A Day for Emotions

-



Today I left my mother, who lives locally to me, at my sister's to sit out this epidemic in their somewhat remote home. Then I returned for a bi-weekly appointment at the hospital to be told that I was the penultimate patient before the department closed. Not yet halfway through a course of treatment that so far has been a resounding success and it has finished. Of course, I'd expected it but it certainly moves you when the staff are clearly shaken and all the nurse can say is, "See you on the other side."

There have been a few tears in my eyes today, I can tell you.

Also anger. I'm cross with all those people who are stockpiling to an unreasonable degree and through their selfishness depriving other people and causing them unnecessary anxiety. I am also infuriated to learn of fraudsters operating in our district who have been offering to undertake shopping for elderly people who are isolating themselves and then have taken their grocery list and money but never returned. 

Ever the pragmatist, the only way I know to deal with the anguishes and hardships that life can throw at you is to keep busy. So, back at home, I threw myself into volunteering and arranged to pick up medications regularly for an elderly couple in the village and to run errands for others, as and when. 

Pursuant to Government advice, I am one of the few local inhabitants not being asked to isolate myself because of age or other vulnerability but instead must restrict social contact. Apparently that means with caution I can travel to visit the supermarket and pharmacy as well as to check on others so long as I maintain an appropriate distance and take protective measures. Additionally it is safe to go outside to walk, drive or tend to my garden.

The calendar on the wall is now a series of crossings out. There are a few exciting items remaining for March: the bin collection dates and the visit to the pharmacy next week to collect those prescriptions!

Comments

Anonymous said…
you boomers are shutting down the entire economy because you're afraid of a flu. Seriously, can you boomers kill yourselves? You are the most selfish generation to ever exist. You don't give a shit about climate change, why should we young people give a shit if you get sick and die of some virus? I HOPE the virus gets much stronger and kills you all.
20 March 2020 at 04:20
Caree Risover said…
What a strange attitude, when this boomer and those she cares for are isolating or social distancing as requested by the government and are being deprived of all non-life saving hospital treatment ( my mother will risk going blind, deprived of the cataract operation she has been waiting for over a year for). They are doing this so that they do not themselves add to this epidemic and clog up hospital beds needed to get younger people fit, well and back to work, so that they can keep the economy you refer to operating. We are all in this together and societies are judged on how they look after their old and vulnerable people. Can I suggest, therefore, instead of trolling a retirement blog, you shut up, do something useful with your life and make sure that you too keep your distance and wash your hands.
20 March 2020 at 07:52
Treaders said…
That troll has been hitting a few blogs recently. What a wanker (pardon my French). I'm on day 5 of being locked in and it's been ok. In order to go out grocery shopping you have to have an attestation on you and show it to the police if you get stopped - otherwise there's a fine. So far (and it's early days) people are following orders, from what I see, which does actually surprise me a bit for the French. Maybe being only 45 minutes away from the Italian border makes things more real somehow. Stay safe.
21 March 2020 at 22:07
Caree Risover said…
Yes, I debated whether to allow the troll a voice or not, but disdain forced me to respond rather than ignore. These are scary times for everybody, but sadly the best contribution we can make to society seems to be to look out for friends, neighbours and family (mainly using technology) and not to catch it ourselves so that we don’t burden over pressed health systems.
22 March 2020 at 08:38
Post a Comment

Most Popular Posts of All Time

The 3 x 60 Challenge

-
Image
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
Read more

All Aboard for Pampering

-
Image
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.
Read more

A Full Service

-
Image
  Image by Couleur on Pixabay 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 subje
Read more

Late, Even in Retirement

-
Image
  (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 on t
Read more

Exhaustion

-
Image
  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 were old work
Read more

A Reprieve

-
Image
  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 intoxicated from
Read more

One a Day

-
Image
  I'm no longer sure if it's a feature of lockdown or of retirement, but, whereas I spent a working life juggling office and family commitments, suddenly one appointment a day seems to fill the diary. Actually having anything in the diary during lockdown is a highlight in itself, of course, but when you were always accustomed to fitting a visit to the dentist in and around office hours it is vaguely disheartening to realise that it might be all you achieve in daylight hours at the moment. To be honest I've been on a bit of a roll following the trip out to Leyburn on Saturday for that first dose of vaccine. We were strangely fatigued on Sunday, a not uncommon side-effect apparently, but Monday morning saw me out on the road bright and early. I'd booked the car in for its annual service and got it there just as the garage was opening its doors for business. I decided to wear an FP2 mask for the occasion but it did make communicating with the receptionist a trifle difficul
Read more

The Danger Zone

-
Image
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
Read more

Business Networking in Retirement

-
Image
Love it or hate it, business owners and key professionals have become accustomed to walking into rooms full of people and making small talk with strangers. It's the real life equivalent of Twitter or LinkedIn. Sometimes to ease the conversation and connections, games are played.  I recall one event where we had to stand up in turn and tell the room what we were looking for in the lowest number of words possible. That was an easy one for a divorce lawyer: "adultery"; it reduced the room to hysterics but I did get work referred as a result! Relieved of the obligation to network in retirement, I have been toying with deleting my LinkedIn profile. It does seem a brutal step to take, severing those historic connections and therefore the potential for reconnecting. Conversely, the deeper I get into retirement living, the deeper the divergence from the business world and the less important maintaining an online profile seems to be. Recently, however, an old c
Read more

Not Only But Also

-
Image
  Today was our big coronavirus vaccination day and it really was a fortuitous decision to have winter tyres on my car, although the first 100 metres uphill from our drive is always the worst part of the journey. Indeed crossing Barden Moor before dropping down into Leyburn was even rather pretty, despite gusty winds blowing snow onto the road in front of us. The vaccination process itself was quick, straight forward and well-organised. We were early but told to go in regardless and there was no queue, unless a slight wait at the door to the room where three of our local doctors were administering the inoculations counts. Indeed the longest part of the process seemed to be the questions asked of us followed by a brief explanation of the whys and wherefores, after which we were asked if we still wanted to proceed. Well it would have taken more than a rehearsed speech to put us off, especially after driving 20 miles to get there. Mind it was only afterwards we were handed an explanatory
Read more

Popular Posts in last 30 days

Not Broken, Just Broke

-
Image
  Back on 20th October, I posted an entry here referring to my broken house, my broken car and mused over whether I could be broken too.  By way of update, garage number one was unable to fix my car and in desperation I took it to the specialists at garage number two. They assure me they know what's wrong and a day's minor surgery should have Miss Scarlet back on the road again. Of course bad news followed the good in the form of the quotation. I'm not yet broken, but I shall be broke!  
Read more

Broken

-
Image
  Yes, the house is broken but it is supposed to be being put back together. Except, when we last visited, somebody had decided that it would be a good idea to relay patio pavers at a noticeably higher level than those that had not been uprooted. It's not that I'm opposed to terracing but not across the patio please. So now there's another job to redo and so possibly delay our return still further. You really can't make this stuff up. It's tempting fate to ask to be given a break, but that's exactly what I did get last week, except this time it's the car that's now broken too. My fault for hanging onto it too long, I suppose. I had thought I'd try to embrace the whole retirement ethos of driving around in an old vehicle, being unable to decide what exactly to upgrade it for, especially now we appear to be entering the sunset stage of fossil fuel driven vehicles. It was a silly move based on the idea that, whilst I'd always needed a reliable car
Read more

A Witches' Coven

-
Image
  It must be a month ago now that houses around us suddenly began to be decked out with arrays of  pumpkins, cobwebs and spiders. The most amazing thing was that this decoration took place almost entirely during the hours of darkness, so we would awake on a morning to the sight of yet another house embellished by attempted creepiness. It's all been something of a change to the relatively staid, mundane and unornamented surroundings of October in our home village, all no doubt a reflection on the contrasting demographics of the suburban outskirts where we are temporarily residing and of rural hamlets. Last week we played host to Grandotty and parents, meaning that our age statistics were more in keeping with the rest of the street. Needless to say Grandotty revelled in constant walks to see the spiders.  "Spider! Quick, quick! Run, run!" became a constant refrain. I swear I've never enjoyed (or perhaps even noticed) the run up to Halloween before. That's the great
Read more

Day 3

-
Image
  It was my third morning back at the gym today. Apart from forgetting my trainer shoes (again!), I confess to being modestly proud to have survived unscathed. So far there are no screaming muscles, my joints aren't stiff and I'm ready to do it all again tomorrow (trainer shoes packed in readiness). Conscious of  fast approaching the era for physical decline, yesterday I found my attention online diverted to a somewhat old study on the benefit of being able to sit down onto the floor and then stand up again without using your hands. I surprised myself by being able to do this relatively comfortably. That's just as well, because the study from more than a decade ago suggests that failure gave a seven times greater likelihood of dying within six years. On the one hand that could suggest that this blog might be around for a while yet. On the other, and on the basis that I'm pretty sure I probably couldn't do that in the early days of retirement not to mention during th
Read more

Nightmare Over?

-
Image
  Could the nightmare finally be over? Not the one about the house as sadly that's destined to continue for a while yet, but perhaps the other one involving my car.  It didn't feel like that at the weekend. After picking the car up on Thursday evening, complete with all kinds of new parts, it drove just like a dream. Well, for all of 3 miles anyway. Then the nightmare began again as the inside became flooded by petrol vapour. There were profuse apologies yesterday when the garage checked it over and conceded that the mechanic had inadvertently nicked the seal on a hose causing a vapour leak. They sorted it as a matter of priority and thankfully I am fully mobile once again. I was straight back to the gym and a weights class this morning. Talk about being out of practice. The weights were fine, but I forgot my trainer shoes and water bottle! All part of retirement's rich tapestry of incompetence and brain fog, or perhaps, after reducing life to walking pace, speeding it up a
Read more

A Full Service

-
Image
  Image by Couleur on Pixabay 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 subje
Read more

Dream or Nightmare?

-
Image
   It sounded a little too good to be true when we received an email at the beginning of the week from the remediation company contracted by the insurers, suggesting that we could feasibly be back in our home by Christmas. The day dreaming began and the pace of work in the rooms upstairs that we are decorating quickened. Little by little, however, we realised the serious pitfalls of such a situation, not least because notice to terminate the lease on our temporary accommodation would need to be given this month with no certainty that we would actually be able to return as indicated. Corners would need to be cut and/or we would be returning to somewhere only half finished with no prospect of entertaining family over the Christmas holidays.  Then nightmare of nightmares, because the tenancy end date would actually be 25th December, I had visions of cleaning and clearing two houses at the point when most people might be sitting back, slippers on, waiting for Santa Claus to pop down the ch
Read more

Cod and Chips

-
Image
I am conscious that food has not played an enormous part in my commentary on this blog. I am unsure why, as I certainly eat a great deal of it! Perhaps it is because my nutritional need in retirement has not varied enormously from when I was working. If anything, I probably eat slightly healthier (although we have never been a family for fast food, ready meals or take-aways) and maybe less than when I was working. There are of course exceptions and I would be being disingenuous if I did not confess to partaking in a small sized (Yorkshire measurement) fish and chips when we were in Whitby on Saturday. We ate late to ensure we could get a seat in one of the renowned eateries without queuing; deliberately ate small breakfasts and then, in my case, nothing more for the rest of the day. We also prepared for the feast by a running pace up the 199 steps to St Mary's Church and I did an extra long work-out in the gym the next day too. The trouble is that one of the problems of
Read more

Empty Nest Syndrome

-
The youngest arrived on Saturday morning and left to return to London this afternoon. It was a quick visit but we managed to squeeze in a trip to see my mother, a meal out, a visit to the cinema and a good old fashioned Sunday dinner. It all felt very busy, although the youngest has never been loud, the house was noisier than we have become accustomed to, and there just wasn't as much time to spend together as we would have liked. Seeing her off at the station was a moving experience but, of course, it's only a few more weeks until she'll be home for a month. Upon my return and, solely out of interest I assure you, I found myself looking up Empty Nest Syndrome on Wikipedia.  Apparently all parents are susceptible but those who are dealing with other stressful events such as, and it cites "retirement" as a specific example, are particularly vulnerable! Oh dear! However, it does point out that coping mechanisms include pursuing one's own hobbies an
Read more

Carnage

-
Image
  Today, I drove my mother to the large hospital 25 miles from where she lives. I drove, because using public transport would have required two trains and then a bus. It would also have taken two and a half hours to ensure that we did not miss the second train when any quicker schedule was based on the first train running on time and then changing platforms and onto the next train all within a minute. With her advancing years, my mother finds it difficult if not impossible to climb up and onto public transport and as her health difficulties have justified a disabled parking badge, it made sense to drive and use the bluebadge for priority parking. Knowing that parking can be tricky on the hospital site and my mother can't rush, we arrived with a generous forty minutes to spare but, reaching the disabled parking bays, noted that they were fully occupied. Of course, that ought not to have been a problem, so instead I dropped my mother at the door and gave her instructions to wait for
Read more