One week back. I have to admit that more than a week after our return from the USA I’m still searching for that comforting normality I wrote about in a previous retirement blog. Even the weekend papers, usually a solid pillar of our lives have proved just too much effort to read. In fact reading in any form is guaranteed to send me off to sleep.
And if that is surprising then not being motivated to watch television is even more so. We’re both tired and find we haven’t got the energy to do either of the above. In the absence of any commitment to the above activities it’s probably not surprising that I haven’t been able to gain any inspiration for topics for these blogs from two of my favourite and most giving sources.
Of course there’s also an explanation in the fact that since getting home we’ve had plenty going off in our lives and these activities have been a rich source of blog topics – music (although I missed last Thursday’s folk fiddle rehearsal on account of jet lag and tried it on Zoom, more about which at a later stage), vineyard, household chores like buying and planting our bedding plants and, whisper it, even sport. You know all the typical daily activities that make up our retirement life. And this blog itself, of course.
We did eventually drag our sorry asses off the sofa and up to the barn / vineyard. In past times this has provided a degree of escapism but not so much this visit. Of course we went to the pub. Clive, the landlord seemed to have become even more non PC if such a thing was possible. Or maybe we’d just forgotten how appallingly rude he is? And the pub itself was different. It was empty mainly, it seemed, because the whole village was on the sports field celebrating the Queen’s jubilee.
No disrespect to her but we’re not really royalty celebrating (with its uncomfortable – for us – overtones of patriotism) people. In fact I’m delighted that most of the population has returned to work. The weirdness (even uniqueness) of the four day bank holiday has not helped one bit in my search for a normal existence. But that no doubt makes me sound very grumpy indeed.
I had done OK in finding blog topics for the blog until today that is. Which brings me back to seeking inspiration from reading the newspapers. Not the actual paper itself, the news itself is mostly depressing beyond words, but the review section often throws up something worth me pondering on.
In fact it’s back to last weekend’s Observer for a blog idea. In this case it’s an article about that old stalwart, actor, Sheila Hancock. She’s 89 and has been a feature of our TV viewing for the whole of our lives. So on that basis alone (and not just that basis) she deserves a read.
She has written a ‘new memoir’, Old Rage (as in image above) and in which she ‘mercilessly describes her lockdown look.’ If she can manufacture a memoir out of that then good luck to her. My lockdown look could be described in 8 words – just the same as my non-lockdown look. But it takes all sorts.
She has a number of things to say about retirement. For example, people don’t prepare enough for retirement, she says. Everything just stops overnight … it’s amazing how many people become lonely after they retire.’
I can’t say I’ve become lonely and I did prepare for retirement to some extent. It’s in my nature to have plans and have done so at every stage of my life, retirement being no different. But she does go on to say, ‘I do feel that work keeps me going.’ Hmm, quite so, I think I’m still, after 8 years of retirement, struggling a little bit to replace the plus to my self-esteem that work used to provide. Will this deficit never be filled?
Anyway enough of that and back to picking up the pieces of our retirement lives on our return. Anybody might think that we’d been away for months instead of a mere fortnight, although coming back just a couple of days before the arrival for three weeks of our Aussie bound son, certainly doesn’t help in our search for normality. His presence in the house renders things anything but normal. But, as he might say, it is what it is.
Retirement life, one week back summary
At the risk of repeating myself, I still don’t feel as if our lives are back to normal despite several attempts to wrestle it into some kind of recognisable shape. It does feel a bit that no sooner do I put a piece of our normal retirement life back in its rightful place than another piece drops out. Perhaps it was ever thus?