Are retirement Christmases different from pre-retirement Christmases? Answer. Yes, but I’m not quite sure how or rather it would take too long to explain how. Suffice it to say, this Christmas certainly has been different and the reason is simple – we’re on our own for the first time ever, in this country anyway. The…
Category: Family
Retirement Christmas number 9 (2022)
So Retirement Christmas number 9. Have they got better or worse as the years have rolled by? Well better in the sense that they have got simpler and that means with less obligation to others. No parents, or cousins or relatives of relatives or friends of children. Not all at once of course but in…
Retirement blog: Friends, relatives, mining and retirement a strange mix?
One of the knock on effects of the pandemic has been seeing nothing or very little of friends and relatives. If you’re a tad on the anti-social side, as I confess I am, then this can be a blessing. And one or two ‘friends’ I haven’t missed at all. Long may their absence continue. Of…
Retirement blog about keeping all the plates spinning
Talk about spin those plates or even as one door closes another one shuts. Whatever but the thoughts come about because we’ve just got back from the ancestral home and the trip raised a few issues. Mrs Summerhouse keeps reminding me that we are lucky to have choices as we pass gracefully through our retirement…
A brief Friday retirement blog: Is the grass actually greener in OZ?
I don’t often write about our children in these retirement blogs. Not sure why. One of them is half an hour away in Allerton Bywater and the other is half a world away in Western Australia. I don’t know how families managed when a letter to or from took three weeks (or whatever) to go…
Ancestry research : a common retirement activity?
I did something this week that I’ve heard retired men of a certain age are motivated to do. I met a woman in a hotel without my wife being there. No, no, you misunderstand. I met her so she could share something with me. No, wait. That sharing being the research she has been carrying…
Retirement and looking after oneself – for the weekend
Retirement or no retirement, it’s that time of year, the dreaded or blessed, you decide, sister’s weekend. This is their thirtieth such get together. I’ve written before in these blogs about this annual event. This is the third year that it’s been just me and the pups (and since I retired). Before this it was…
Tracing my family history now I’m retired and it’s a bit late
I was not quite sure what to write about in this blog. In the end it has turned out to be a blog about trying to find my father’s birth place (see photo below – bizarrely – read on all will become clear). It’s Monday morning the house is cold and we’ve been forbidding ourselves…
Retirement and wedding plans (not mine)
I like to think of this retirement blog as a multi-various literary fest. Cover many topics and not in any great depth, is my motto. So to a different topic. I think I mentioned, in passing, that our daughter is getting married at the end of May. I write this with all the usual joy…
Retirement and the mysterious case of the wedding suit and the sore heel
Back in the day, the words ‘measured for a suit’ meant a certain something. I fully admit I haven’t had many ‘made-to-measure’ suits in my life. Not being of any particularly abnormal proportions, an ‘off-the-peg’ suit, how these terms come back to me in my retirement, has done me quite well. Until now that is…