Lawks a-mercy. I thought I would make it my retirement mission to bring out of retirement some old English words and phrases that are, sadly, rarely used these days. I believe this is a popular – at the time – version of ‘Lord have mercy’. As I think the Lord should have mercy on my pathetic efforts at self-determination or simply being in control of my retirement life (a theme of many earlier retirement blogs), the phrase seems appropriate to kick off this blog. Let me explain, regular readers of this blog will know that I continue to be obsessed with what I have called ‘the missing link’ in my retirement. That absent ingredient that will make my retirement experience so much closer to perfection. I have argued that retirement is the time in our lives when taking control of what we do, becomes a realistic possibility. So finding the link and inserting it, is a realistic goal. for the retired person. Problem is, I can’t identify what the bloody missing bit is.
As I do sometimes, I look back to my career as a psychologist and try to recall any techniques that might just be helpful to me in identifying the elusive ‘perfection factor’ missing from my retirement. Quite a long time ago I wrote about a psychological approach called Solutions Focused Therapy (SFT). This was an approach to helping people solve problems that I used quite a bit and valued very highly. So once again with the ‘physician heal thyself’ mantra ringing in my head, I set about using one of the techniques popular in this approach, entitled scaling. It is as follows, and this is the simple version. You ask yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 and without too much thinking, where are you (in this case) in terms of feeling satisfied with your retirement? The second linked part of the process then asks, what would it take to move just one point up the scale? The thinking behind the technique is that quantifying your ‘life’ in this simple way gives a sense of being in control and helps the process of clarifying, in the most accessible terms, what it would take to ‘improve’ your life. One point means you are only looking for small improvements (a sound psychological premise) and hence achieving the improvement is a practical option.
There is another aspect to this technique. My score in this case was a 7 and the idea of scaling is that it encourages you to consider what it is about your retirement life that caused you to give it that score. In other words, what are all the good things in your retirement life that you want to have continue? And this is where the insanity of my own retirement becomes apparent. Shortly after engaging in this activity we went out to take the pups for a walk and called in at the garage to buy a newspaper and, with my score ringing in my brain, I reversed into a car behind me. I swear it wasn’t there when I started but maybe it was and I wasn’t concentrating. As Mrs Summerhouse pointed out, losing your powers of concentration / memory / sanity as you get older should be the theme of this blog. Well, maybe it is, I don’t know yet. Depends on how it unfolds and whether I remember what I’m writing about. So this was upsetting, a) because of this apparent 
How I laughed – nearly went to Bradford. Now my 7 was out the window. I was down to a 5 or 6, what good is thinking about moving the damned score up a point to be back to where I was before I reversed into another person’s car and no I couldn’t just have driven off as he was sitting in it when I ‘hit’ him, not that I would have anyway, I’m not like that. And he was very pleasant about it, not to worry, these things happen, nobody got hurt, he said. This, as I stood there shaking my aging head in disbelief, saying over and over, I can’t believe I did that. So my attempt at taking control was smashed by an unpredictable act of fate, chance, bad luck, etc. etc, how a determinist like me hates all those words. You try to take control and there’s always some bloody thing lurking round the corner, that says, you think you can take control of your life, ha, think again.
So here I am again, using this blog as writing therapy. I was so pissed off with my carelessness and my brain was so full of the event and the ‘what does all this mean’ type questions, that my head was fit to bust. As is my usual strategy I needed to get my angst out of my head and onto paper. Of course I could have written it all down in my diary as has always been my custom and publicising my stupidity on my blog is always a tale of two cities. However, in this case I have decided the good side somewhat outweighs the bad, if only perhaps to provide comfort to my fellow retirees who might realise that they are not on their own in this world of why am I so fucking stupid? So, hey ho, what is this blog about? Getting more doddery in retirement? The foolishness of trying to control one’s life? No, I think, neither of the above. I think the message here is don’t drive backwards particularly in a Land Rover Defender without turning round, wing mirrors can only tell you so much. Like retirement itself, sometimes you need to look back.
PS. I never did get round to deciding upon my one point improvement and now I’ve lost interest at least until my next bout of self-determination comes around.