A Retirement Blog by Caree Risover

  Image by Suhas Rawool from Pixabay I see this week the British Press has picked up on a study published in New Ideas in Psychology. It's by Norwegian expert Hermundur Sigmundsson and is titled Passion, Grit and Mindset in the ages 14 to 77: Exploring relationship and gender differences.  The media reports are obviously easier to read than the scientific analysis and their coverage of your get up and go leaving at the age of 53 has been amusing to say the least. Despite conjuring for me an image of John Wayne in True Grit, it is nevertheless an accepted given that passion, grit and mindset are amongst the most important attributes required in order to be successful . Sadly the study shows that the correlation between the three has broken down by our early fifties. We can get through with sheer tenacity but the passion is gone, or we still hold the belief but lack the energy. I guess I'm living proof of creeping cynicism as I age, an increased boredom threshold and yes my vit...

Image by Lynette Coulston from Pixabay I believe we are all getting just a little bored with the restrictions on our lives emanating from Covid-19. I'm certainly fed up with attending meetings on Zoom rather than in person and no, it has nothing whatsoever to do with my lack of photogenicity. I think what I miss the most though, are the casual face to face interactions with strangers and acquaintances; everyone seems so stressed at present that few wish to linger and chat, with or without a face mask. It was certainly a bit rough of Kim Kardashian West to rub it in, however, with her insensitive viral tweet: "After 2 weeks of multiple health screenings and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time." Mind, I'm not sure which I'm more jealous of: a trip to a private island or the multiple health screenings. Neither are readily available...

  My attention was drawn to an article in The Times the other day about a sense of  humour deficit. It referenced a book by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas entitled 'Humour, Seriously' which I vow I must read one day. Anyway the gist of the article was to point out that once we grow up and aquire the responsibilities of the workplace environment, human beings have a tendency to lose their sense of humour and give up on the giggles. It's a bit like all those surveys on enjoying life, we reach 23 and everything is downhill from then on. Or is it?  Just as life satisfaction picks up again in our sixties, it seems that cheeky sense of humour never really leaves us after all; it just lies buried under the myriad of red tape and bureaucracy that weighed us down for a few decades. Moreover a quick jump into retirement and a few weeks later there we are dancing to sunbeams and in my case laughing at sunflowers .  Clearly my own anecdotal evidence is probably in need of car...

I've been as busy as ever of late achieving very little, although I have read a number of books and pulled the information together to get my tax return prepared, as well as spending time in the garden, wrapping it up ready for winter. All of which is a bit of a shame because I did mean to follow up my last post about our trip to the lighthouse with a description of the culpability it evoked. You see our first evening there got off to a dreadful start when we sat down to eat. Mister E poured us both a glass of red wine and we toasted our stay in an amazing location. Putting those wine glasses down again, however, was a big mistake. Mister E noticed that the table top seemed to be at an angle and that there was a discernible wobble. He ducked down to take a look and then bobbed back up again. Splash! One wine glass fell over and its contents splattered over the pale primrose wall. Talk about guilt. Nobody can have felt so bad since George Washington chopped down a cherry tree. Even ...