A Retirement Blog by Caree Risover

  Corfu Town  So this is the entry which I promised in my last post, describing a brief but beautiful trip to the Adriatic. The youngest and I made the trip together (Mister E prefers his time on the high seas in small vessels, hence our restoration project ). We flew to and from Corfu Town and took in Koper (Slovenia), Venice (Italy), Split and Dubrovnik (Croatia) and finally Kotor (Montenegro). We chose the cruise based solely on the itinerary and  the fact that save for one sea day, the rest were all spent ashore. They were all amazing destinations and I had only ever visited Venice before. The weather was splendid at 26 degrees or thereabouts all week with flat seas, blue sky and lots of sunshine. We also had the opportunity for some mother and daughter bonding; patience required on both sides! Venice So what was there not to like? Cruising, I'm afraid. Yes, I am beginning to understand where Mister E comes from, although sailing...

On Saturday I joined the march through London demanding a people's vote on the terms of exiting the E.U. It was the biggest protest since the march against the Iraq War back in 2003 and which, of course, failed to alter Government policy. I therefore walked on Saturday knowing that shuffling en masse through the streets of the capital is unlikely of itself to change political direction and that even if it were to, a second referendum is no guarantee for resolving the current chaos. So why you may well ask, with a blister on my toe and exhausted from a week of walking around walled towns in the Adriatic (of which more, in my next blog entry), did I make the effort to attend? The answer is simple: anger! Yes I am irate in circumstances where I can never previously recall such an ineffective collection of Parliamentarians in key posts across all parties. The country has been dragged into a long running internal debate within the Conservative Party where...

Listening to a radio news bulletin yesterday, I have to confess to a bout of salivating excitement. "Older people should eat cake, and cream, and chocolate," I heard. For a brief moment I wondered if I was dreaming, somnolent amidst a Bake-Off fantasy land perhaps. However, a check of the day's newspapers confirmed that they were running the same story. It's taken two hundred and twenty five years but Marie Antoinette's purported dismissal of the woes of the peasants has finally found a home. In the past we have had reversals of the health advice pertaining to the consumption of eggs and butter, so why  not to cake (and cream and chocolate)? Call me an optimist if you must, but I am still looking for an opportunity, in the interests of twenty first century science, to disprove one of the basic laws of life, namely that if something sounds too good to be true then it probably is. Sadly this wasn't my golden moment. To benefit from this latest w...

Unless you were fortunate enough to have outdoor employment or are spending retirement closeted away, life post-work is inevitably more cognisant of the changing seasons. After the long, drawn out, hot and languid days of summer it can be emotionally draining to experience the transition from sunshine to the dark evenings, stiff breezes and rainstorms of autumn. In fact it demonstrates just how dry this year's summer was when, despite being British and spending the whole of your adulthood with an umbrella wielded to your arm, you are actually surprised when it rains. Depressed, disillusioned, and dejected: a sorrowful reaction to the traditional season of golden leaves, floating mist and wide, breathtaking skies. When I was working, I had a tendency to ignore the progress of the seasons, to batten down and continue, oblivious to the changing elements, cocooned from the outside by four walls with a pile of files to concentrate on and distract. In retirement t...

I have been musing for sometime about how we are defined by both ourselves and society and how easy it is to gain our self-identity from the job that we do. My thoughts on this were provoked still further by the discussion, to which I contributed, in the comments that followed the blog entry across on Satisfying Retirement entitled " 5 Things a Retired Person Learns about Life after Work. " Ask a career housewife what she does and the stereotypical value of paid work is reinforced when she replies: "Oh, I don't work; I'm just a housewife." Similarly, a person carrying out unpaid voluntary work can be inclined to say: "I don't work either, I'm just a volunteer." Somewhere along the way society has instilled the idea that working for anything other than money is less valuable in itself than paid employment. Little wonder, therefore, that in retirement, after our two score years or thereabouts in the workplace, we add t...

The dry, warm days of summer ended abruptly today with the arrival of Storm Ali. Delight at the thought of yellow and brown leaves being blown around my feet prompted me to take a short walk with the intention of pinning posters on the Parish Noticeboard. I was on a tight schedule, squeezing the stroll between exercise classes this morning and a trustees' meeting at the almshouse this afternoon. Consequently I walked fast and the effect was indeed bracing, until the pernicious clouds above turned an ominous shade of grey, scudded overhead and then emptied their complete contents over me. If that wasn't enough, as I waded through rivers of water, the wind lashed the rain into my eyes, stinging and causing me to stumble blindly in the direction of home. Of course there was something exhilarating about the whole experience, not least when I felt rain run past my collar, down the back of my neck and in streams all the way to my socks. As my showerproof jacket surren...

Long-term readers of this blog may recall that even before retirement I was expressing some interest in learning to paint, an activity I abandoned more than three decades ago as my time became consumed by work and family commitments.  Since retiring, although I have frequently declared my love of colour and contemporary art, my painting has been very much limited to muted tones on walls. I did try sketching but the results were, should we say, disappointing. Had I been back at school I'm sure the report would have indicated something to the effect that "Caree needs to practise diligently in order to improve," which sadly I have not and which, in any event, would no doubt be teacher-code for "lacking in talent, temperament and tenacity." However, I was recently admiring the paintings of Carole Ann Hall , a local artist in Newcastle, wishing that I could share just a small part of her flair and technique when, totally coincidentally, I discovered ...