New skills in retirement. It’s ironic the day after I cancelled our October Irish trip, Ireland rises to the fore. It was as follows. I was looking through a few of my old retirement blogs and I started to read the one I’d written at the beginning of the year about my new year resolutions or what I’ve called my goals. The irony is that I only had one and that was about continuing to learn new skills. And here I am well over half way through the year and I haven’t written a single blog about this area of my retirement.
When I reflected on what I’d done this far I thought this was a bit harsh. I’ve developed my musical skills somewhat, particularly in terms of performing with the Folk Fiddle group in public – Baildon, Headingley, Keighley, Otley and shortly, Stockeld Park.
In addition I’ve taken up my previous enthusiasm for playing the bodhran. Not well, but I’m doing it. So that’s kind of learning if not a new skill at least revisiting an old one. I’ll return to the musical side of things in a moment.
In the other key area of my retirement life, namely the vineyard, well we’ve had a good year weather-wise, so far at least and this has facilitated a little skill-development in the area of watering, pruning and spraying against disease and for fertilising. Small steps forward but forward none the less.
The final ‘skill’ of my retirement is, of course, this blog. New skills are even less in evidence here but I’ve persisted with the podcast and just about taken over from my late friend PW with his knowledge and skill but I’ve a way to go yet. I find myself often wishing he were still around so I could ask his advice. But not to be. So at a stretch I could say I’ve learned some new skills in this area.
Which brings me back to the musical side of things. I’ve already explained that the jazz playing has paused for the summer. Now, as of last Saturday and the Otley gig, so has the Folk fiddle /guitar side of life.
Apart from a degree of relief that any pressure here is reduced, it also gives me an opportunity to actually try and learn some new skills. Again as I’ve written before my jazz keyboard playing has been restricted for a variety of reasons I won’t go into now, so from somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain (recently scanned but with no results so far) I had the idea of trying to play piano / keyboard to Irish/ Celtic music.
It’s by no means a unique musical genre. Piano has long figured in Irish music and in a form not impossible for the amateur to play. In more recent times groups like The Gloaming have put a new and certainly in my experience, unique face on piano and Celtic music, but that’s for the future.
If I want to try and develop some skills in this area of music I can stay with the simple/er stuff and, sensibly, an approach closer to my current skill levels. Now I will admit because I haven’t played any keyboard for the last year or so, so it has very much starting from scratch. But then I tried it this morning and not too shabby I thought.
I tried playing along to two of my favourite Celtic tunes – The Morning Dew and The Parting Glass (as above) – and yes, not too bad. What I would like to do is to persuade the folk fiddle group to let me play the piano on either of these songs or suitable others. But before I would even ask I’d have to feel a lot more confident about my playing. And that means some serious practice. Not my natural predisposition at all but, you never know what life holds in store do you?
Only one other thing and take this as a negative or a positive, your call. Having saved money on the Irish trip I could almost justify spending some on a new keyboard. True I already have two but neither would be suitable for outdoor performance. I won’t bore you with the details but I need a smaller, portable keyboard with a sensitive action if I ever were to fulfill this ambition.
New skills in retirement summary
So anyway, in the meantime, I hope I can keep learning the somewhat new skills I require in order to avoid making a fool of myself. As I have written many times in these retirement blogs, it’s a fine line between healthy and inspiring challenge and unrealistic and embarrassing foolishness. We’ll see which I end up with.