A Retirement Blog by Caree Risover

 I know that many people associate a trip into the countryside as a unique day out. When you live permanently amongst green fields, however, a journey into a large town or city can generate equal novelty.  Hence,  accompanying Mister E to a hospital appointment today, there was the thrill of dual carriageways, large roundabouts, traffic lights, and the sight of multitudes of people, many of whom were drinking takeaway coffee as they walked. Leaving Mister E to face the staff-in-scrubs alone, I ventured across the road into a park. Perhaps as a countryside dweller it felt more enticing with its grass and trees than pounding pavements. I admit I was not disappointed by the bench seats beneath a myriad of mature foliage offering ringside views for people watching; there was a sculpture of sorts and, laid out as part of a trail alongside the pathway, an assortment of adult outdoor gym equipment. Yes, I tried it all, ensuring I remembered to sanitise my hands afterwards! It wa...

Normality is a word that seems to be bandied around with ever greater frequency in this the strangest of times. I wonder what it actually means for most people. I understand that if you have been furloughed, worked from home or even been stretched out in striving to maintain our health and care services that a reversion to one's accustomed workload executed in the pre-pandemic way might be an understandable interpretation. If, however, you are fully ensconced in retirement, how does conventional wisdom define normality? Freedom to do as you please, where you want, when you want perhaps.  Aung San Suu Kyi said "The only real prison is fear and the only real freedom is freedom from fear."  Clearly she had far more than pandemics on her mind when she wrote that. Nevertheless as debate rages about the prospect of opening up and the easing of restrictions, we must all be asking ourselves whether we want to seize the opportunity to walk through an open door (mask free) or is fe...

  (Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay )   In the Guardian today , columnist Zoe Williams posed the question: Where do we find life's purpose? I read the article, hoping to find the answer. Instead, she concluded that the people to ask are those of us who are retired! Fonts of all knowledge and masters of the universe, have we actually discovered the meaning of life? Of course, retirement presents the opportunity to search, to experiment and to wonder. But obviously if I had the answer, I wouldn't have read the article in the hope of learning something I think the gist of what she was writing is that when we discover that work itself does not meet our quest for fulfilment, what will? That of course is the scary thing about retirement; defined by work, how will we fill our time, will it be enough to satisfy us? Some people don't adapt. There's a large hole where work used to be and they return. Others find it a time of contentment but is that the purpose of life, contentm...

  It's happened; I have finally reached that stage of retirement where I believe it appropriate to declare myself a technophobe. It all came to a head yesterday after permitting my iPad to  update to iOS 14.6. I'd been avoiding the upgrade on the basis that whilst it might resolve some issues it would inevitably create others. However, conscious that certain apps appeared to be struggling, I ultimately and unwisely decided to try it as a potential solution. I wish I hadn't bothered, or at least not without doing a little more investigating as to the consequences. How do you keep your passwords safe? I moved on from the favoured one or two repetitive sequences several years ago and purchased a purpose designed app that stores passwords in an encrypted format. It automatically backs up to iCloud,  and I recently even started to rely on it to generate frustratingly unmemorable chains of random digits. Now, I did consider, rather than chancing my luck and banking on the iPad ...

  It is seven years today since I closed the door on my legal career and I still have no itch or desire to return to the world of court rooms and orders. If I have a yearning at all, it is for a resurrection of the retirement life I had become accustomed to before this darned pandemic descended upon us. It is a craving that is now, however, tempered by the sense that the simple life I have long hankered for is within my fingers' grasp, if only... I noticed a meme the other day that just about summed up my situation. In essence it was indicating that lockdown has demonstrated that we need more than time trapped at home to organise and sort; the problem was never a lack of hours to devote to the task as we had always assumed, but rather something within that needs to be tamed and brought to heel.  Who would have imagined that seven years down the track with supposedly oodles of time, I'd still be contemplating how to declutter myself of  physical stuff?  Strangely the ...

During our first lockdown it was a pleasure to drive (so long as you had a reasonable excuse to do so, of course). The roads were empty, and progress could be made unimpeded by other traffic. I was reminded of that feeling of enjoyment this past week when choosing to visit my mother during one of the home teams' group matches in the postponed Euro 2020 football tournament. Clearly I was one of only a handful of people who had not felt obligated to gather around a TV screen to watch the game and once again the road was my own.  As with so many things in retirement, it is always useful to be able to pick and choose the timing of activities. Scheduling a journey to avoid the commuting rush that once I would have been stuck in, at the beginning and end of each working day, always gives me a feeling of satisfaction. Picking the right time to visit our local market town when parking spaces will be plentiful is a delight too. If I can venture further afield and stage it to avoid the cro...

  (Image by 955169 from Pixabay ) So 3 days of fitness classes later and I'm still here. Not even a slight twinge of pain as I sit typing. Actually I did wake this morning with discomfort from the obliques on the left side that were put through their paces during a core workout the day before, but an Abs Blast class appears to have sorted those. The endomorphins have been circulating and I feel alive again. If only I could attribute the elevation of spirit to exercising alone but  this would give a  totally wrong impression. Instead my return to the gym has, of course, also restored the capacity for casual conversation, laughter and interaction with so many people (socially distanced, obviously). Being physically active is something I've tried to maintain during lockdown but coupling it now with the chance to connect with others face to face, takes happiness to a new level. It's strange though that in discussing our respective situations, the last 15 months seems to have...