Retirement blog: what’s in the bubble?

I‘m writing this retirement blog while watching the second day of the first Test match. That’s cricket if you don’t know. Even after being retired for nearly seven years I still find it difficult to sit and watch cricket on TV without doing something ‘useful’. Not that different from the old days when watching cricket ‘live’, you used to take a radio, a Playfair (a little book with details of the players performances) and your sandwiches, this as a minimum) to paper over the boring bits. Anyway back to today and I’ll leave you to decide whether writing a retirement blog is useful.

So I watched some cricket yesterday but the English weather meant there wasn’t much to watch so my conscience wasn’t too tested. What was noticeable was how often the idea of ‘the bubble’ got a mention. True there has been a lot of talk throughout the latter stages of lockdown of ‘the bubble’ but it hadn’t registered with us very much. Other than the odd visit, to deliver our shopping, from daughter and son-in-law, we haven’t had to consider who might be in our bubble.

Now along comes the cricket with a lot of talk of player’s being in their ‘team bubble’ and what this meant for them in practice. Huge arrangements for on-field and off-field behaviour. As some of you will be aware, cricket, particularly the longer form of the game, can lead to a degree of day-dreaming. Yesterday was no exception. It allowed me to speculate at my leisure about bubbles in general and specifically what would be in my bubble if I had to have one.

I thought I would include my attempt at brain-storming in the image above. Asking Mrs Summerhouse to write down the ideas, as they came to me, on the only bit of paper she could lay her hands on. That was the easy part. It will be no surprise when I admit that I don’t mind being in a bubble. But that’s depending on what I can take with me.

So I pondered. Obviously the easiest decision was to include Mrs SH and the doggies. Truth be told, and you can’t tell from the image, they came as an after-thought when I’d got the material type choices out of the way. But there was no doubt that they would be there.

After that well the first thoughts were very much on the basics of food and drink. It’s my birthday this coming week, tomorrow in fact by the time you get to read this, so I’d got my dietary choices worked out. Simple to carry the choices forward into a bubble scenario. So Mrs Summerhouse’s Chicken Kiev and perhaps a bottle of Gewürztraminer. Job done.

Then the media choices. Difficult to choose, from my many books, half a dozen (I’m not planning for a long lock-down) carefully chosen books. I’m much into nostalgia at these difficult times. You know that ‘how much better life was in the olden days’ (not true of course but whatever gets you through these times). So nothing too taxing or challenging. Agatha Christie and Maigret should do the trick.

And music to listen to? Well something that will mellow me out, if you forgive the cliché, but at the same time completely engage me should I choose to set aside my reading and listen. So Milestones by Miles Davis. Then the visual side of things. Easiest to go for a couple of DVDs. It’s a level of technology I’m comfortable with. This is no time for new, a bubble should be an environment in which a person feels completely at home, snug almost. So a couple of old black and white horror movies. Say, Ghost Train and The Haunting (which I expect to get for one of my birthday presents come tomorrow). Could have been any number of similar offerings but these two will do for me.

Railways have to be in there with me. And that means the false comfort of yesteryear’s railways. Steam trains. Recently watched Michael Palin on his train journey from London (Euston) to Kyle of Lochalsh, so that will do nicely and then a bizarre choice. Photographs of Loch Skerrow halt. This is really one for the aficionados. It’s a now derelict (almost disappeared) halt (i.e. not really a proper station) in the wilds of Dumfries and Galloway. I love its remoteness and it’s my bubble so I’ll take what gives me comfort. And this isolated train stop does just that. Can’t explain it any more, suffice it to say if bubbles have walls then these photos are on those walls. Google it if you want to understand a little more.

Now to the tricky bit – sport. Probably many people’s first choice of comfort material. True, but only if you can choose exactly which sport and which games. I can’t really take any footage of village / club cricket because it doesn’t tend to get filmed. So county cricket is where my memories lie – Ilkeston 1964, maybe Derbyshire playing Nottinghamshire. My first taste of school boy cricket. No film of that either, so Test (international cricket) it is. Headingley 1981. If you’re a cricket fan you’ll understand if not then, as I say, it’s my bubble.

Football, that’s easy, the Nottingham Forest side of 1978, 79, 80. No point going into detail or even explanation. You either get it or you don’t. But it’s in my bubble for sure.

By this point you’re probably thinking this retirement blog is nothing more than an exercise in pure self-indulgence. What does it tell us about the world of retirement? Nothing much I agree except… being retired is one form of being in a bubble. Maybe the older we get the more bubble-like our lives become. Maybe we should take a little time in retirement to consider what we want in there with us. What will give us pleasure as we age?

Self-indulgent or sensible use of our precious time? I don’t know, you be the judge.

Just an after-thought – do you take electronics with you into the bubble? If you do is it still a bubble?