What specifically you ask is a puzzle after all isn’t retirement per se far more complicated than you ever anticipated? Getting old you always knew might be tricky but there’s tricky and there’s darn right perverse. Specifically the role of music in my life has been complicated all along and it’s only getting more so….
Retirement clickbait
You all know what ‘clickbait’ means, here is my attempt at writing a blog with that concept in mind. Hence the title – what one question have I continued to ask myself for the last ten years or so of my retirement? ‘Clickbait’ has been on my mind as an irritation since I started looking…
Do’s and don’ts. Really?
This is the kind of blog – you might call it advice giving – which I wrote a lot of when I first started this retirement blog. I’ve written fewer and fewer of this type the further I’ve got from retirement – over ten years and counting. I also used to read the newspapers /…
It’s a struggle : Vineyard 98
I’m struggling towards 100 blogs about the vineyard which, some of you will remember, forms an important aspect of my retirement. It’s that part to do with being outside in the fresh air, communing with nature, creating something, physical labour. So quite an important part of the retirement plan, my retirement plan that is. Or…
Resilience part 3
I’m pretty sure I’ve written about the need for resilience in retirement before. I will check but if I ever doubted it then yesterday reminded me and then some. Yesterday was my birthday, my 76th birthday as you ask and about 1.30 in the morning of this birthday I lay awake (not an uncommon event)…
Give it up?
I have to confess after more than 10 years and maybe 1500 versions of this blog I’m getting a little weary of it. It’s not exactly that I can’t find anything to write about although that has become harder the more home-bound I’ve become after my health issues, but even writing one a fortnight has…
Does a lot of good work for charity.
There’s one aspect of retirement that in the ten years I’ve been retired has never quite worked out for me. Before I retired and when I contemplated what my retirement might look like I was pretty certain that this activity would form a part of my retirement life. But it was not to be. True…
No more control freak, now I’m Mr Grumpy
After several months of writing in these retirement blogs about my health and not in a good way, I’ve tried to keep these more recent blogs a little more, what can I call it, upbeat? It’s been a struggle at times and in this blog I’ve kicked that idea into the long grass. In this…
Regrets, not really
What is it the song says – regrets I’ve had a few? In our case it’s definitely true that they’ve been too few to mention. On the whole we’ve taken our chances and experienced a pretty rich life, though I say it myself. One possible exception was coming home to the UK having lived in…
Friends, what are they for?
Well, what are friends for? The answer right now seems to be to do with helping me fill that musical gap / void left when I stopped being a part of the Folk Fiddle group*. I rather despaired that I would ever play any music again with other people that is. In fact I had…