Too Busy To Blog

When we were working and bumped into a retired friend or acquaintance they invariably told us how they were rushed off their feet with "not enough hours in the day" - you know the sort of thing. We would brush this off with a wry and knowing smile whilst thinking "of course you are rushed off your feet. You've got twenty four hours in every day and absolutely no work to worry about." But now that the tables have turned and we are in their shoes, we are the ones who are claiming there is too much to do and not enough time to do it in. So few hours that I've been unable to get time at the laptop to write for over seven days - my longest blogging absence since I started writing this almost three years ago.

So what has been taking up all this time? I hear you ask. Well our schedule for the last seven days went like this. 

On Monday we drove to Rochester to help out with a little childminding for a wonderful little granddaughter. We took her to the enormous shopping mall at nearby Bluewater where she had a whale of a time checking out the toys on offer while we bought some bits and pieces to keep in Framlingham when she visits.

On Tuesday I took advantage of the fine weather and headed down the road to search some local fields with the detector. There's nothing particularly exciting in the day's finds but there are a couple of late medieval studs amongst the usual mixture of buttons, buckles, shotgun cartridge cases and musket balls. It was the first time in my twenty odd years detecting that I have been able to walk to a field near home instead of driving the once obligatory four hour round trip in the car. When I got home I completed the preparations for a talk that I'm giving on the hobby to a local Rotary Club.

Wednesday saw us driving back down to Rochester for another child minding day. This time we visited the village of Upnor on the Medway near Strood where we enjoyed some excellent fish and chips in the Tudor Rose pub before taking the baby to the castle - an old Elizabethan fort run by English Heritage. 

On Thursday it was an early drive to Ipswich to catch the train to London where we had an appointment near St Paul's to see Cumberland Place our financial advisors. When we sold the business we handed all the proceeds over to them and they manage it for us. Everything seems to be going well and we've done a lot better than if we had put the funds in the bank despite the uncertainties of stock markets over the last couple of years. After overspending so much on the house in Framlingham our advisors reckon we should cut back on the big withdrawals a bit now but we've no major purchases planned in the near future so that should not be a problem. So, barring catastrophe, we should have more than enough to see us through our retirement and leave a bit to the family.

On Friday we had some time in Cambridge with the family before spending the weekend with them in Framlingham.

I did the modern day equivalent of killing the fatted calf and bought a beef fillet from Hall Farm butchers on the market square and made Gordon Ramsay's Beef Wellington recipe (download it on the BBC good food site). It's a foolproof recipe and the meal turned out very well.

For once, both ovens plus the steam oven and the microwave all got brought into use. We're looking forward to having more guests as we really enjoy using the kitchen and realising its full potential. It was a short stay and Paul and Josephine still have plenty more to see in future visits. They packed up on Sunday and we drove back down to Rochester where I'm now writing this. We're doing another day with the baby today but heading back to Framlingham this evening to get ourselves straight. We've got three days at home ahead of us now but no doubt we'll find plenty to do to fill in the time.

Goodbye Kent

We love Kent and we've enjoyed our two weeks here in Rochester (albeit interspersed with forays into Suffolk and Wales) but tonight we're packing our bags in preparation for the long trek back to St Andrews. At 540 miles it's a bit longer drive than usual as we're traveling via Richmond in Surrey to drop something off at Marion's auntie's. We had hoped to visit some old friends while in Kent but the man fitting the new boiler for Paul took longer than expected so our only time out was a quick visit to Tunbridge Wells on Tuesday and some time at Bluewater yesterday.

If you aren't familiar with Bluewater it's like a southern Trafford Centre; I hate visiting the Trafford Centre but somehow Bluewater didn't have the same effect on me. I'm not sure why as it has the same Disney styling. Perhaps it is not quite as big as its Manchester counterpart, perhaps it was the uncrowded atmosphere or maybe the shops and restaurants seemed a bit more refined but I have to admit that I quite enjoyed the experience with a good look around John Lewis including coffee and cakes in the basement food hall, a few tapas at Tapas Revolution and a visit to their enormous multiplex cinema.

We went to see Anna Karenina. It's an amazingly original production using the setting of an old theatre instead of going on location for the majority of scenes (although there were some sweeping shots of peasants on the vast grasslands) and it works very well indeed. Marion thought that I wouldn't like the film but I did enjoy it very much although Anna and her lover's relationship seemed to be founded entirely upon them falling in lust with each other's incredible good looks. Keira Knightly is a very beautiful actress and Aaron Johnson is dashingly handsome so their love at first sight was credible but the relationship somehow lacked the depth that I understand was portrayed in the book. Jude Law (once a heartthrob himself but now made up as a curmudgeonly old man) portrays the cuckolded husband with a measured performance and Matthew Macfadyen adds charm in his role as Anna's brother.  

In the few days we have in St Andrews we're celebrating my birthday at the wonderful Seafood Restaurant with a long lunch, making a trip to Edinburgh to do some shopping (and to take some of my detecting finds into the museum) and then I'm afraid it's back in the Prius for another journey to Suffolk on 2nd October for a meeting at the kitchen designers and to have a look at progress on the house in Framlingham. You can say what you like about retirement, but ,in our case at least, it's anything but boring.

The Gas Man Cometh

We're spending a few days in Rochester house sitting while British Gas fit a new boiler for our son and our daughter-in-law. Despite their less than perfect reputation, BG has been pretty good so far; the boiler arrived promptly, the fitter arrived promptly and he got to work pretty sharpish so that within a few hours of being in the property it started to look like our renovation in Framlingham.

I'm glad that our new baby granddaughter isn't around for the few days that this work is going on as there's going to be no hot water until Friday. At least they should all return to a nice warm house; when the gas men finish we aim to give the place a good clean to get rid of any workmen's dust and replace all the  furniture that we had to move so that they could fit the new pipes. One of the best things about retirement is the ability to be on hand to help with this sort of thing.We'll be off back to Scotland when it's all done but it won't be long before another night at Ipswich Premier Inn as we've an appointment with the kitchen designers on 4th October.

We haven't been out into the Kent countryside as much as we planned as yet but we did manage a quick visit to Tunbridge Wells yesterday to check out some furniture for our house in Suffolk. We passed this place in Aylesford once before and this time I was able to take a snap. Ours is a very uncommon surname and I wonder if there's a family connection.

I don't want to sound like Victor Meldrew but I spotted this scene yesterday. Someone has enjoyed their four cans of lager or whatever but couldn't be bothered to walk the two steps to the litter bin to dispose of the empties  - I just don't get it.

One of the luxuries of being here at Paul's is the availability of a broadband connection. After two months in the caravan with wireless for snails I have got out of the habit of Twitter and Facebook but was able to have a chuckle on Monday night when these two cryptic messages appeared in close succession. Both friends are Evertonians and I guessed from the first (the lower one) that they had scored a goal but two minutes later the message was not quite as clear. I checked the scores and sure enough Newcastle had equalised. 

Tomorrow we're going to head to Bluewater (the Trafford Centre of the south) to check out more furniture while gas man Matt does his stuff. We may even get the chance to watch Anna Karenina at the multiplex there. It would be good to get to the pictures as we've only seen three or four films since we moved and were getting used to at least one a week in Southport.