I can’t think why I don’t write more blogs about books given that I probably spend more time reading than any other retirement activity. As many of my retirement activities – walking the dogs, travel, dining out, working in the vineyard, even writing this blog have grown more restricted, books and reading have stuck with…
Category: Happy retirement
Never give advice
I’ve never really been a big fan of poetry. I’ve tried to be but it’s not happened. I even have a section of this retirement blog dedicated to poetry but, as you might see, that section has but one offering and that many years ago. I had a friend who wrote poetry and I had…
I do like to be beside the seaside
If the above were true, which to some extent it is, then the last few years would have been pretty miserable. This last weekend was our first visit to the sea, since, well we couldn’t quite remember when. Certainly pre Covid which would make it 5 or 6 years. Not great for self-confessed coast lovers….
DIY, no can do
Perhaps it’s inevitable that when you’re retired you look back at all the things you used to be able to do and can no longer do. Inevitable but stupid. An intelligent retiree focuses on those activities they can do and values / takes pleasure in those positives. Hmm, simple. That’s what I’ve tried to do…
It’s a puzzle
What specifically you ask is a puzzle after all isn’t retirement per se far more complicated than you ever anticipated? Getting old you always knew might be tricky but there’s tricky and there’s darn right perverse. Specifically the role of music in my life has been complicated all along and it’s only getting more so….
Friends, what are they for?
Well, what are friends for? The answer right now seems to be to do with helping me fill that musical gap / void left when I stopped being a part of the Folk Fiddle group*. I rather despaired that I would ever play any music again with other people that is. In fact I had…
Simplification, the way forward?
Given there is a definite view of retirement, mainly from retired people themselves, that, as they get older, their life choices become restricted ( I feel the world is closing in on me as one acquaintance put it), that deliberately limiting one’s own choices is perverse, to say the least and maybe outright foolish. I…
Change of plan, really?
I’m not sure I dare even write this but here I go. And after all I’ve written over the last few months about wanting to return my retirement life to what I’ve persistently called ‘normal’, you might think I’ve got some damned cheek but as The Animals once sang many years ago, ‘It’s my life…
Into 2024, what’s in store?
So here we are half way through January, 2024 and how am I doing in my continuing efforts to return to my life pre all my health problems of last year? What I’m choosing to call normality. You may recall that my carefully considered retirement life was made up of a number of deliberately chosen…
2024, new start?
Well the first day of 2024, so no more 2023 which was an annus horribilis indeed (if that is how you spell it, certainly my spell checker doesn’t think so). It would, of course be foolish to think all our health problems will end with a new year. New start? No, more like setting ourselves…