Know Your Onions
Imagine therefore our surprise when last week's delivery of organic vegetables included three onions, all putting mine to shame in the size stakes with one a whopping 4 inches across. Not heavy enough to use as a substitute for dumbbells, too large to eat in one sitting.
It's brought me back to that wonderful phrase: "Know your onions," meaning, of course, to be knowledgeable about your subject.
In the world of work, so many have an expertise and are renowned for it. Years of practice at honing skills. In retirement, there's more of a feeling of dabbling, of pottering; a lot of general wisdom on all kinds of subjects but, unless we are now spending our time pursuing a hobby or interest that's lasted a lifetime, can we really claim to know our onions?
For me the joy of retirement has been to experiment and constantly try new experiences, learn little snippets, resurrect old hobbies and attempt my hand at new ones. Is it, however, too late to become an expert in something and is there an ambition to do so with various interests constantly competing for my time?
This pandemic with the constrictions imposed on life has certainly forced me to re-evaluate how I spend my hours and what I want to do with them. For the present I am hooked on finding out as much as I can about the life of yeoman farmers on the moorlands of North Yorkshire in the 18th Century. It almost sounds like the basis for a thesis, but it's a thirst for knowledge, not a desire to be an expert, that's driving me.
I guess there must be some people who do resume academic studies but for me the pleasure of education in retirement has been its practical nature; getting stuck in and my hands mucky (from planting onions, for instance). Learning from mistakes can be rewarding in retirement too, less so when studying or working.
Now that I've got my teeth into a topic, however, would it be personally fulfilling to undertake a formal course or tuition in say British social history? Definitely not! Whilst I won't claim to have a grasshopper like attention span, I have always enjoyed the flexibility of retirement; getting to choose on a daily basis what it is that I want to do and how I shall spend my time. The rigour of studying; reading recommended texts by set deadlines; exploring hypotheses set by somebody else; exam phobia: I can see no appeal.
If the idea actually passed across my brain, it was only momentary. In retirement my passion for learning has not diminished but I believe self-enlightenment is much more suited to this stage of my life, applying the thinking and critical skills acquired at university and in the course of my career. For the time being, therefore, I am surrounded by books and articles on hill farming 250 years ago and the impact on society of the Industrial Revolution. I'm not quite at the point where I am going to try to breed sheep or spin my own wool but I shall continue to flit between inside and outdoors, reading whilst also tending to the rest of the harvest from the vegetable patch.
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