We went for a bike ride this morning and it made me appreciate how lucky we are to have been able to retire while still in our fifties and to be healthy enough to enjoy days like today in the beautiful surroundings of St Andrews (and soon in Suffolk too). It was a warm spring day as we chose the downhill route from the caravan site into the little city and along the harbour by the glorious East Sands where it was pleasant enough for some families to settle down on the beach and build a few sandcastles. We imagined bringing Rose down there one day to do the same.
We then headed to the West Sands which were a hive of activity with all manner of recreations underway. With a brisk breeze it was perfect for Sand Yachting (if not for cycling) and the yachters were flying across the sands at a hell of a pace. There were also kite surfers out and about as well as the usual plethora of walkers and runners plus an isolated angler.
I didn't spot anyone with a metal detector on the beach (although I have seen a few there in the past). I went out with my detector yesterday and found a few interesting bits and pieces - nothing of any great age or note. This item is a bit of a puzzle. It is complete. Any ideas what it might have been used for? I would love to know what it might be - answers in the comments below please.
The weather forecast is for more of the same tomorrow so we're planning another ride. This time it's a long one down to Tentsmuir Forest. It's a haven for wildlife but wildlife was closer to home today when we went to Duncan and Sarah's for lunch. Duncan has spent lots of time renovating a big pond in the garden and recently filled it with fish. Unfortunately the new fish didn't go unnoticed by the locals and Duncan looked out of the window during lunch to see this magnificent creature having a fair old paddle. It was so brazen that when Duncan scared it off it merely sauntered to the neighbours' roof and looked greedily at the remaining goldfish with a look that said 'just wait until you go out'. Having the same experience with our pond in Southport I suspect that it's a pond keeper's occupational (and expensive) hazard.
We've finally started to get things moving with our planned move and have started to put our house in order. It's not in bad nick but there are a few flaws that need tidying up and we've arranged for a couple of tradesmen to come in and touch up the decorating, replace a few taps that have seen better days, fit a new seal to the washing machine and all those little cosmetic things that might put prospective buyers off.
With no ties we've got pretty much the whole country to go at but our extensive research keeps pointing us towards East Anglia and particularly the county of Suffolk which seems to score highly in a fair number of lifestyle surveys. So we've booked a cottage and we're off to do some research in a week or two. We hope to settle on a small town or village first before we start to look at property so the first couple of days will be spent driving around trying to get a feel for places and, if we find one or two places that we like and feel at home in, the last few days should give us time to visit some properties.
We've had an initial look at places and the north south divide is a bit of a pain. Our initial searches indicate that the sale proceeds of our detached house (above) with a super loft conversion, two conservatories and a big and well fitted kitchen will buy us something like this in one of the villages we're going to investigate. Granted this is in a popular holiday area but it's a significant reduction in space and privacy from what we've been used to for the past twenty years so we aren't going to rush into anything.
It's a bit of a catch 22. We can get something spacious if we want to live in the country but if we want to live close to facilities (which is essential as we want this to be where we spend our retirement and don't want to grow old in a remote location) we can't get much. I suppose we don't need much as there's only two of us but we do want the family to be able to come and stay. It's certainly an interesting project for us. I'll blog how we get on.
If retirees like us knew the answer to that question we might well solve the current economic crisis at a stroke. We could live like there's no tomorrow and spend,spend, spend if we knew that there wasn't one or at least knew how many there were. For now we'll have to keep an eye on the cash and live within a budget that should give us a comfortable lifestyle without being overly extravagant.
We'll have been retired for a whole year on Wednesday. We've had a great year in very many ways with the wonderful arrival of our first granddaughter Rose, our new caravan in St Andrews and the new found freedom that retirement has brought. But sadly our happiness in the past few months has been overshadowed by Marion's mum's relentless fall into Alzheimer's which has turned her into a Jeckyll and Hyde character who one day hasn't got a clue where she is and another will correctly tell you that there's eighteen minutes to go in the football and seem quite her old self before bursting into tears and asking what is happening to her brain.
So, apart from that struggle, and it is a struggle that occupies us on some level almost every waking minute now, what has retirement been like? It got off to a fantastic start with a brilliant Madness concert in Manchester just a few hours after leaving the office. Then, within a week of clearing my desk, I was in hospital having a new hip. That wrote off December although Marion looked after me brilliantly and I quite enjoyed being nursed and loved passing the time watching the new 3D telly and reading a big pile of novels.
I was up and about by the end of December when we had a memorable new year at The Old Course Hotel in St Andrews where we watched the most amazing firework display courtesy of the wedding celebrations of Di Stewart and Nick Dougherty. Since then we've got into a routine that revolves around the gym, cinema, reading, cycling, blogging, metal detecting and writing and rewriting my novel. I'm on the second rewrite now and maybe one day I'll be happy enough with it to try and publish. We've also managed to take a few holidays after going through 2009 and 2010 with none and enjoyed breaks in Cockermouth, Kirkby Lonsdale, Feizor, Isle De Re and Italy. Next year we'll probably spend all our holidays in St Andrews.
It's been a good year for cinema for us. We've seen about 37 films at either FACT in Liverpool or Vue in Southport with just one visit to the St Andrews Picture House. There's nothing wrong with the local Vue which is fine for a multiplex but we love going to FACT in Liverpool which has a much more interesting film selection and a great little cafe. I wouldn't say that there have been any classic movies this year but there have been plenty of very good ones. My favourites include A Separation, Midnight in Paris, Of Gods And Men and We Need To Talk About Kevin. Our worst experience was The Tree Of Life. Some that were undeservedly panned by the critics in my opinion were The Eagle and The Lincoln Lawyer.
We've only managed five theatre trips but two of those, One Man Two Guvnors and The Ladykillers were comedy classics. Concerts have been fewer still with Dolly Parton, Glen Campbell and Madness all that we saw.
All in all a good year. I hope that there will be many more to come. I read an article in the weekend papers about longevity. The writer reckoned that, although I can hope to live for up to another twenty years, the rot sets in at around 63 and most men will encounter some sort of functional deterioration or illness that will restrict them from then onwards. So we had better make the most of the next four or five years. Get the cruise brochures out Marion.
So you are all back at work and catching up on the two hundred emails and big pile of post that arrived this morning. And while you do that Marion and I are finally starting to understand what it's like to be retired. "But you retired on 30th November" you may well say. Very true but, let's face it, going into hospital a couple of days later and the subsequent period of recuperation don't really count as normality.
With the leg well and truly on the mend I think it's fair to say that today is day one of the rest of our retired lives. And what a fascinating day it has turned out to be. I still have to complete the Guardian quick crossword (it's part of my OCD) but I no longer have any deadline as I don't have to grab my coat and rush out of the house at ten to nine. I can even take the crossword to the loo with me if I feel like it.
Crossword done, we have some stuff to take back to M&S and discover that the average age of everyone in Southport on a Tuesday morning is probably about twenty years higher than it is at weekend and the place is crawling with the grey haired and balding. But there's no queue to speak of at the returns desk and we get things done much faster than usual.
My hair could do with a trim. This usually involves several trips to the barbers where I pull up outside, count the number in the queue and drive away. I then repeat the exercise at half hourly intervals until I find a lull and triumphantly make my entrance to be seated immediately at the chair. Today I turn up at 11, there's no queue and I'm seen straight away.
Marion decides that she'll give the daytime classes at the gym a go and I gamely decide to accompany her and give my new hip a work out. You know what it's like at the gym at the start of the new year when everyone has made that resolution to invest £30 per month and actually turns up leaving a queue at every machine, compared to every other month when the money continues to go out of the account but the trackie and trainers stay in the wardrobe. Well it's not like that at noon and I've virtually got the place to myself and manage to exercise for half an hour.
I discover that there are toilets just outside the gym. It's not that I need them but it's the first time that I've had the time to look around the place and I had always assumed that the ones in the changing rooms were all there were. I wonder why people spit used chewing gum into the urinals. Do they have no spatial awareness and think that large blob of gum will somehow go down the small hole? Or does it give them something to aim at? Or do they think that after a certain number of pees the gum will shrink sufficiently to drain away? Or do they simply think that the cleaners enjoy removing the piss soaked globules? Oh yes we love removing your gum from the urinals - it makes our day and is so much more preferable to finding it in the lined waste paper basket positioned a foot away.
Yes it has certainly been an interesting day. We've discovered that we can do everything so much quicker just when we don't need to. Which means that retirement hours are probably worth two working hours. Which means that we're going to have so much time to do all that stuff that we've always wanted to do. An old bloke at the gym told me that it took just six weeks for him to feel fully recovered from his hip replacement. Which means that in two weeks time it should be all systems go.
