Retirement pressures. First of all let me apologise for being somewhat tardy with this blog (not to mention the absence of the retro blog). As my grandma used to say, lad you’re all over the shop. Meaning you’re badly organised or something similar. Since we got back from America we have indeed been all over the shop.
This blog being just one example. I am hoping to get back in the groove with my writing quite soon, but not today it seems. The reason in this case is that we’ve made our first trip down to Derbyshire since our return and in keeping with our general dopiness, I forgot to take my laptop with me so no writing was done while we were away. Not until we got back to Leeds, which is now.
This lack of organisation with the blogs is only the tip of the iceberg. We’ve made just one visit to the vineyard since our return, didn’t do a lot but hoped that mother nature would take care of things until we could spend some proper time up there. And of course our son is staying with us – always interesting.
But probably the biggest challenge, since we got back, has been on the music side of my retirement life. Last Thursday there was my first rehearsal through which I pretty much sleepwalked which would have been OK had it not been quite an important practice for the gig on Saturday.
The Saturday gig was at Headingley farmer’s market which is as close to a home game as I can get, it being just down the road. So some exposure to friends and neighbours and the inevitable and hard-to-please Headingley, grey-haired brigade.
As if this was not challenge enough I decided I would make life even more difficult for myself by playing not one, but two instruments. Not at the same time but still a challenge. Let me explain. As well as playing my usual guitar I decided now was the time to branch out and play also the bodhran (the Irish drum as it is sometimes known). A member of the group had been foolish enough to mention on a WhatsApp message that the group needed a bodhran player. Silly boy.
It looks a bit like a giant tambourine but I think I can fairly say it’s more difficult to play than that. Properly played by somebody who knows what s/he is doing, it’s a thing of great beauty and complexity. You play it with a double-headed stick, often called a tipper. You don’t just hit the drum you hit it with an up / down,wristy stroke which may have come naturally to me 10 or so years ago when I bought this instrument in Limerick, but no longer does.
Hey ho. By the time Saturday came around I had more or less committed myself to playing at the gig, even though I hadn’t picked this fiendish instrument up in anger for many years. I tried by way of practice, playing along to a few of our tunes. I’m not going to lie, trying to play properly (i.e. with the tipper was impossible), the rhythm just wouldn’t come.
I realised after several futile minutes of practice playing ‘properly’ wasn’t going to work and unless I wanted to bottle it altogether I had to adapt my technique. So back in the bag went the two tippers (I had bought a new one on Thursday in the hope that a different kind of tipper (there are many sorts) might improve my playing (it didn’t).
So no sticks or tippers which left playing with my hands / fingers. And this is what I did come the actual day of the gig, before that critical audience including Mrs Summerhouse and the two dogs. In this way I managed to strike the drum with an interesting, and dare I say authentic enough, rhythm to convince the unknowing that I knew what I was doing. Ha.
It went well partly because I didn’t try to be too clever and partly because I chose, from our about 30 tunes, just 4 to play bodhran to, 4 that I thought I could get the rhythm right, the rest I stuck to my guitar (see above). And by this chicanery I managed to survive the morning at the farmer’s market. And Mrs Summerhouse managed to buy strawberries and Lemon Drizzle cake.
Retirement pressures summary
I do not make life easy for myself. It’s a very, very, fine line between stimulating retirement challenges and self-induced misery. This gig, the decisions about which I made in the continuing haze of jet lag, wavered dangerously between the two states. There were times during the gig itself when I thought I’ve clearly made a mistake here and I will never, ever repeat this mistake. A controlled retirement verging on the dull is what’s needed here.