Retirement: Good on paper. I have to admit the Saturday morning just gone I had set myself the task of writing this coming Tuesday’s Summerhouse Year’s blog and I was struggling. I was trying to avoid having to write it at the last moment, on Monday morning probably having driven back from our vineyard and typically feeling quite knackered. That’s what I’ve done the last few weeks and it doesn’t work well.
Not for the first time recently I wonder about the sensibleness of putting myself under such writing pressure. And more so in the context of having a dance card (as I’ve called it) that’s too full. (If I’d called it a bingo card I think I would have called ‘house’ some time ago).
Incidentally, I’ve written well over a thousand blogs since I started this ‘writing project’ and strangely I have not yet posted a celebratory blog to this effect as I have for every other centenary landmark. Strange.
Anyway, I digress. So good intentions but I was struggling. I suppose I was hoping that something would inspire me from that morning’s papers. But, of what I’ve read so far, this has not turned out to be the case. I was left with the hope that, as Mr Micawber (I think) said, something will turn up.
All that has turned up, at the time of writing, was the words in my head – ‘I like my life on paper’. Weird, you might think and surely a simple passing bit of nonsense. But no, the words persisted. But, I thought, my readers will interpret these words as meaning that my retirement life looks good on paper but not when I consider the reality.
And this is not, what, it turned out, I meant at all. To cut straight to the chase, it means that I like the books (that’s the paper bit) I have acquired over the last few weeks from Father’s day and my birthday. These from Mrs Summerhouse, myself (self-bought) and my children. I like them so much that I’ve taken this blog as an opportunity to capture a photo of them all (with one exception, that is somewhere else).
They represent my ideal life in total. The crime fiction ones solely in the sense that reading these in the late afternoon or, more commonly, in bed, relax me in a way not easily achieved by other activities. I’ll just make that point lest you should think I have secret criminal ambitions. Nope.
The other fiction book, The Leviathan by Rosie Andrews, is my nod to the ghostly side of literature. Again a constant in my reading programme although I have to say so far, and I’m about half way through it, it is proving slightly disappointing. Not easy to write a good ghost story and I’ve read (and even written) plenty, so I should know.
But the rest of them fairly capture my ambitions and interests. Ranging from a history of Ireland where, with all good fortune, we will be travelling to in October. I’ve been meaning to read up on the history of the country of my ancestors and which we visited every year until Covid came along. There was a programme on TV about the same topic (history that is) which also, it must be said, inspired this further reading. To supplement this book there’s the Ireland by campervan example, a present from the dear boy on his recent visit home from Australia.
He’s also responsible for the book on the North Yorkshire Railway. You can never have too many books about ‘old’ railways (usually steam trains) and there are certainly plenty to choose from. This being a local railway is a welcome addition.
Then there’s my annual purchase or rather my daughter’s annual Father’s Day present of Wisden Almanac to cover the cricket side of life. In reality this can be either massively up-lifting or not… In paper form at least one can select the best bits and gloss over the rest.
I’m more than pleased with the art side of things as represented by the variety and spread of a biography of Hogarth and Francis Bacon in Moscow. The latter an interesting juxtaposition but one on which it is slightly too soon to comment on as I’ve only just got started reading it.
PS. as is my habit, I’m reading all these books (and more) at the same time. Mrs Summerhouse thinks this ‘style’ of reading to be perverse but I obviously disagree. It makes perfect sense to me as different kinds of books are read at different times of day and dependent on my mood at the time. I don’t see the problem.
Retirement: good on paper summary
So that’s it. Books again, no surprise given their central role in my retirement life. Great title but slightly light in the delivery, even misleading as this retirement blog has unfolded. But, as I said at the start, I was struggling to find a topic and this is as close as I got.