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The 3 x 60 Challenge

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So much is written about the post-work bucket list that as you approach retirement, you inevitably feel that you should have one. A tick list of 100 things to see and do before you die. You don't even have to think up your own any more, the Internet is full of them. Glance through them if you will and you quickly get the impression that retirement must be full of adrenalin rushed grandparents throwing themselves out of aeroplanes or climbing Kilimanjaro. Indeed the eldest recently sent a book to Mister E and me entitled "101 Coolest Things to Do in Great Britain." Now it is a good read and has some, shall we say, "interesting ideas" but for those that hold the most appeal I can honestly say that I've already been there, done them, got the photographs. There are others that wild horses wouldn't drag me to. It may be cool, but somehow Mister E and I attending Bestival is beyond even the most vivid of imaginations. The problem with trying to...
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All Aboard for Pampering

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Mister E and I may be retired but we still enjoy being pampered now and again; who says you have to be working hard to deserve a treat? Yesterday offered one of those occasions when we were spoiled with a train trip on board the Northern Belle, previously operated and restored by the Venice Simplon Orient Express. It was a day for lounging back in a plush seat, eating and drinking everything put in front of us (and there was quite a quantity) whilst watching the scenery glide serenely past. The luxury of our surroundings and the attentive service from uniformed staff all added to the sense of occasion and enjoyment. We were entertained by wandering musicians and a magician on our figure of eight route around County Durham and North Yorkshire, ending up eventually back where we started at Darlington Station. Just like my retirement so far really; there is no obvious destination but the journey getting there is immensely pleasurable.
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A Full Service

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  It's not just the Spring Cleaning that I embrace in February and March because, much as I dislike routine, the end of winter and beginning of spring have become a time to put other aspects of our house in order. So, it's a period for sorting ourselves administratively with meetings with our financial adviser and personal banker; reviewing and renewing insurance policies, changing insurer as necessary; checking tariffs and switching energy suppliers. In fact this year we have surpassed ourselves by finally updating our wills too!  Energised by the thought of springtime and rebirth, it's also become a time for medical checks, new spectacles, and a dental check-up. When making my appointment with the optician, I was given the option of a hearing test; I declined but no doubt, in years to come, that too will find its way into my retirement body scan. It's not simply a phase for a human body overhaul either, as we've subjected our cars to annual serv...
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Late, Even in Retirement

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  (Image by Merry Christmas  from Pixabay) Whilst retirement continues to throw up its new experiences, I'm conscious that some of them only arise because I'm a little late for the party. We have the misfortune to suffer from the problems that rural connectivity throws up. In particular, we  frequently struggle with mobile reception at one side of the house, whilst at the other it has proved impossible to obtain a wifi signal meaning that the benefits of a smart televison are non-existent.  However, during last year's initial lockdown, for the first time I appreciated the potential of casting especially from the iPad to the living room. It's been an indispensable way to participate in online exercise classes.  On Sunday, I was idly exploring other options to cast when I discovered that every series of Downton Abbey is available on Amazon Prime. I'm one of those few people who until now has never watched a single episode. I was, of course, working when it aired ...
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The Danger Zone

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I have generally considered myself  to be healthy and my retirement lifestyle equally so. I exercise daily; eat a good diet; don't add salt to my food; don't drink much; have never smoked; have no obvious stress triggers; have even lost half a stone in weight since finishing work although, like many people, several more pounds won't be missed. Grief, I sound so boring! Anyway, I was a little concerned by my hospital visit at the end of July when the nurse checked my blood pressure. I could see the reading on the screen and, as it seemed high to me, I did ask her if it was okay.  "Absolutely fine," she said but that didn't exactly allay my fears. After all I had been sitting in a waiting room that could easily have passed for Obesity International and what if mine had simply been the lowest she had seen all morning? The result has been nagging on my mind, so on Monday I called into our surgery and had the Practice Nurse take another readin...
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Seven Years and Itching

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  It is seven years today since I closed the door on my legal career and I still have no itch or desire to return to the world of court rooms and orders. If I have a yearning at all, it is for a resurrection of the retirement life I had become accustomed to before this darned pandemic descended upon us. It is a craving that is now, however, tempered by the sense that the simple life I have long hankered for is within my fingers' grasp, if only... I noticed a meme the other day that just about summed up my situation. In essence it was indicating that lockdown has demonstrated that we need more than time trapped at home to organise and sort; the problem was never a lack of hours to devote to the task as we had always assumed, but rather something within that needs to be tamed and brought to heel.  Who would have imagined that seven years down the track with supposedly oodles of time, I'd still be contemplating how to declutter myself of  physical stuff?  Strangely the ...
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Exhaustion

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  Who would have thought it?  Yesterday, according to my Fitbit app, I walked more than 5 miles without leaving the house; most of it was between wardrobes and the bed where robe contents were displaced and sorted. Now in the course of  the motivational training sessions, I was warned that one wardrobe and a time limit of 4 hours were desirable. However, when Mister E expressed interest in getting his hanging rails decluttered too, it seemed opportune to keep going. After all when the man who cannot even bear to throw away a cardboard box, admits his closets need a good tidy up and needs help to do this, who could possibly refuse? To be fair, he took to the process with a great deal more realism and less sentimentality than I did. In the end the hangers on his rails move freely whereas mine are still a trifle squeezed. Looking at the number of empty coat hangers we produced, I'm ashamed to say we must have jettisoned at least a hundred items between us, most of which wer...
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Happy New Me

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  There's something very special about New Year. There I am at 11.59 pm on 31st December waiting for the clock to strike; I whisper a few resolutions; the New Year rushes in and I am a transformed being. Except it doesn't work like that. Least of all last night, when I couldn't keep my eyes open late enough to witness the ushering in of 2022. It continues to be a hard life in retirement (she says smiling).  I was up this morning, however, with a good thirty minutes to spare before welcoming the first dawn of the new me, assuming of course that I had remembered to make some resolutions.  I hadn't.  It wasn't so much that I'd forgotten to make any as, to be honest, I genuinely couldn't think of any. Of course, nobody's perfect but in retirement where everyone strives to live in the present, resolving to socialise frequently, regularly ring Great Aunt Betsy (another figment of my imagination), shed pounds or come up with anything to alter your life for the ...
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A Reprieve

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  Tonight I am writing this post rather than continuing my game of catch up with Downton Abbey. After a week of  constant viewing, I am even beginning to sound like Lady Mary; should I deign to clamber on top of a horse and ride it side-saddle, you will know that my conversion is complete. Yesterday, I remained on target to reach the finale today when I noticed that the warning to the effect that all episodes would be removed on 31st January appeared to have disappeared. I wondered if an extension had been granted or if instead I was already viewing on borrowed time. I checked again this morning, and, can you believe it, after all those mammoth sessions in front of the television there is indeed now a new expiry date in two weeks' time! I am unable to explain my relief.  Retirement and deadlines simply don't go together. After a career of working to time limits,  I honestly have no idea why I succumbed to the challenge. All I can think is that, still slightly intoxi...
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Living the Dream

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  It is 8 years ago today that I left my office desk and took my first steps into retirement.  Fittingly, this afternoon I was reminded of some of the associated emotions whilst chatting to our next door neighbour who retired too a few weeks ago. Whilst he's clearly throwing himself into all those tasks that you let slip whilst you are busy working down to your final day, he also divulged that he is experiencing those horrendous nightmares where you wake up, palms sweating, realising that you were imagining yourself back in the workplace. At least I was able to reassure him that, 8 years on, not only would I be incapable of doing the job that kept me occupied and fulfilled for so long, but also I honestly would be unable to recall what used to be required of me, at least not sufficient to dream about it. Who would have thought it would be possible to get to that stage, but when life is filled in other ways, memories of the task of earning a living by pursuing a career do actu...
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2026

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Well here we are in the Year 2026 and my very best wishes for health and happiness to all. From New Year to New Year's Resolutions to New Me; I think that's how the theory goes. If so, I'm ashamed to say that discernible change at this end is non-existent. All those thoughts of renewal and revival went out of the window when I awoke yesterday feeling totally exhausted, nursing the beginnings of a cold and a biceps sprain that has haunted me the whole of the festive season. Start the year as you mean to go on? On this form, no thank you.  Of course, it's only a hiccup. It's arrived, however, just after a lovely Christmas when so many of the extended family visited and close family stayed; I got the shopping in and decorations up in time; cooked for what can only be described as crowds on three occasions and enjoyed the company of those gorgeous grandchildren for eight full days. We've eaten all the left-overs and there are some days when I swear I haven't lef...
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Making Time

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I saw the Doctor last week about the biceps pain I've been struggling with since before Christmas. It transpires it's a partial tear rather than the sprain I had suspected and although I can tell it is healing, albeit slowly, my left arm continues to feel incredibly weak. All that effort I put in to stay fit and one muscle chooses to repay me with an injury and eight weeks of rest from lifting anything with it  As ever, I've found the silver lining in the form of my tax return which, freed from some of my regular gym classes, I've been able to complete and submit with breathing space before the 31st January deadline. The weather has been exceptionally cold too, so I've snuggled down with a book for a couple of hours every day and ticked four off my reading list for the year. With those, a birthday lunch, non-weight-bearing classes, tidying up after the festive period's visitors and sorting various issues for my elderly mum, I've not been exactly idle. Despit...
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Maps

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  I have actually made some progress with planning out my direction for 2026. I'm doing it with the mind-mapping technique and at present have produced a draft of something that resembles a spider's web with text scrawled across it. There's quite  a bit of refinement to be undertaken and detail to be added but, if nothing else, it helps me to put options into perspective and hopefully assist in directing focus as I've realised very quickly that I can't possibly follow every strand of the strange diagram I have created, there just simply aren't going to be sufficient hours in 2026 to permit it! Meanwhile, life continues apace regardless. Last week I spent a very pleasant afternoon in York by myself, visiting the Art Gallery where the pieces shortlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize of 2025 were still on display complemented by Future Tense: Art in the Age of Transformation. The latter was a huge light installation by Squid Soup and Liz West that you could wander i...
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Lessons in Life from Alfred Wainwright

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It is hard to visit the Lake District and not be reminded of Alfred Wainwright , the celebrated fellwalker and author whose Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells in seven volumes remains the leading authority on hill walking in the area. Whilst out in the open air last week many of his written thoughts also came to mind. The joy of shared experience and of the human sub-conscious perhaps, or an attempt to answer the most profound of questions that haunt our every moment. Wainwright's answer however, whilst illuminating, fell short of providing a definitive answer to that one word question, "Why?": "...more and more people are turning to the hills; they find something in these wild places that can be found nowhere else. It may be solace for some, satisfaction for others: the joy of exercising muscles that modern ways of living have cramped, perhaps; or a balm for jangled nerves in the solitude and silence of the peaks; or escape from the clamour a...
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The Woman in Black

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Many years ago, in that world of work I invariably wore black . Dull, sombre coloured suits with white blouses and heeled shoes were viewed as appropriate attire for both office and court room. I think there was even a myth that black flattered and slimmed. Hence I had a collection of LBD's for evening events and even black swimwear for holidays. In retirement I realised that they served little purpose. Getting rid took much longer, but I think I finally got there in 2021. Today, however, looking through my wardrobe where various hues of blue dominate, the thought went through my mind that whilst there is no black there is no purple either. I was thinking of course of that wonderful poem by Jenny Joseph, " Warning- When I am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple ."   Scanning the poem in my head, I realised that I don't have a red hat (unless the pink one I now wear in the garden in winter, after it was partially eaten by a moth, counts). I haven't taken to spending m...
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Six Months and Still Counting - Reflections on a Sixth Month of Retirement

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Yes it has now been six whole months since the big retirement date and I can honestly say I am still counting my blessings, as a result. Of course most of month six was spent travelling which of itself is always a liberating and stimulating experience. We were away 18 days in total, something I had never managed during all my years at work. Best of all, not only did I return on a wave of excitement and inspiration but it is still with me. In those old office days, three days back behind my desk and it would have been a faded memory. However, I confess that even I have  bored myself rigid with all 598 of my photographs, not to mention the Instagram retouched versions! So instead I have now thrown myself into getting organised for Christmas. When you are working, leaving everything to the last fortnight becomes an overstressed panic. This year, it feels like oodles of time, especially now the youngest is home to help and to feed through even more ideas.  I'...
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Hot Air

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I do feel that my blog entries of late have given themselves over to an indulgent opportunity for a little ranting. The strange thing is that retirement is like a second adolescence in so many ways: I can go to bed late and get up late; I can do what I want to do, rather than be at the bidding of others, and live in a totally selfish bubble if I so choose; my responsibilities are negligible; I can eat at odd hours; there is no reason for commitment to any engagement unless of my choosing; I can make spur of the moment decisions on how to spend my time, be it by curling up to spend a day reading a book or by taking advantage of the sun in the sky to go for a walk; I can spend hours thinking about the meaning of life, talking with friends or even just looking at my phone, should I so want. Recently however I have also discovered that it is a time for reclaiming the passion of youth; the fight for right and beliefs. I hear many elderly people moaning about election coverage, a...
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A Letter to America

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Dear America, I have just returned from a 4 week stay in the USA in which Mister E and I have travelled from Boston to San Diego spending time in Massachusetts, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and California. I can't claim to know you but we had a fantastic trip meeting many friendly people all in the grip of election fever. Fortunately we had the foresight to be flying home on election night at the same time as West Coast polling stations were thinking of closing. We learnt the result at approximately 3am Pacific Coast time, speeding 34000 feet above the Atlantic with the assistance of a 120 mph tail wind. The British Airways Captain was ultra professional in the way he announced it: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I have received the result of the Presidential Election from Canadian Air Traffic Control. For those of you who wish to know it, I propose to give you it without comment: Trump 289 ..." I'm not sure that I even heard or took in Clinton's tall...
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Off Colour

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I was not myself at all yesterday, struck down, I suspect, by a mild dose of food poisoning. No appetite, a painful tummy ache, totally overcome by fatigue with weak joints and an unending wave of nausea, I took to my bed. Safe in its confines, I listened first to the stomach fire brigade spray its hoses of bile on the malcontented and noisy dragon beneath and then waited patiently whilst the sewage cleaning operators in the intestine did their work. In the meantime the extremities resembled the polar ice cap as I shivered my way through the day. At least in retirement there is no longer any pressure to drag yourself out of bed to fulfil commitments in an office diary. However, yesterday was a Sunday so I didn't even have that thought as solace for my condition.   It is unpleasant being out of sorts but (touch wood) I am fortunate in generally enjoying good health. As we age, however, I know that it may not always be so. Already wear and tear on vital knee joints...
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The Danger Zone

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I have generally considered myself  to be healthy and my retirement lifestyle equally so. I exercise daily; eat a good diet; don't add salt to my food; don't drink much; have never smoked; have no obvious stress triggers; have even lost half a stone in weight since finishing work although, like many people, several more pounds won't be missed. Grief, I sound so boring! Anyway, I was a little concerned by my hospital visit at the end of July when the nurse checked my blood pressure. I could see the reading on the screen and, as it seemed high to me, I did ask her if it was okay.  "Absolutely fine," she said but that didn't exactly allay my fears. After all I had been sitting in a waiting room that could easily have passed for Obesity International and what if mine had simply been the lowest she had seen all morning? The result has been nagging on my mind, so on Monday I called into our surgery and had the Practice Nurse take another readin...
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