My retirement is all very musical at the moment so I thought I would write a short Friday blog to bring you all up to date with what has happened and what is yet to happen. No wonder I get emoji red, unhappy faces on WordPress for my sentence length, with one like that to kick off. I digress.
One of my key principles for leading a fulfilling retirement is the idea of balance. I always tried to keep my life in balance when I was working and it’s a value I’ve done my very best to carry forward into my retirement. Of course life has a habit of wriggling free from my control strategies and at the moment the musical side of retirement seems to be fighting with the vineyard pruning for dominance.
Walking the dogs, writing this blog are always there, but in 3rd and 4th place right now. So, as for the music, last week saw me make two public appearances. The first was the now Monday night jazz gig. I even did a bit of preparation for this performance. Not like me at all. Went rather well I thought.
And the second, two days later, not really public but rather a rehearsal for the Folk Fiddle group with me strumming away on my newly-stringed Taylor guitar. Nothing like new strings to a) take time to change and b) to give the player a nice bright sound when it’s done even if it does need retuning on a regular basis because they’re not properly stretched.
In addition to my own humble efforts we’re going to a concert on Friday night, tonight in fact by the time this gets posted. It’s a concert by the National Youth Jazz Orchestra at Leeds Town Hall. The last time I attended a big band concert like this one was at the Marsden Jazz festival a couple of years ago. I enjoyed it so much I haven’t been to another one until now. Typical inertia from me. This one popped up unbidden (like so much else) on my Facebook page. This one seemed like it was a sign. So I ordered our tickets and we’re good to go.
Also next weekend is the Heart Refu Jazz Saturday. This is a now annual event to raise money for the city’s refugees, so a good cause. They’re running a number of concerts and workshops, one of the latter is on playing jazz guitar. Now I haven’t attempted this for quite a while ever since my arthritic fingers refused to form those complicated jazz chords and I moved to playing keys (as we hip piano players call it). I’m likely to show myself up again but at least this time in a good cause.
Having overcome a few confidence issues, in playing before an audience, I’m rather pleased with myself and how I’ve started this New Year musically. Oh, and talking of things musical, I bought Mrs Summerhouse a 3 pack of DVDs for part of her Christmas present. The three films were Yellow Submarine; Help and Hard Day’s Night (as above), all starring yes, you’ve guessed it, The Beatles. We’ve watched 2 of the 3. The first two and unfortunately I have to report that, songs apart, they have not aged well.
Admittedly, the best of the three we haven’t seen yet and the other two we hadn’t watched for many years. Seemed like a neat present when I had the idea but, at this distance, they’re not good. Help, even by the standards of films of this sort, has no plot and just a series of repetitive and pointless scenes in locations with no logic to them at all. Yellow Submarine which seemed so revolutionary at the time, now just seems long and again rather silly. Never go back they say and this would be true in this case.
So there we are that’s you up-to-date with my musical ventures in this brief retirement blog. I hadn’t really planned for music to play a big part in my retirement but here it is. Makes me wish I’d started a bit sooner in life with the public stuff. I’ve always played musical instruments but only in a private sort of way, now look at me.
Those of my readers who don’t see the point of planning their retirement would find my musical adventures, where the intellectual (learning new stuff) and the physical (my arthritic fingers) are doing battle for supremacy, a good example of not planning, but going along with whatever the flow turns out to be. Who knew?