Was this a perfect week? Maybe, maybe not. Pretty darn good though.
Often I have spoken of getting the right balance in life and this certainly applies to retirement. This is all about how I use my time, whether it is spent doing a lot of one thing, or perhaps flitting from one thing to another many times in a day.
Of course it also depends on what kinds of things any of us would want to include in the mix; I mean here the kind of ingredients which we use to build our routines. While I might go as far and list my ingredients, I am not very disciplined at how I spread them out evenly but arguably this is because different times of the year lend themselves to different things.
Before I waffle on too long, allow me to list some of the basic ingredients:
- staying fit and healthy
- socialising
- learning something new
- being involved in worthwhile things
- growing my faith
- making time for my mother, somewhat elderly these days
- household maintenance and chores – cooking, cleaning, maintenance inside and outside our house, gardening, keeping the cars in good condition
- hobbies
Perhaps one of the nicest things this last week was spending the day with my friend Chris, pictured above. We have known each other since 1980, or thereabouts. As I have said before, there’s a real value in having such good, long standing friends although there is definitely a case of growing old together. We have, you could say, been through thick and thin, ups and downs. And yet there is something so enduring about these old friendships.
Speaking of these old friendships, I often wonder if we would get on with each other is we met for the first time nowadays. Maybe we would, but I suspect it is less likely. It is our history which keeps the friendship going. We might go a year or two without seeing each other (plenty of phone calls in between though) and yet we always enjoy the time spent with each other. Priceless.
Some of the other things which I’ve done this week….
On Monday we drove back from a weekend in Exeter, visiting my eldest daughter there. We saw my mother on the way back and we dropped into see another long standing friend (Austen) in Wiltshire. Those 220 miles were a real joy.
Wednesday was nice. We had a church friend over for lunch and she brought her fiancé who we hadn’t met before. That was rather nice and as a bonus we talked about art. I have a feeling those conversations will be building further in the future.
On Thursday I had a nice 6 mile walk with the financial advisor (the one we pay!). Aside from talking friendship stuff, we talked money. We discussed sluggish markets, the delights of the ESG places where we have some of our money and why he reckons keeping money as cash is such a poor choice, but then he would, wouldn’t he? I pointed out that NS&I are offering a 12 month bond at 6.25% which seems pretty attractive and risk free. You can imagine we had an interesting debate about time in the market, rather than timing the market, if you get my drift here.
Also on Thursday was the AGM of a local charity we are involved in. Aside from the formal business (which was very brief) we had an update from a local MP, Andrew Selous, a Tory chap. While I do not agree with him very much when it comes to politics, he said a number of surprising things. Firstly was the amount of things that his own party is responsible for that he is disappointed in; I didn’t think he was being very loyal. He sidestepped a couple of questions and then he said of all tax raised by the Government, some 11.5% goes on debt interest. That was staggering. Not on repaying the national debt but merely the interest.
Friday was being involved with a luncheon club here in the village, followed by an evening performance of the village amateur dramatic club in the village theatre. It is very small scale, very much on a shoe string but all good fun and entertaining.
Saturday was enjoyable, though a little disappointing. In the morning we had some friends join us for breakfast and our Ukrainian guests joined in and this made it particularly pleasant. The disappointing part was after the breakfast and I went to the village library where I was wanting to see our two Ward Councillors. They had cancelled their surgery and I didn’t know. In fact nobody seemed to know, part from a very apologetic librarian.
Sunday also involved our Ukrainian guests. I have already taken them into London twice but they had never been inside Buckingham Palace and they were eager to go, in spite of my republican leanings. They loved every minute and it was a joy seeing them forget about the horrors of their country being at war.
Our guests wanted to see London at night. And that’s just what we did!
London photos taken with my iPhone.