Tag Archives: retirement

Repeating Old Mistakes

And suddenly, as I checked the date to fill in a form last night, I found that there are only four days left until the end of the month. I have nine possible sets of submissions to make, and none actually finalised. After a marathon session this morning I managed to get two sets near enough done. I’ll get another couple done tonight and things will seem to look a little brighter. However, it’s a long way from the scenario of being ready in advance, which I imagined when I got the least lost sent off.

The previous few days had been spent writing articles for Facebook and newsletters, intending to metaphorically clear my desk before getting to work on the poetry submissions. By the time I’d sorted out a couple of technical hitches and spent a couple of days in Nottingham and relaxed a bit, I found I’d actually lost a week.

If I cut out all the extra writing, I doubt I’d be much better off as I’m the sort of person who doesn’t do something until they are forced to. Some call it working under pressure, some call it being lazy. It’s much the same. Having honed my procrastination skills for the last 60 years, I’m unlikely to develop a sense of urgency, or a passion for efficiency, in retirement.

In fact, I’m so committed to procrastinating I just drifted off and read an article about how to make myself more productive. I’m pretty sure it hasn’t worked.

Wood Pigeon

A Few Odds and Ends

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Yesterday we started the day late, with an almost Full English Breakfast for brunch. It was, to be fair, Full enough, and lasted us until the evening, when Julia cooked Iranian Vegetable Stew, which we ate with fresh bread from the bread maker. It’s a stew made with squash, spinach, potatoes, onions, tomatoes and (in our case) cranberries, flavoured with ras el hanout. Julia’s version is similar to the recipe in the link, though there are various versions of the recipe, and after reading the link I see there are various versions of ras el hanout.

There is, I feel, little point to retirement if you have to get up early and stick to a routine, or even a recipe.

We had black-headed gulls in the garden yesterday. They didn’t stay, just dropped in, grabbed some bread and flew off. We have frequently seen them overhead but this is the first time they have come to feed. We also had white doves. There is a small flock that flies round. I presume somebody local has a dovecote. There is no way to record them on the garden birdwatch site, but at least the gulls were a new species, as was the rabbit.

Then, between darkness falling last night and Julia looking out of the kitchen window this morning, something managed to open the bottom of the peanut feeder and drop the nuts to the floor. It was almost empty so it isn’t a disaster, but at the moment we can’t find the base. We suspect the squirrel is heavily involved. That’s the trouble with squirrels, they just have to escalate things.

Thought this might be Cauliflower Fungus. As I don’t intend eating it, it doesn’t really matter.

Several Blank Days

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I thought I was becoming more lively, I even said as much in my last post, but then everything seemed to go very flat, as if I had a slow puncture. Where it was a reaction to the operation (if you can call such a minor procedure an “operation” or whether it was a loss of energy resulting from sitting round doing nothing, I’m not sure. The real test is that I did the washing up after breakfast, which is the first thing I’ve done since making soup last week.

Anyway, today as I sat and watched people root through barns full of junk, I decided that the washing up needed doing. How boring must a TV programme be before the washing up seems preferable? What sort of life do I lead where washing a few plates stands out as one of the notable events of the last week?

Allium at Whisby

I haven’t even kept up with my writing. Nothing submitted in May, no more Facebook posts for the Numismatic Society (I had been intending to edit the Admiral Vernon post to make it more suitable but it’s heavy going) and no progress on the talk for September. It really has been a poor time for doing things. Still, it’s just laziness, procrastination or recovery (it’s hard to tell where one ends and another begins) and it’s not fatal. I can start working again today. In fact, let’s be positive. I will start work again today.

The last few weeks haven’t been a real measure of retirement, as hospital has taken a chunk of my time, but I do hope I can do better in the next few months.

But first I will get then kettle on. Julia has just rung to say she’s on the way home and that takes precedence.

Cranesbill Geranium

The First Day of Retirement

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Vegetable Soup of Indeterminate Ingredients

For the last six years I have had Wednesdays off work, because, with us working weekends, Wednesday was the only day we could have off together. Gradually we have done less, and the NHS has demanded more of my time, so it was often a day for medical stuff.

Today, though the first official day of my retirement, featured no work, a blood test and a trip to the jewellers to drink tea and get a watch battery and a new strap. Thus, it was impossible to tell the difference between work and retirement. Tomorrow, I will be in hospital for 8.30 to have a pre-operative assessment. I got quite excited when I got the booking but it seems that they now last six months (they used to do them the week before the operation at one time).

Mushroom Soup with healthy pumpkins seed garnish

That means that I will have to wait until Friday to notice the difference between working and being retired. Even then, as Fridays had been reduced to half a day, it won’t make much difference. It will be Saturday before I really notice and, to be honest, as Julia will be in Toronto, I’m not really going to have much of a day.

I thought that the hardest part of being retired would be striking a balance between the workload (I know a number of people who work harder in retirement than they did when they were at work) and the inclination to stay in bed all day. In fact, the hardest part so far has been noticing that I’m actually retired. If Julia were here she would doubtless make some barbed comment about me being semi-retired since the 1990s.

She’s only been gone a day and I’m already missing her.

Carrot & Ginger Soup

Today’s illustrations are soup. After two days of cake and Chinese takeaway my digestion is pleading for plain food and my brain is telling me to eat more vegetables. Tomorrow, I think, will be a soup making day. I’m thinking mushroom and sweetcorn. It’s a strange combination but I have surplus mushrooms and half a can of sweetcorn in the fridge. Though I also have tinned tomatoes and a bag of lentils, so that’s a possibility too.

This will be the last time . . .

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Retirement Cake

I have a song going round in my head. It has been there since I drove back from work for the final time tonight. It’s not quite the right words, but it’s close enough.

Today I did many things for the last time. However, tomorrow I will start doing many things for the first time, so it all balances out.

And, of course, with the main event of tomorrow being a blood test, I will be doing many things that I’ve done dozens of times before. In fact, it is probably not going to make a lot of difference at all. Blood test tomorrow followed by having the rest of the day to myself is a standard Wednesday anyway.

Thursday is a hospital appointment followed by an empty day. Then Friday is free, but under our new hours I only worked half a day anyway. As I say, not a lot of difference.

I’m sure I can cope with retirement. However, first I have to get through two weeks without Julia, as she is currently in London and tomorrow will be flying to Canada for two weeks. We started our married life with me going to a conference a couple of days after the wedding, and both of us have spent various nights away at events or in hospital, so it’s not that we cannot exist separately, it’s just that it feels a bit odd.

Meanwhile, to remind myself of the benefits of retirement, I will spend a few moments of the phone calls we received today – about half were useful – people making appointments, ordering stuff or asking prices. The rest were rare coins. This included a man who told me he was ringing from the toilet and having a break from work. There’s a first. And, with it being my last day at work, it’s also, I hope, a last.

Plans and Problems

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I finally sat down and worked out my leaving date. I have six full days and two half days to go. It’s still slightly flexible as one of the others has to go to a funeral and I might be doing an extra day to provide cover. It’s a relief to get it sorted.

This week I work as normal (if a 3 1/2 day week is “normal”), the week after I do a normal week but swap days to work Monday, which allows me to go for my Urology consultation on Tuesday. That is going to require my best underwear and a stiff upper lip. Then The week after, I will do one or two days, depending on the need for cover and the rest is holiday.

I will lead a modest existence in retirement, but it won’t actually be a step down from my current wages, with the added benefit that I don’t have to do anything to get paid.

Julia, Sutton-on-Sea

To be honest, my poor pension planning has been a matter of regret over the last few years, as has my lack of career planning, and the general wasteland that is my life in retrospect. Still, it’s too late to worry now so I’m going to concentrate on enjoying what remains.

It seems that when I move I will have to have a new rheumatology consultation, and will have to arrange for a bulk lot of pills, because the new practice won’t prescribe any until I’ve been seen by a specialist. As we have seen in the past, a few weeks off the pills leads to crippling disability for months, so I’m not keen on that. I had naively thought the prescription would just carry on. So much for the concept of health care being national.

So, with one set of problems resolved, another set heaves into view, and life’s rich pageant rolls on in all it’s lumpy glory.

Julia – looking sophisticated in Bakewell

It is, of course, possible that regular readers may have seen my photos before and assumed I was already retired. Julia says it isn’t going to be easy to tell when I stop work . . .

Back to Blogging

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Sorry about the erratic service. I’ve been very tired and disorganised and my hands have been very sore. I’m not sure what happened – I was recovering from the arthritis flare-up when it suddenly became worse. It wasn’t particularly painful but my knuckles felt very tender and I had no strength in my hands for simple jobs like tucking my shirt in or using a fountain pen. Even now it’s a bit tricky pressing on the mouse button and I only have three capable of pressing down a key on the keyboard. Fortunately I don’t need many as I am generally a two-fingered typist anyway.

I have discovered why some of my eBay photos do not allow me to edit them properly. It seems to depend on the camera settings I use. My Panasonic, despite being old and slightly faulty (some of the pixels are missing from the screen) continues to be better than the pink party camera foisted on me by the shop owner. It has better battery life and close-up focus abilities so I carry on using it. For some reason it will no longer let me crop images properly. I don’t know why, but I have tested it on some other settings and can now crop properly.

Even if other things hadn’t intervened, I think I would be ready for retirement soon. It’s very wearing having to go to work and use a dreadful pink camera and a computer that won’t switch on properly and which works very, very slowly . . .

My cheap laptop and ten-year-old Lumix actually do a better job. Having worn out two cameras in the last six years I am becoming quite resentful that I am not provided with proper equipment to do the job. It will be quite relaxing to retire.

Photographs are from Julia’s recent excursions.

Looking Ahead

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Trees near Slaidburn

I have three months to go. I’d better start filling in forms, as I need to ensure my pensions will be ready to take over when my wages stop. I’m looking forward to warm weather and a life of leisure now. When all is said and done I am generally a man of eternal optimism and though doubts may arise from time to time I can generally get over them. Having had doubts about retirement when faced with the imminent reality of it, I am now happily anticipating a time of leisure and doing what I want. I admit this will mean I no longer hve the excuse of work blocking my plans. I will just have to face facts – I don’t do things because work takes too much time, I don’t do things because I am lazy and badly organised.

I’m giving serious thought to one of those reclining chairs with a built in footstool and ejection mechanism. That’s just what I need. I’ve been looking at the TV adverts, I may even get one with a USB port so I can plug my Kindle in and read all day. I don’t need the one that has a special arm where you put tea and the remote control. I will have a small table for tea, and continue to lose the remote. Looking for it is all the exercise I get.

Tree – Clumber park

Periodically I will withdraw to my study (the spare bedroom) and write poetry. Each morning I will wake up early, ready to write at the crack of dawn. Then I will reset the alarm for n extra two hours. Ambition is good, but it’s silly to spoil retirement with actually getting up early. We will visit all the local garden centres and have tea and cake. And I will, of course, use my new bus pass, until I get tired of sharing a space with people who cough and splutter and generally spread germs. At some point I will get round to buying an electric scooter so I can take it down to the Country Park and ride round the lake. They have Kingfishers and otters, and I am going to enjoy that bit.

Bear in a tree – spring is coming!

15 More Saturdays

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I think I now have 15 more Saturdays left to work. It’s not many. However, where I was dreading the countdown a few weeks ago, it now can’t come fast enough.

I’m probably a bit of a letdown to my family with this, because one of my grandfathers worked on after retirement, as did my father. My father carried on full time until he was 67 and then started his own business, which he ran until he was well into his 70s. He did this because he had no hobbies (apart from working), which is something I always said I would not allow to happen.

One of the things I am aware of is that my other grandfather had to retire early with Parkinson’s Disease, and my mother started with it in her early 70s. There is little point saving enjoyment for some future time if I may become too ill to enjoy it. My mother got very cross with me once when I said I ws going to wait until I retired before doing something. I can’t remember what it was, and I still haven’t done it, but I am aware of the general principle.

I’m not thinking of getting Parkinson’s, just using it as an example. My cousin, a GP, tells me that as far as they know, it isn’t hereditary, it’s just quite common. I don’t really need Parkinson’s as I have enough to be going on with as it is. I’m still coming to terms with arthritis, which was a bit of a surprise when it happened.

I had a letter yesterday inviting me to apply for my State Pension. I may have mentioned it. I forget things these days. Things are getting closer.

Tomorrow I am going to make a list of everything I need to do to move house. It is going to be a lot longer than I think. These things always are.

I have subscriptions to half a dozen poetry magazines, so that’s six addresses I will have to change. I’m in three poetry societies. RSPB, Wildlife Trust . . .

That’s a lot of letters. That’s why I used the P id for Postbox 10p coin as a header picture. I used the sunrise for the end picture as I like it.

And yes, it’s likely that next week’s post will be 14 More Saturdays. Once you find a winning formula you may as well stick with it.

quercuscommunity

Life after the Care Farm