Retirement problems. I was going to start this blog by telling you that I had ‘idly’ been looking through my past blogs looking for inspiration but that word, idly, would seem to imply I’m not busy and this would not be true. True there is nothing musical going on. The folk fiddle rehearsals start again this Thursday after a three week break and there hasn’t been any jazz at all but to suggest this has left a sizeable void in my retirement life wouldn’t be quite accurate.
Truth be told I’ve enjoyed the break which slightly questions my commitment to the musical side of my life. And this after buying new keyboard so that I can play piano to Irish music. This grand plan has not been helped by me falling ill, so maybe that’s the explanation.
Any vacuum has more than been filled by working in the vineyard. I’ll be writing a separate blog about this side of our retirement lives shortly so all I will say for now is that we’ve been putting the netting back into position to protect the grapes from the birds now they’re ripening and if there’s a worse job vineyard-wise then I haven’t yet experienced it.
Anyway the point is that I was looking through back issues of the summerhouse years and my eyes fell on the section entitled Retirement Problems. Interesting I thought I’ll take a look. To my surprise it seemed the very last blog in this section was January, 2020. As the mathematically aware among you will realise that’s about two and a half years ago. Wow, this would seem to suggest I haven’t had any retirement problems for this long.
Either that or I’m simply filing under different headings – health for instance. Certainly I have written plenty of blogs on matters of my health. But as for the rest well I’m not sure, so I thought I would apply my grey cells to this title today. In other words what are my retirement problems currently if I don’t include health issues?
One that springs to mind is holidays. We have cancelled our re-arranged Irish holiday which was supposed to happen in October. The vague plan was to replace this holiday with a couple of hotel breaks, one in London and the other in Yorkshire. Good plan but while I’m struggling a bit to walk with my Achilles problem, neither option is likely to give me much pleasure. I’m going to the physio’s this Wednesday so this might help. But it’s still a problem if not a massive one.
I said that there isn’t much going off musically but there is a problem and it’s along the lines of my musical ambitions outstripping my physical skills – arthritis and similar problems. If only I’d started younger. If only.
Maybe alongside the physical side of problems I might suggest the intellectual side, as represented by writing this blog, is also slightly problematic. Certainly coming up with new ideas each week is a struggle. But again I’m forced to say that this hardly constitutes a world-shattering retirement problem.
Retirement problems summary
Interesting. Maybe I’m forgetting something but, take my recent health out of the equation, and there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of the usual sort to worry about. That can’t be right, next I’ll be writing a positive view of retirement – no mention of finance, vehicle breakdowns, relationships, the world as a whole (although any examination of that in the UK would certainly put a dampener on any positive perspective. But let’s not go there. Stop with the thought not much in the way of problems – touch wood.