Keighley retirement gig. I can’t let the moment go by unacknowledged. Time and again I’ve written in these blogs about setting myself retirement challenges as a way of keeping mentally alert and using this precious time to its best possible effect. And that’s quite a sentence to kick off with.
More often than not I’ve suggested that setting these challenges have caused a good deal of anxiety and stress. To the point of me wondering whether setting these challenges has been somewhat self-defeating, pointless even.
Well on Sunday we played a Folk Fiddle gig that went really well for me. Yes, no ifs, buts or maybes, it went well. And this even though I tweaked my Achilles in the morning before setting off to the gig. I fell over the chair I was loading into the Land Rover so I could sit rather than stand like I had at the Kirkstall gig, the one I wrote so disparagingly about recently. I suppose kicking the chair after I’d tripped over it probably didn’t help but frankly it (the chair) deserved it. But it didn’t help my foot.
Anyway we got there and set up the chair, the music stand and my music. As well as the guitar I also took and played the bodhran ( see above prior to setting off – sorry can’t seem to get photo in place) and, because of the arrangement of the players (more in a line than a square), I knew I could both be seen and heard. And because Mrs Summerhouse and the doggies had come with me, driven in fact, I had feedback from the ‘audience’, so to speak.
This was lacking at Kirkstall because Millie wouldn’t walk through the crowds. So she was happy at Keighley because there weren’t any crowds, barely any people full stop. In an ideal world there would have been a massive, cheering crowd but, in truth, I didn’t need this. I knew I was playing well and Mrs SH and the doggies confirmed this view biased though they were.
What really helped me feel I was contributing to the group, as I mentioned, was the fact that I played both the guitar and the bodhran. This by popular request and as I knew this was going to happen I took some time prior to the gig to work which songs I would do what to. Even playing both on some tunes, no not at the same time but changing instrument in mid-stream, so to speak – again. So never mind the spontaneity, a bit of planning helped my performance. Other than when the music sheets got out of order. But if they did I could simply resort to playing the bodhran when it really didn’t matter which tune we were on.
If I needed further confirmation then Frank (our lead guitarist) provided it. At the end of the gig he turned to me and said, brilliant Peter. No, that’s not true, actually I made that up. What he in fact said was, ‘that was fun’, which I took to be his masculine way of saying I played well enough. In the past he has commented that I was a) playing too fast, b) playing too loud and c) playing not loud enough. So this comment I took to be the equivalent of ‘brilliant’. Mrs SH confirmed that Frank’s playing and mine were very similar. High praise indeed as he is the main man and I am simply the apprentice. And in this case the apprentice got a couple of positive comments after the gig about the bodhran playing. Take it from me, this is a rare event indeed.
Keighley retirement gig summary
So what am I to learn from this gig? Well, we used to have this concept when working (as a psychologist) of intermittent reinforcement. I won’t bore you, probably can’t remember the details anyway. Suffice it to say that it’s the kind of positive that comes along occasionally but it’s sufficient to keep you doing whatever it is you’re doing for quite a while without any further reinforcement. Well, hopefully that’s what’s happening here.
In addition it somewhat proves the point that challenges in retirement are worth setting even though the reinforcement is only intermittent. True there’s quite a bit of pain (literally in this case) that goes with this challenge-setting but that, as they say, is the way the cookie crumbles and you simply have to keep chewing. Sounds all very good and positive doesn’t it, we’ll see how long it lasts.