I think I’ve written this thought before but hopefully it bears repeating; in a world that seems to constantly be contracting, a person has to work harder and harder to keep one’s options open. The temptation is, many years into retirement, to go with the flow and settle for or even enjoy a life of…
Strange thoughts
In a world of uncertainty I know one thing for sure, the older I get the weirder my thoughts get. I’ll give you one example that struck me as I was watching TV the other day. It was a programme about a hospital garden designed specifically to accommodate spinal injury victims, many of whom were…
Good health and cheap not
I did something last week that I had never done before in the 77 years of my life thus far. I paid for private medical care. I was not happy with this decision for two reasons. One, it has always been against my vague socialist principles and two, it’s very expensive. I wouldn’t like to…
My best ever Christmas present
Are retirement Christmases different from pre-retirement Christmases? Answer. Yes, but I’m not quite sure how or rather it would take too long to explain how. Suffice it to say, this Christmas certainly has been different and the reason is simple – we’re on our own for the first time ever, in this country anyway. The…
My reading has changed
My reading habits are changing or perhaps more accurately my newspaper reading habits are changing (my book reading habits remain largely unchanged). We still buy both The Guardian and Observer at the weekend and subscribe to the first on line for the rest of the week. The latter was more of a charity gesture to…
Spend it to help
Those of you who have been reading these retirement blogs since the beginning (over 12 years, yes, really) might remember that perhaps my main mantra in terms of a successful retirement has been the idea of balance. Check out my early thoughts on the matter. In summary the components have been – outdoor activity /…
Phew, what a week!
Continuing the theme of two coming along at once (buses you may remember) this is the second health blog in a short time. Oh no not that old chestnut I hear you cry. We’ve heard all we want to hear about your health. But wait just a minute this blog is not about my health…
Spend or Save?
Social media, the newspapers and the rest are full of stories about punishing pensioners, financially that is. So that would be us then. Taking money from our savings accounts, taking away our heating allowances, increasing our taxes, getting rid of our triple lock arrangements, blah, blah. If we weren’t in the habit of ignoring, as…
What’s wrong with me now?
Even though I’ve been retired for just over 12 years (September 2013) and have written, according to my recent advert in The Oldie magazine (I put one in each year about this time) I have written over 2,000 blogs about retirement ( see image above)I have, in that time, read very few other people’s retirement…
Vineyard 102: The Harvest
I think a degree of predictability, routine even, in retirement, is a good thing. Demands on a person, even self-imposed ones, within reasonable limits, give a retired person a feeling of self-worth. And self-worth, as we age, which I’m definitely doing, can be hard to hang on to and should be highly valued. It’s one…