Stained glass and retirement

At one time in these retirement blogs there was a strong theme of ‘stained glass windows’ running through them. In a couple of very early blogs I wrote about Mrs Summerhouse attending a course on how to make stained glass panels. She made a few panels and I showed them in these blogs. After that we went with the group on two or three visits to local churches to appreciate and admire the stained glass windows within their walls. These blogs represented yet another example of my misplaced understanding of what our retirement  would look like. We thought a new kind of art forMrs SH and the related visits to local churches to gain inspiration would form a significant strand of our retirement. We were both wrong. So much for anticipating and planning one’s retirement. Since the last stained glass blog several months ago, this aspect of retirement, that promised so much, has been a void. Until last Thursday. I wrote briefly in my last blog about the visit to Ripon Cathedral and I had to admit that, for me, it was a little disappointing. My fault entirely, Mrs Summerhouse enjoyed it and so did Julie Wilks who made the presentation below. Julie kindly agreed to my showing her video on this blog and I thought I would show it here because a) it’s very good and b) it makes a welcome change to my retirement ramblings. Hope you agree.

There may be a moral about retirement to this story, I’m really not sure whether there is or not or what it is. Don’t try and plan your retirement, just let it flow? Don’t be afraid or embarrassed to give up on an activity that came up short (like my jazz classes)? It’s never too late to return to an activity that didn’t live up to its initial promise but might now? I don’t know maybe it’s simply don’t try and over-analyse your retirement decisions. Just don’t know. As I’ve written before, retirement can be a confusing time of a person’s life.