Retirement Life in the Week Ended 22 December 2024
Another week in Essex away from all my Devonian chores. Ho hum! I’m missing out on festive celebrations and won’t be going home for the big day itself. For all sorts of logistical reasons Paul isn’t coming here. It’s a good job that we don’t make an awfully big thing of Christmas. It’s normally just a day where we play board games and cards and have a roast dinner that’s a bit fancier than normal!
But things are moving on. My mum was immobile and pretty much bed bound at the beginning of the week. By Sunday she was making it up and down the stairs and had got back to telling me off! Who knows? By the end of next week I might be back with my man. It would be nice as our New Years Eve celebrations are a bit more impressive. I won’t hold my breath but fingers crossed.
Where I’ve Been
One of the things I remember about blogging in the past was that I purposely went out of my way to seek out things that I could write about. In doing so it enhanced my life. At the moment I’ve taken on huge amounts of responsibility. . It’s hard so I’m looking at ways that I can be diligent about self care. With this in mind I thought I’d make more of an effort to use the little free time I have to strive for some quality experiences.
There’s a lull in proceedings at the beginning of most afternoons. So, after I’ve fed and watered my parents, I go for a walk. They’re normally snoozing then anyway. On Monday I decided to go and find the Clifftown Telephone Museum. By coincidence it popped up in a social media feed and I was curious.
I walked along the main street in the area that overlooks the seafront and thought I’d spotted it. Alas the first phone box I spied contained errr…….a payphone! Actually that’s quite a rare find these days. Luckily the museum wasn’t too far away, down a back street near a little park.
Now some websites describe this as the smallest museum in the world but I wonder if someone with a tinier one got the hump, So in other places it’s billed as ONE of the smallest in the world. However you look at it it’s pretty tiny.
I’ve tried to capture what’s inside but the reflections go in the way. It seems to be housing a temporary exhibition of mosaic and stained glass. They must have known I was coming. Oh I also should mention that Helen Mirren helped to fund it. She’s a Southend girl too.
What I’m Working With
This is my parent’s kitchen that hasn’t been touched when it was built in the 1950s. Some would see it as charmingly retro but this is its only worktop. When I’m done with the airfryer it gets put away in the cupboard. I expect it was designed by one of those men with a fruity posh voice that you see on old news reels. You can almost hear him say ‘And here’s where the lucky little woman of the house can conjure up supper just in time to have on the table when her husband comes home.’
Aside from the ones for the cooker, fridge and microwave (hiding on an open shelf behind a William Morris curtain) there is one power point You can’t have your tea and toast at the same time. Mum is very excited about the kitchen in her new bungalow. ‘How many plug sockets does it have?’ she keeps asking. I look at the virtual viewing video on the estate agent’s website to check. I think that there’s at least eight.
What I Spotted
I had a lazy eye when I was little and had an operation to correct it. Because of this I spent a lot of time at Southend Hospital and loved the snake at the entrance. I took Mum for an x-ray this week and spotted him. He’s a mosaic by an unknown artist and he’s made out of beautiful smalti glass tiles. It signifies the Rod of Aesclepius, a Greek symbol for medicine.
What I’ve Been Cooking
My fish pie is famous amongst my friends and I made one for Mum and Dad this week. It was just concocted from a supermarket mix of salmon, smoked haddock and cod with extra prawns cooked in a bechamel sauce. I topped it with buttery mash and grated on extra mature cheddar. Apparently some chefs tut the fish/cheese combo but they can keep their opinions to themselves. The photo was of a filling that I made earlier. I forgot to take one this time. I think that I spot that the earlier version contains a bit of mackerel.
I’ve been trying to cut down my work by making meals for my parents that are largely one pot wonders, casseroles, oven bakes and the like. They have the added bonus of lasting for two meals each. As they retire early, at about eight I do the bulk of the prep after they’ve gone to bed. Most days I’ve got something that just has to be cooked in the airfryer or microwave at lunchtime. Mornings are busy enough without faffing around anymore. The whole thing is complicated by the fact that Mum is coeliac so strictly gluten free.
Mum and Dad are old school meat and two veg type of people. Actually it’s more like three or four veg as they’re obsessed with keeping their bowels regularly. What is it with the oldies? There’s an awful lot of pans involved in those seemingly simple dishes. I’m trying to convince them that they’ll get a substantial portion of the ten a day, that they seem to demand, even if it’s cooked in one dish.. The fish pie contained spinach and peas and I stir fried mushrooms and leeks as a side. So far so good. They seem happy with what I’m cooking.
What I Remembered
At one time I carried around a copy of The Four Agreements, a spiritual text by Don Miguel Ruiz that describes a code of conduct based on Toltec wisdom,, the teachings of a pre-Aztec race of people in Mexico. The book was thought provoking enough for me to read three or four times in full. It has had significant impact on the way that I lead my life and communicate. For those who don’t feel the urge to dive into the book the Four Agreements are pretty self explanatory.
- “Be impeccable with your word”
- “Do not take anything personally”
- “Do not make assumptions”
- “Always do your best”
That last one came to mind this week. By the time it got to Thursday I was exhausted.
Now I have a little early morning routine comprising of spiritual practice. In normal times I start it about five o’ clock and it works well in the stillness of the early hours. Here that’s the time that Dad starts traipsing around the house shouting his head off and creating porridge Armageddon in the kitchen. He wakes Mum up, she needs lots of assistance and then I’m off downstairs mopping up milk and scraping congealed oats from multiple surfaces. I’m often awake from about 3am anticipating the maelstrom.
So my normal peaceful practice has gone awry. I’m spreading out my reading, meditation and contemplation through the day. . My attention is all over the place. But in among the I remember that the notes accompanying that fourth agreement. Our best can be different depending on what’s going on our lives. I’m got with that.
Who I’ve Been In Touch With
I’m trying not to moan these days so I won’t go into the nitty gritty. But it’s been a hell of a week that’s been compounded by difficulties around the availability of health and social care provision. In a nutshell it can be pretty sparse. Once you’re actually in contact with staff they are invariably lovely but run ragged.
So what to do? A friend of mine volunteers for Healthwatch England, an organisation that supposedly has a bit of power. It aims to improve care services by listening to the voice of service users. I want to tell our story without it solely being for the purpose of just whingeing and griping.
Oh, by the way the rainbow is one of mine. I’ve made lots now as a thank you for my NHS friends. I’ve just realised that there’s a bit of a mosaic theme going on in my posts this week but you can’t get too much of a good thing.
What I Spotted
I was on the bus the other day and I spotted lovely art projects including yet another mosaic outside the primary school that I went to half a century ago. If that doesn’t make me feel old nothing else will. Anyway on Sunday I decided to divert past it on my walk. I wanted to take some photos and thought that it was better to do that when the kids weren’t there. Times have changed. In my day an adult probably could have freely walked into the playground and had a go on the climbing frames during break time. I exaggerate somewhat but there was free access. Now the grounds are all locked tight.
I particularly loved this installation – I think that it was metal but it was a bit hard to judge. The whole thing is a big tree but snapping it in its entirety through the railings was a bit tricky. I went for a detail shot instead.
My photographic difficulties didn’t end there as there was a great big shadow across this lovely artwork on the infant school wall. It’s that time of year when the sun is low in the sky. Still I hope you get the gist that it was lovely.
Disclaimer
This post contains links to companies and organisations just because I’m happy with the products or services that they supply or I’m spreading the word about what they do. There may also be affiliate links to Amazon for books and other items that I am personally recommending. If you decide to make a purchase from them, I might get a little bit of commission at no cost to you.