A Retirement Blog by Caree Risover

I was not myself at all yesterday, struck down, I suspect, by a mild dose of food poisoning. No appetite, a painful tummy ache, totally overcome by fatigue with weak joints and an unending wave of nausea, I took to my bed. Safe in its confines, I listened first to the stomach fire brigade spray its hoses of bile on the malcontented and noisy dragon beneath and then waited patiently whilst the sewage cleaning operators in the intestine did their work. In the meantime the extremities resembled the polar ice cap as I shivered my way through the day. At least in retirement there is no longer any pressure to drag yourself out of bed to fulfil commitments in an office diary. However, yesterday was a Sunday so I didn't even have that thought as solace for my condition.   It is unpleasant being out of sorts but (touch wood) I am fortunate in generally enjoying good health. As we age, however, I know that it may not always be so. Already wear and tear on vital knee joints...

After my last blog entry I have been contemplating my retirement and am beginning to feel that the next driver is "giving up." I don't mean by surrendering but rather in a very physical way in order to reach that nirvana of a simplified life. So for me July has been a month to embrace Plastic Free July and abandon added sugar.  The statistics on plastic are appalling and when I looked in my own waste-bin at the beginning of the month I saw with horror that, despite our conscientous devotion to re-cycling, we were still disposing of more plastic in the form of cellophane-wrapping and cling-film for landfill than any other form of waste. Just realising the extent of the problem that we were creating (and we consider ourselves good at sorting re-cyclable waste from our other rubbish) was a start in the right direction and now it has become a crusade to deliberately shop to try to avoid the worst excesses of single-use plastic whilst looking for items made of...

A pologies for yet another interruption in service. The last time I made a blog entry I was attributing my lapse to a bout of very welcome but very warm weather. Since then, here in North Yorkshire, we have been paying our penance with days of rain and for a period of one week some rather unseasonably low temperatures. Still variety is the spice of life as they say, and retirement thunders on (oh yes we have had a couple of electric storms too) regardless. So I have been taking advantage of the wet weather to endeavour to catch up with a pile of administrative tasks left for the proverbial rainy day. Trouble is that, even with fourteen or more wet days, I'm still not up to date and procrastination appears to have successfully defeated my good intentions. On the plus side we have caught up with old friends, finished a course of hospital out-patients' treatment, had a family member to stay, eaten out  on several occasions, read numerous books, worked out in the hope of usi...

With so many awful things happening at home and abroad at the moment, it is very hard not to be in angry mode the whole time. So instead, I've been breathing deeply and doing what I do best, namely enjoying retirement. Of course, a mini heatwave has helped along with the return of the youngest after her time at the University of Texas.  You always know when the temperature reaches Mediterranean proportions because not only do you reach for the sunscreen but there's a frantic bid to find the insect repellent, long hidden in a bathroom cupboard, even if it was out of date and of no tangible effect either. Similarly you always know when the youngest is at home because the laundry baskets fill quicker and the fridge becomes home to all kinds of strange vegetarian foods. I'm certainly not complaining, especially as we've just enjoyed two wonderful afternoons in the sunshine. The first at Kiplin Hall which I had promised to return to when the sun was s...

It's a strange old world and a sign of the times when the winning party loses and the losing party is seen as the winner. That, however, seems to be the outcome of  the election.  Taking the electorate for granted with its arrogance the Conservatives went hammer and tongs for the United Kingdom Independence Party voters and in so doing forgot that middle England with its intelligent, economically literate, remain-voting  populus would be both repulsed and insulted by the rhetoric. Consequently, although winning the most seats (albeit short of an overall majority), the Prime Minister totally failed in her objective of getting the large majority and mandate she was seeking to negotiate a "hard" Brexit, closing the door to the exisiting arrangements for free trade and the movement of people within Europe. So, having finished my last blog entry with a feeling of resigned disillusionment, like more than half of the electorate I was overwhelmingly buoyed to find ...

I honestly didn't intend to do another political post or let off steam again, so hopefully this will be a quieter post. As I type I am conscious that the Polling Stations close in less than thirty minutes and I am steeling myself for a late night.  It has been a nasty election campaign when the strong and stable image of the Prime Minister has crumbled into a weak and wobbly one, refusing to engage with the public, debate with the opposition, cost her policies or even bother to explain them. That said she will undoubtedly triumph tonight leaving us with the most extreme right wing Government in memory. The only other viable party in presenting policies that are progressive and socialist, will inevitably have shown itself to be too far left for significant electoral gains. The best one can hope for is a hung Parliament or certainly one without the clear landslide that the Prime Minister was seeking when she chose to call this snap election. A campaign that was me...

I do feel that my blog entries of late have given themselves over to an indulgent opportunity for a little ranting. The strange thing is that retirement is like a second adolescence in so many ways: I can go to bed late and get up late; I can do what I want to do, rather than be at the bidding of others, and live in a totally selfish bubble if I so choose; my responsibilities are negligible; I can eat at odd hours; there is no reason for commitment to any engagement unless of my choosing; I can make spur of the moment decisions on how to spend my time, be it by curling up to spend a day reading a book or by taking advantage of the sun in the sky to go for a walk; I can spend hours thinking about the meaning of life, talking with friends or even just looking at my phone, should I so want. Recently however I have also discovered that it is a time for reclaiming the passion of youth; the fight for right and beliefs. I hear many elderly people moaning about election coverage, a...