Picking up the reins of normal retirement life through the haze of jet lag. I said in my last retirement blog how comforting it was to get back home to those familiar routines. And so it is but one of two things have prevented this happening in any pure and predictable way. And jet lag is definitely one of these ‘things’.
Not having flown from the USA for 12 years (we think) one quite forgets what a serious business this jet lag actually is. Add to this the fact that we are 12 years older, so 73 as opposed to 61, it’s all a bit stressful this travelling. The actual travel that is, the holiday itself was largely a pleasure and worth the large amount of money we laid out for it. But getting the flight back, not so great. Have I forgotten or have we got less resilient? As always the answer is probably, both.
So picking up the routines of our life, so far, has meant trying to write this blog which means getting up off the sofa and sitting at my desk, as opposed to closing my eyes and drifting off – again. And then waking up and feeling even worse than before I fell asleep.
Getting up usually means walking the dogs. They have been a joy since we got back. I knew I’d missed them but not until now, to what extent. But walking them has been very hard work, quite a lot of simply putting one foot in front of the other and speculating on how nice it will be to get back to my favourite sofa and, dare I say it, Escape to the Country, my dirty little televisual secret that I’ve mentioned before. The English countryside never looked so good. That can’t be a bad thing can it?
Probably the hardest or most challenging routine to pick up has been my musical activities. I haven’t heard yet whether there will be a jazz session this Sunday, but I certainly know that there is a folk fiddle rehearsal this Thursday (today in fact) with 5 or 6 actual gigs to follow shortly. This is a bit more than a usual routine because I’ve never played that many public gigs ever before and they’re so close together. Hmm, is this a good idea? I’ll let you know.
I’m not always kind to myself when it comes to my musical challenges. For example when I got home and started reading the WhatsApp messages from the group there was quite a bit about a new tune, Toss the Feathers but, more to the point, there was a clip of The Coors playing it and one of them playing a Bodrhan (an Irish drum). One of our members had written, all we need is a Bodrhan player, and some synapse in my brain said, I’ve got one of those and I used to be able to play it.
I dig it out and start to try and play along to the clip. Long story short, I can’t, my wrist (it’s a very wristy technique to play it) just won’t do what I tell it to. Very frustrating. The end result is, instead of practising the guitar as I should, I ended up spending / wasting time trying to play the bloody Bodrhan. I will keep you informed as to whether this goes any further as a part of my ambitions or if I go back to the sensible business of playing guitar. At this point I don’t know.
Which leaves the vineyard. We haven’t seen the vines for about a month. That’s a lot of time at this point in the year. Much might have happened which is code for much might have gone wrong. My man in the Dales has been keeping an eye on things, mending the drive and cutting the grass he tells me but he doesn’t do things with the vines themselves. So, as I say, much might have gone wrong. We will take a trip up there tomorrow. Until then I’ll just worry about the state of things. When I’m not worrying about my musical skills, that is.
Oh and then there’s our trips to Derbyshire. Maybe next week, so there’s much to wrestle with before that time, so this aspect of our retirement life is nowhere near the top of my worry list. The only other thing to worry about this week is the arrival of our son from Australia. He’s going to be staying with us for 3 weeks. All I will say is that his last visit, 3 years ago, was not a runaway success. So fingers crossed for a better outcome this time around. As always, I will keep you informed.
Normal retirement life summary
So this is the best I can do by way of describing our usual retirement life and the one to which we have returned. When I look at it, as written here, I think no bloody wonder I’m feeling exhausted.