New Experiences
The hallmark of retirement has to be opening the door to a raft of new experiences. This can involve travelling, but more and more frequently I have found that the time retirement bestows enables unfamiliar adventures much closer to home. Indeed fresh perspective and novel opportunities can often arise unexpectedly and from out of the routine and mundane.
This past week has been no exception. Following on from the acquisition of The Bug, I decided that I was too cowardly to try out the self parking function alone so called into the car dealership where the salesman was more than willing to show me the vehicle's capability. Nothing ventured, nothing gained but apart from a good laugh at The Bug's choice of parking spaces after failing to recognise all the obvious ones, it is not a function I anticipate much need for, having determined from the demonstration that I have a superior aptitude for parking a car than a piece of software linked to a host of sensors. Call me arrogant if you wish but this event convinced me that, despite all we hear about AI, there is hope for the intelligence of we humans after all.
Next, of course, there was that visit to the dentist and this was swiftly followed by another visit, this time to an Extra Care Facility. Obviously, it wasn't for myself, at least not at this stage of retirement. Instead, I was accompanying my mother there for a social event, but it did captivate my interest. Gone were the rooms with ill-matched wallpaper and carpets and the high-backed armchairs around the edge with their slumbering occupants that I recall from my grandmother's final years. Instead the building had the air of a pleasant hotel with high ceilings and wooden floors, exhibiting too the tasteful impact of interior design. The residents, despite their advancing years and clear disabilities, were otherwise sprightly and alert as they indulged in a craft activity and quiz. Another option to file in the brain's recesses, should the time for assisted living arise.
Then there was my injury. I guess I got a little carried away trying to execute a Camel Pose in Yoga on Wednesday and on Friday morning awoke with horrific pain in both sets of quadriceps, those long muscles at the front of the thigh. Walking was agony and Doctor Google was less than helpful when it suggested that 6 weeks' rest and recuperation accompanied by the application of ice were needed and that a medical examination might even be required! Good grief, all I'd done was apply a little too much enthusiasm and overstretch. This morning my legs were still in torment but I continued with the ice treatment (20 minutes every couple of hours) and then, courtesy of a You Tube video, some self-massage; first with a tennis ball, then a roller and then an electronic massaging device. Clearly technology does have its plus points because the advice was spot on and by mid-afternoon I could once again go up and downstairs, relatively pain free.
All in all a fairly typical week for retirement when I continued to learn from experience rather than a text book and in so doing found energy and stimulation in normality. The best encounter of the week, however, came from simply staring out of the kitchen window whilst washing up, when there on a branch in the hedge rested a little willow warbler, a never-seen-before visitor to our garden
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