were aimed at 16- to 30-year-olds living in some suburb somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard of the USA and packed with questions about tattoos, the local mall, school, dating, your parents, God, baseball, and your last holiday in Jamaica. In other words, written with a separate species in mind.

So here’s a meme I never took part in, because it never arrived my way. An expat meme, with questions I might have answered had anyone bothered to ask them. Now it’s too late.

How long have you lived away from your home country? Going on 20 years.

Do you still feel like you’re just visiting? All the time. I’m serious.

What do you notice the most has changed about your home country when you go back for a visit? More American influence in media, language and culture in general.

If you were to move again, would it be back to your home country? Without a doubt.

Do you ever get homesick? Only in the run-up to a holiday back home. You can tell right here because I start to write memory-laden posts about the old days.

If you read the news, do you read it in your native language or that of your host country? English mostly, but German and French as well.

What do you like the most about Germany? The amount of free time I have. It’s something I value very highly. That and no Sunday shopping. One day a week where consumerism has to hit the brakes.

What grates you the most? Whiners who bitch and moan about Germany but refuse to leave, offering up a dozen excuses for not doing so. Get the hell out if you don’t like it. What are you waiting for? Someone to decide for you?

Did you speak the language of your host country before you arrived? Not a bit.

How long did it take before you felt comfortable speaking the language? I’m still not completely comfortable unless I’ve had a couple glasses of beer.

If people switch to English when you speak to them in their language, how do you react? I like it! It means they’re reaching out for a connection, which is good, so I usually say something back in English to see how far it will go.

What has been the biggest change you’ve had to make in leaving your home country? In Hamburg, I can’t go hiking in the mountains.   There’s no skiing or mountain biking worth getting excited about for a thousand km, and I can’t just drop by a tennis court anytime and start playing.

If there were a button to improve anything about your expatriate life, what would it say on the button? For free flights home, press here.

**So, that’s it.  You are not required to pass this on.  You may, however, look closely at that photo and tell me what’s weird about it.  Aside from the guy on the right.

German justice: you may be the victim, you may be right, but you still have to pay

This is a story about how a newcomer to Germany was given a first-hand look at rednecks in this country, and how the law is set up to protect even them.

S. is one of the nicest fellows I’ve met in a long time. Easy manner, loads of friends, always down for whatever. He arrived in Hamburg three years ago to take a job with a major German retail company. After a couple of weeks on the job he was sent to deliver some documents to work colleagues who lived in a small town just east of Hamburg.

It was a warm summer evening, so S. was driving his sporty BMW Z4 with the top down.  He drove around the town a bit trying to find his colleagues’ place, but soon got lost, so he stopped in at the local police station to ask for directions, and was soon on his way again.

That’s when things started to get twisted.

Fifteen seconds after asking for directions, a skinhead jumped in front of his car and blocked his way.  Soon a half-dozen rednecks surrounded him, swearing at him and yelling that he should just get the fuck out of town instead of driving around their place. One of them even climbed up on his hood and wouldn’t get off, another tried to wrench off his side mirror.

Feeling seriously threatened, he hit the door emergency door lock button, but the windows and the top were still down, so one guy was able to reach in and grab him by the collar.   Luckily S. was wearing a seatbelt, so he couldn’t be dragged out of the car.

With a half-dozen men – and one woman -  still braying at him to get out, he did what I think anyone in that situation would have done.  Using the gears and the wheel in a nifty swerve to knock the guy off the hood, he tore off out of there, chased by one of them in another car.

After S. finally got to his destination, his colleagues came out to look at his car.  Just then the same group arrived to hassle him again, this time with reinforcements, as a group of 10 were now threatening to beat up not only S., but his colleagues as well.

Again, he did what I’d do: got the hell out of town, jumping into his car and speeding away.

My friend was angry and upset, but didn’t pursue it further until he received a summons to give a statement with the police.

In the meantime, the man who’d been knocked off the hood had gone to hospital complaining of various ailments, and was charging him with bodily injury.  He said S. had run into him with his car as he was driving like a madman through the centre of town.

In the ensuing court case my friend, who speaks very good German, was able to convince the judge in his testimony that he could not have been driving fast or erratically through the town at the time, because he was trying to find an address in an unfamiliar town, and that’s not how one would be driving if looking for an address.

The judge also dismissed the testimony of the man who accused S. of running into him.   The man had no answer when asked why, if a car had slammed into him, he’d suffered no leg injuries.

So the judge chose not to convict my friend, but in the twisted way German justice works, he still had to pay.

His tormenters got off scot-free, but because S. failed to go to the local police that evening to report the incident, he was forced to pay a fine of €1,200.

“I was not found guilty of anything,” S. says, “No criminal record – but in the ridiculous hodge-podge and horse-trading of German law, I was still asked to pay a fine.”

S. wanted to appeal the fine, but his lawyers said all he’d do  is rack up more legal costs.  His lawyer’s bill with the fine had already climbed to more than €4,000, so he just paid it.

Another twist:

Because the case has only been shelved, and not conclusively ended, S. cannot turn around and charge his tormenters. The case against him has to be officially ended before he can proceed, so his case against the rednecks will probably never be heard.

“It’s a completely bonkers German law which lets criminals slip through the loophole, provided they make the first accusation,” he says.

A life in a box

I’ve been carting around a chaotic jumble of ribbons, string, paper, plastic and metal in a ratty old box for most of my adult life. Entirely useless yet absolutely essential, it sits in a closet waiting to be hauled out and dusted off whenever I feel like a wallow through the muddy ruts of memory lane. It’s way better than a photo album. It’s my life in a box.

A sampling:

Most have a story behind them, some of which I might even get around to one day.

1 New Year noisemaker, ca. 1968

1 metal sugar scoop made in Grade 8 metalwork shop, 1972. I hated that class. The teacher was two metres tall and had a horrible temper he let loose with a booming voice. He once humiliated a classmate to tears by smashing his work flat with a sledgehammer.

4 gold Molson Mostar ski racing pins won at Whistler Mountain, BC. They were fun ski races. A ski instructor or patroller would weave through the gates, with his timing used as a benchmark for yours. If your timing was less than 10% slower than his, you got a gold pin.

1 Canadian flag, made of cloth and sewn on backpack for trip to Europe and Middle East in 1980 – 81.

1 square of leather cut away from the long-discarded boots I wore on that trip.

On the Pyramids at Giza, with sweaty socks:

1 Eurail Pass. Expiry sometime in September, 1980. After first validation two months before in Calais, France it became worthless in Lisbon. Not a good idea if you want to get to Greece.

1 Melkweg membership card, valid until Nov. 1, 1980 – from Amsterdam nightclub memorable for what I probably don’t remember of my only evening there.

1 t-shirt remains from Mount Hermon ski area in the Golan Heights, Israel, where I worked as a first aid ski patroller in the winter of 1980 – 81.

1 can of Elite instant coffee, bought in Kiryat Shmona, Israel, 1981.

1 exploded nose cone cover of a Katyusha rocket which hit our Kibbutz in the north of Israel in Spring, 1981. Nothing much has changed.

1 shell casing from the Boer War, picked up by my maternal grandfather and passed on to me.

Spare keys to the only three cars I’ve ever owned. All bought used. The ’85 Honda Prelude was the best of the bunch.

1 Canadian Ski Instructors’ Alliance pin. Best and worst job I ever had. Low pay, deep tan.

Via Rail uniform buttons, lapel and a souvenir pin from definitely the worst job I ever had. I still refer to it as Vile Rail.

1 roll of splicing tape and razor blades for editing tape for radio reporting. I can’t believe it was only 15 years ago they were teaching this in journalism school. Now it’s all done digitally, of course. A bit of a loss, really.

1 photographer’s press pass to see Canadiens hockey games at the old Montreal Forum, 1993. Never got to go interview the players after the game, but free entry to Canada’s most revered hockey shrine was priceless.

1 deck of Donruss original 1992 Toronto Blue Jay Championship Season baseball cards, sealed. A press package gift. Is it worth anything?

1 deck of Donruss original Montreal Expos 25th Anniversary Edition baseball cards. Opened. Another goody-bagger for journalists. Please ignore the McDonald’s logo.

1 Little Red Book. Bought in Beijing, 1997.

1 book of postcards depicting glorious and commendable revolutionary dance drama theatrical production Red Detachment of Women flying the red flag.

1 Hong Kong cent note. Value: next to nothing.

About 20 Hong Kong dollars worth of bar coupons to the Hong Kong Press Club.

A slew of identification cards, including:

1 Vancouver Expo ’86 season’s pass. I swore I would never go to that circus, but ended up actually working there for a time.

1 University of British Columbia library card with some longhair who must have showed up for the picture sometime after 4:20pm.

1 Concordia University library card.

Not shown: 1 Whistler Mountain season’s pass. Price in 1978? $165. You might squeeze two days out of that much today.

1 Quebec driver’s license, expiry 1994. No photo required. Guaranteed to induce derisive laughter in California Highway Patrol cops.

1 Canadian Association of Journalists membership card

2 Vancouver Polar Bear Swim Club buttons, Jan. 1, 1990 and 1995. Best hangover cure other than waiting 36 hours.

1 guest membership card to Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club.

2 Canadian National Railway pins

1 Queen Elizabeth silver jubilee medal. I really do love the queen. Honest.

1 Canadian Red Cross blood donor card, now useless. Because I lived in France in the early eighties, they think I might pass on Mad Cow Disease to recipients, so I am no longer allowed to donate blood in Canada.

Moo.

See those coins in the sugar scoop? I used to collect coins, and so people gave them to me from time to time. I’ve got piles of them, hundreds from all over the world. I look at them and tell myself I should find out if any of them have value or at least put them in an album instead of having then crammed in the bottom of a box, but I’ve been dragging them around forever and never get down to doing it.

I will retire someday, though.

Lost your job? Maybe that’s a good thing

With unemployment in what’s left of the world’s leading economy rising to its highest level in 25 years today, a lot of people are going to suffer as the tidal wave aftermath of Wall Street’s latest greed bubble washes over the rest of the world.

But losing your job isn’t bad news for everyone.

Take the case of my friend and fellow Canadian Douglas in London. We met in Hong Kong in late 1995 when he was being hired for a new weekly show at the station where I was working. Because they the management twits picked Douglas instead of me to host the new programme, I first saw him as a rival, but after a couple of days on the desk with him I soon got over myself, and we’ve been tight ever since.

Douglas has had a real Hong Kong career. He first worked in radio, then TV, then switched for the big bucks of public relations ’til he – quite understandably – couldn’t stand the stench of all the bullshit any longer, then went back to TV.

About two years ago, he got a job producing for a world-famous provider of television business news in London. I remember how excited he sounded on the phone from Hong Kong about landing the position, how he was finally getting out of this “small town” and hitting the big leagues to work on what’s happening in the heart of old world finance.

But like all expats who’ve already paid the price once for leaving home and establishing another one overseas, in moving to London he had to pay all over again, because in the meantime he’d built up such a good life over a dozen years in Hong Kong.

Douglas had good friends, a loving, long-term partner, a comfortable home, even a rag-top car in a city where driving is a luxury often associated with the very wealthy. And let’s face it: as a successful, white, middle-aged gay man in Hong Kong he was still a hot commodity. In London he’s as common as the man on the platform waiting for the 8:15.

So when Douglas told me yesterday that a show he’d been working on had been cancelled and he’d taken the buy-out they were offering him and his colleagues, I said to him: Fantastic!

Getting bought out is the best news he’s had to deal with in ages. Wu Hu! He can now take the cash, travel a bit, visit family back in Canada for a while before taking up a standing offer to return to the station where we met way back in the mid-nineties.

It’ll be the third time in a decade he’s gone back to them, but that’s OK. It not only demonstrates how highly they value his skills, it shows all of us how important it is never to burn your bridges and to remember who your friends are.

And instead of moaning about another dreary London morning, he’ll once again be able to enjoy breakfast on the terrace in the middle of February amid lush greenery, warm breezes and maybe even the sight of a passing cockatoo before heading out into the sunshine.

Nice life if you can live it.