A Retirement Blog by Caree Risover

  New Year's Eve, a night for reflection when, as you may have gathered from my blog post here yesterday I am hardly in the party mood; instead I am full of cold and sick of people! Well the latter isn't qute true but you get my drift. Once upon a time when I was relatively young, staying in at New Year would have resulted in the initiation of a full medical examination. These days I don't even suffer from that relatively new disease known as the Fear of Missing Out. In fact, looking at posts by friends on my Facebook Timeline not to mention WhatsApp messages, staying in could even be the new normal. It seems I have reached the age when people wish you a Happy New Year at 8pm before disappearing to bed with a good book and a yawn. That's retired living for you; a few days of merriment at Christmas and it's enough partying for the rest of the year. Before I jump on the bandwagon and head up the stairs myself, I thought I really should take a moment to reflect on 202...

  Christmas comes just once a year but when it does it lasts a long time! At least that's how it feels after hosting the family for 8 days. Of course it was great to be back together once more but having 5 adults in the house for that long, increased by day visitors and on one night an additional overnight guest, is something neither Mister E nor I are used to anymore. Retirement has given us the house to ourselves, day and night, week after week. Sharing our space with others is somewhat strange, as well as tiring (or maybe that's just the thought of all the bed linen and towels that now need washing!). Lolling with a post-Christmas fatigue, normality is slowly being restored, or it  would be if I wasn't suffering from a running nose and sneezing. Typical Christmas guests, they may have gone but they always leave something behind and this year it was their colds. Proud of our potential Covid immunity after succumbing in October, we thought we'd  breeze through the ind...

  It's sometimes very easy in retirement to relax and lose track of time. Add that recent sunshine trip   into the mix and some might say I've reclined so far back into my metaphorical deck chair that I've entered a world of denial. Were you to ask me today's date I might struggle a little, save to say that I'm aware it is just before Christmas. How do I even know that? Well picking up the eldest and Dilly from the railway station this morning with a similar rendezvous arranged for the youngest later this evening might have something to do with it. Christmas visitors are here. There is no obvious stress permeating my being. Could everything be so well organised and planned that I'm ahead of myself? Sadly not, denial it definitely is and a feeling of floating on a higher plane, looking down and thinking no day in the year is ever worth getting frazzled over. Hence, this week I've been back into the gym, adding on a swim and spa; I've had a morning of stre...

 We managed to squeeze in another week away, this time making the excuse of dark winter days to snatch a quick stay on to La Gomera in the Canary Isles. Prior to the pandemic we had frequently taken a long haul trip at some point between November and January most years, after discovering that a quick burst of sunshine really does help us cope with the short days and cold temperatures that haunt the upper reaches of the Northern Hemisphere at this time of year. I guess you could call it a Vitamin D replenishment/Serotonin boosting visit. Just what the doctor might have ordered if we had thought to ask him.  As you can imagine with blue skies for most of the week and temperatures in the high 20's, it was somewhat difficult not to feel relieved, smug even, to discover that our travels just happened to coincide with a sub-zero Arctic blitz at home. Moreover we hadn't flown half way round the world to find it and in fact hadn't even strayed out of our customary time zone. With i...

  The weather has been a little tricky this year in the garden. The vegetable plot got off to a late start with frost persisting into May. It was mid-June before we began to detect any real warmth in the weather. Before we knew it, and despite a lack of sustained sunshine, drought conditions persisted and by August a hose-pipe ban was instated which, despite now weeks of wet conditions, I understand was finally lifted this week. Of most concern to me, however, is the rapidity with which we have suddenly moved from constant rain or drizzle to cold temperatures. Fair weather gardener that I am, I've been avoiding a soaking by seeking out activities more pleasurable than undertaking an autumn clear up. Obviously this means that now we have limited hours of daylight, grey skies and damp miserable conditions, I've been crawling around in the mud planting bulbs and clearing dead foliage.  What did I say in my last blog entry about letting go of anything that doesn't spark joy? Ex...

  Over the years I have adopted the habit of reading the Booker prize short-list. As a consequence I often find myself immersed in a tremendous book.  Long reservation times at the library mean that I am still waiting for some of the novels that were so accoladed this year to become available. To date, however, I can only express my disappointment, especially as the last specimen took me 3 weeks of hard graft and dedication to complete. I confess, tholokuti (is that enough to tell you which book it was?), I could easily have been persuaded to cease reading it altogether except, without skipping to the final page and despite it being an allegory and political satire where I surely knew the ending, I did want confirmation of what happened next. I was inevitably disappointed by my chore of endurance. In fact, I almost convinced myself that I had just forgotten how to enjoy a book when my usual pattern is to become so absorbed that I complete any novel within 2 to 3 sessions and t...

Did I really give my last blog entry the title Unscathed? Tempting fate and living dangerously might spice up retirement but aren't necessarily to be recommended. Of course the portent of doom was obviously already floating in the stars on Tuesday night when at 6pm and on the coldest day of the winter so far, there was a power outage across the village. Now you may not recall, but Tuesday evening, 7pm was, of course, the kick-off time for the England v Wales World Cup match. I can't imagine how awful it must have been for the poor souls on the other end of the customer helpline that evening, who would inevitably have been inundated with angry would-be TV viewers. After all I felt aggrieved and am hardly a die-hard follower. Electricity was restored by 7.30pm but not after the customer care personnel had presumably received short shrift from disappointed football supporters. Even if the fans were spared the agony of a first half that by all acounts was made up of back passing an...

  We have recently returned from another little foray. On this occasion we went to Malta and what can I say? Flying again after all this time- it was almost a new experience but bit by bit the memories return: the queues; the waiting; the cramped airline seats; the appalling range of  over priced and undertasting snacks; those passengers at the various airport checks with the wrong documentation. I could go on but, discomfort and all, it was quite simply great to be able to do it again. Malta too was a new to us destination. Another place that we had cancelled our planned visit to, back in 2020. A home from home in ways that I had not expected; well it always makes crossing the road easier when the traffic drives on the left, not to mention finding a post box when it's red! Staying in Valletta, we wandered to our limits finding the light, history and architecture very much to our pleasing; an urban photographer's paradise, even in the rain. We also had easy access to local bu...