Can you write your way to happiness? A headline in the Review section of The Observer a few weeks ago. I’ve been meaning to respond but I’ve been too busy being miserable. So now I will respond and, as a person who has kept a diary every day for the last nearly 40 years, I…
Category: Happy retirement
Retirement life continues
We’ve been back from Ireland for approximately a week and a half. Time enough to put aside those reflective thoughts about the meaning of life, to set aside those grand thoughts about how we might / should change our retirement lives and get back to the routines of our retirement as it actually exists. Regular…
Retired man and woman try to run a small business
Running a small business when retired. It’s what lots of retired people do, apparently. Admittedly in our case it’s running the gardening business of our son who’s in Australia. He’s still waiting to hear from the authorities whether they will give him a work visa so he can take up the offer of a job….
In retirement is the grass greener?
You know the old saying about grass and how it’s always greener on the other side of the fence? You don’t well, that may be a good thing for you. I’ve always been a bit of a victim to this kind of what psychologists call ‘faulty thinking’. I think, on balance, it is faulty because…
Our third retirement Christmas
What sort of retired person writes a blog on Christmas day?* Well, I cheated a bit writing this on Christmas Eve but it’s the thought that counts. I had to smile about the prospect of another action-packed Yuletide, a bit less action filled because this year, for the first time in many, many years, we…
When you’re retired and your daughter gets married
So the wedding of my favourite daughter, I’ve put it off for a while mainly because I didn’t have any photos and now I do courtesy of number one son, most of which are unpublishable but I’ve extracted a few from the many he took, on his phone of course, and there are all the…
Now I’m retired should I join something?
So the wedding is over, it went well. More of this later. We’re back from our very nice holiday with the pups in Ireland (more of this and house buying in a later blog) and although this set me off again wondering about where we, in retirement, should live, it was definitely more good than…
Retirement in 2014 and goals for 2015
It’s that time of year – again. That is the end of this year and very nearly the beginning of a next year. For me this means it is a time of review and goal-setting. By the way, don’t be misled by the jollity of the image, right, we’re usually in bed by the time…
The (retired) Aussies were here
The last of our Australian visitors has just walked out the door at 6.30 in the morning. Like the proverbial bus you don’t see one for a long time and then two sets show up, quite coincidentally, at once. Of the two sets of partners only one person is working, so, in total, that’s five…
Adventures of retired persons : an oxymoron?
A couple of weeks ago we took another walk on the wild side. I just haven’t got round to writing about it until now. It’s yet another example of the kind of retirement activity I swore I would never get involved in and it needs to be ruthlessly exposed. I confess, we joined a walking,…