A hectic retirement blog

a hectic retirement

A hectic retirement. As somebody once said, they think it’s all over. If we were referring to the wait for international football success so it would be thanks to the women folk and England being female European football champions. England’s first international football success since 1966. Just thought I’d slip that in.

And so it was with the sister’s weekend, at least for another year, if you’ll pardon the juxtaposition. We drove back to Leeds yesterday relatively unscathed. But, if I was thinking of the hectic-ness of our retirement lives generally, I’d be quite wrong.

So this week shows no sign of slowing down. Take today for example (Monday). We’ve just delivered Mrs Summerhouse’s art works to her exhibition space in Headingley otherwise known as Heart (short for Headingley Art). When I get the pictures of the event I’m going to use them to make this blog partially one of those pictorial blogs, the like of which we haven’t had for a while.

I sometimes wonder why we keep the van particularly with the MOT and Road Tax shortly needing to be paid, but then on a day like today when we can put all the art works into the back and drive down to the ‘gallery’, it all seems worthwhile. So Mrs SH is there right now hanging her work as we artists say.

Then later today we’re expecting a visit from some old chums from Australia. They’ll stay overnight and may or may not want to take a look at our vineyard. What with Covid and stuff it’s been a long time since they’ve seen it and us, and I like to think things have improved since that last time, although I’m pretty sure we haven’t, improved that is. If they don’t want to see it then we shall almost certainly take a ride up there later in the week probably to water the young vines if the second heatwave arrives.

There’s the Folk Fiddle practice on Thursday evening and then another gig, this time in Otley on Saturday. And the week would have been even fuller had I not cancelled a hospital appointment on Wednesday. I just couldn’t face all the Covid requirements and I didn’t much fancy the rest of it either. Nuff said, so I’ve cancelled that.

Anyway enough of the health or lack of it, I’m still suffering from my Achilles which has morphed into other foot and leg problems. So let me end this blog about our week on a positive note and refer you back to how I started this blog, reporting on Mrs SH’s grand exhibition with the pictures and perhaps even a video clip – maybe.

A hectic retirement summary

Ok just come back from transporting Mrs SH’s art work to her exhibition space. We’ve got a few photos of her work but the video didn’t want to transfer so not an option. Ironically I’m two thirds of the way through a birthday book about Francis Bacon exhibition in Moscow. Now that really was a complicated and exhausting venture but this has its moments. Retirement and being an artist, quite demanding under these ‘exhibit your work’ circumstances and not the relaxing retirement activity you might imagine. Let’s hope it makes some money for the Ukraine appeal. I’ll let you know.

 

By The Summer House Years

A blog about the psychology of retirement and finding a new identity while maintaining my self esteem. It's also about 'the missing link', an answer to that feeling that there must be more to retirement than this. Or is that just me?

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