A Retirement Blog by Caree Risover

  Corfu Town  So this is the entry which I promised in my last post, describing a brief but beautiful trip to the Adriatic. The youngest and I made the trip together (Mister E prefers his time on the high seas in small vessels, hence our restoration project ). We flew to and from Corfu Town and took in Koper (Slovenia), Venice (Italy), Split and Dubrovnik (Croatia) and finally Kotor (Montenegro). We chose the cruise based solely on the itinerary and  the fact that save for one sea day, the rest were all spent ashore. They were all amazing destinations and I had only ever visited Venice before. The weather was splendid at 26 degrees or thereabouts all week with flat seas, blue sky and lots of sunshine. We also had the opportunity for some mother and daughter bonding; patience required on both sides! Venice So what was there not to like? Cruising, I'm afraid. Yes, I am beginning to understand where Mister E comes from, although sailing...

On Saturday I joined the march through London demanding a people's vote on the terms of exiting the E.U. It was the biggest protest since the march against the Iraq War back in 2003 and which, of course, failed to alter Government policy. I therefore walked on Saturday knowing that shuffling en masse through the streets of the capital is unlikely of itself to change political direction and that even if it were to, a second referendum is no guarantee for resolving the current chaos. So why you may well ask, with a blister on my toe and exhausted from a week of walking around walled towns in the Adriatic (of which more, in my next blog entry), did I make the effort to attend? The answer is simple: anger! Yes I am irate in circumstances where I can never previously recall such an ineffective collection of Parliamentarians in key posts across all parties. The country has been dragged into a long running internal debate within the Conservative Party where...

Listening to a radio news bulletin yesterday, I have to confess to a bout of salivating excitement. "Older people should eat cake, and cream, and chocolate," I heard. For a brief moment I wondered if I was dreaming, somnolent amidst a Bake-Off fantasy land perhaps. However, a check of the day's newspapers confirmed that they were running the same story. It's taken two hundred and twenty five years but Marie Antoinette's purported dismissal of the woes of the peasants has finally found a home. In the past we have had reversals of the health advice pertaining to the consumption of eggs and butter, so why  not to cake (and cream and chocolate)? Call me an optimist if you must, but I am still looking for an opportunity, in the interests of twenty first century science, to disprove one of the basic laws of life, namely that if something sounds too good to be true then it probably is. Sadly this wasn't my golden moment. To benefit from this latest w...