After the sadness of my last retirement blog it will be nice to get back to a more balanced view of our retirement lives. I’ll take a few words to bring you up to date with what’s been happening. The short answer is – plenty. And this despite our efforts to slow down, simplify, reduce the friction of our everyday lives.
One example of us trying to reduce the complexity is me making the decision to mostly drop out of the Colorado cabin project. A painful decision in some ways, a sensible one in others. The main problem having handed over what you might call the running of the project to my daughter and son-in-law, which they have taken on very nicely, is the equity release aspect otherwise known as the money side of the project.
Try as I might I cannot set on one side my unease about borrowing £100,000 against the equity in our house and paying back, in however many year’s time, £130,000. Why this should worry me given the likelihood that, by the time the money is clawed back, I’ll be dead, I do not understand. However despite my attempts to mellow out vis a vis equity release I have remained very un-mellowed. It’s a favourite for my middle of the night worry list. So, having discussed this with Mrs Summerhouse, we have decided to make no further financial commitment. After all we have gifted them the land and provided money for the first phase of this project. That’s not too shabby is it? Legacy-wise that is.
I’m sure they will progress this heart-felt (of mine) project it will just take a little longer that’s all. And in the meantime there will be plenty of other things happening to keep me occupied. Despite my efforts to simplify, in a version of those famous words, as one door closes another one opens, other projects keep going or even expand.
For example, there’s the visit from ‘our’ agronomist to the vineyard Tuesday morning, more leaf samples to collect and send off and try and make some sense of the variability that typifies our vineyard at the moment. I’ll no doubt write about this and the results, in my next vineyard blog.
While we’re on with the world of nature and spending money to try and bring it to heel, Mrs SH has finally got her way with chopping back the fir tree in our back garden. She has worried about its safety, in the middle of the night, so she tells me, for quite a while now. She finally persuaded a tree surgeon type chappie to come and look at it. Surprise, he thought it a bit unsafe and that will be £500 to cut it back, thank you very much.
Then there’s the change of use application. Another expert, more money (another £500, ta very much) and motivated simply by an over-whelming desire not to let the bastards (aka the planners) win, we continue. You may remember they rejected our first application so now it’s a matter of going to appeal. We did this before with the barn, an inspector calls and it’s expensive. But ‘my’ planning consultant is very keen to fight on, using our money of course. Anyway I’ve decided to go ahead with phase two of this project. So you might say that’s another plate spinning away at least for a while.
At the same time as all this is going off, my neighbour across the road continues to help me with my simplification / paring down efforts by moving stuff out of our garage into his. The latest item to cross the great divide (the street) is a large pressure washer. That means, along with this, he’s got my hedge cutter, 3 leaf blowers, one set of wheels and a trolley. And on-going use of my van which he admittedly got MOTed for me. I pay of course.
While we’re on the subject of the van I’ll just mention my efforts to be a good citizen / member of the community. This was something about my van becoming a community van. Whatever that means. My neighbour across the road has borrowed it three times (so far) and my next door neighbour, once, to move a tool shed on to her allotment. There’s a story here but it’s for another time. At least she let me keep the van, my neighbour across the road, asked last time, do you want this van? I can only think they do things differently in India where he is originally from. Next time I see him I’ll just check what he has in mind.
And in the meantime the low-level bits of life continue. Meeting with friends we haven’t seen for nigh on a couple of years. And also, as another example of normality, last Sunday reading the papers with half an eye on possible retirement blogs topics. There were a number of possibilities – ‘a shortage of educational psychologists’; Charlie Watts obits; American foreign policy.
Nope, none of these, what caught my attention was the option, as a leisure activity, of spending a night sleeping in a church. I did not realise, that through an organisation entitled Church Conservation Trust, you can pay to spend a night sleeping in an (unused) church like some form of weird hotel. It’s called champing and apparently American tourists love it. Not sure of the appeal to them or me and it would take more words than I have here to explain but it feels like the sort of thing a suitably retired person should be thinking about doing. Or is that just me being weird? Don’t hold back now.
PS In case you were wondering about the significance of the photo at the top of this retirement blog, the answer is none at all.