It’s Monday morning again and surprise, surprise the sun is shining and I’m sitting in the garden room as I like to do on a Monday watching the queue of traffic leaving the village as everyone beavers off to work. I am just having my second cup of tea of the day with a slice of thick toast with lashings of marmalade and thinking that just maybe life’s not too bad.


The only down side of the day so far is the wall paper paste which Christine sees as the healthy alternative to the poached egg with bacon on the side and perhaps a sausage or two that I used to have every morning when living in hotels whilst at work.


But it starts me thinking about work and the realisation that I have been retired now for eighteen months and like everyone else I know who has retired I wonder where the time has gone. I start looking back to see what we have done over the past eighteen months and the first thing that comes to mind is that I spend a lot of time sitting in the garden room thinking about what have we done, usually with a glass of something to hand.


So to review the period since retirement, the first three months were spent staying with Alex and Dave and the grandkids in the Bahamas which was not too bad a start to retirement. It was during that time, thanks to Kylie Minogue not being interested in my hobbies that Retirement Blog was initiated and the first tentative articles posted. This seems a good time to put the picture up again.





It didn’t last very long on the wall in the shower room though, Christine said it spoiled the ambience. Can’t see it myself but never mind.


We came home to start the major project of putting our cottage back together following the completion of a major extension and refurbishment which affected every room in the cottage. Not to mention a garden that looked like a building site, in fact that’s exactly what is was. So three months in paradise was followed by three months of very hard work when actually going to work would have been a rest. But then again that’s what most people thought I was doing at work anyway.


The family then came to live with us for the summer and then further months in the Bahamas followed in October and Christmas interspersed with garden designs and interior decorating and then what happens? The family move to Barcelona and in between the decorating we have had three months or so of this year exploring Barcelona and getting fit on the beach. All in all it’s doesn’t seem a bad life.


The biggest adjustment strangely enough has been the evenings. Whilst at work the routine was always the same, arrive at the hotel, shower, change and then down to the bar to watch the football with a bar meal, some wine and few beers. Of course if there was no sport on then it was into the restaurant for a leisurely meal with a good book. Quite a pleasant way to spend most evenings. But now.......!


Christine has spent so long at home by self while I have been living away in hotels that she thinks she is in charge of the TV remote control. Instead of Arsenal on the TV it’s ‘Grand Designs’, instead of ‘Champions League’ it’s ‘Location, Location, Location’. I point out to her that I cannot remember ever walking down to the hotel bar on a Champions League night to see the TV showing ‘Escape to the Country’. I ask what the point is of having Sky Sport if we don’t watch it, but this doesn’t cut the mustard with Christine who carries on watching Phil & Kirstie.


But with a little compromise and Sky Plus coming to the rescue and I watch all the live sport while Christine records the design programs to watch at another time. Somehow though, the sport in the hotel bar with the beers and bar meal and a crowd watching added atmosphere that I don’t get in our lounge.


So do I miss work, well I think it’s fair to say I miss the people but when I consider that we have just booked to go back to Barcelona for two more trips, New York later in the year, Anersey in France for a couple of weeks not to mention Dublin I think I am happy to be a retired old codger. The school bus must have passed by now I'll just get a glass.