Retirement Life in The Week Ended 24 November 2024

How is everyone doing? I started this week in Southend-on-Sea with no set date to return home. It’s been good lesson in taking one day at a time. As well as looking after Mum and Dad and doing chores related to their house move I went for inspiring walks of rediscovery in my childhood town. My step count was absolutely pucker this week. But having received some exciting news I made it back to Devon at the weekend.

Here’s what I’ve been up to.

Where I’ve Been

I spent Monday morning at East Beach, Shoeburyness . It’s one of my favourite places in the borough of Southend. I love its big sky vistas and it’s also a perfect place for beachcombing. I picked up lots of shards of pottery there that I’ll use in future mosaics as well as the stems of three clay pipe. At some time during the trip I managed, unintentionally of course, to scare a whole flock of geese. It wasn’t something that I did to create a photo opportunity. I reckon that thousands of them took to the sky.

What I’m Up Against

In the coldest week this year my visually impaired Dad keeps messing with the thermostat and turning the heating off. He’s an ex-engineer so likes to fiddle with technical bits and bobs. It’s a good job that I was staying though. Mum would have never worked out how to turn it back on again. That would have meant a twelve hour trip to reset the controls. It’s just one of the joys of being a long distance carer.

Thank goodness it won’t be long until my parents live around the corner. It’ll be easy then to sort things out like this at a drop of a hat. In the meantime I’ve come up with a quick fix with good old duct tape.

What I’ve Been Up To

Even though I helped Mum and Dad a lot while I’m staying with them I had a lot of time on my hands. I made sure some of it was spent exercising daily. Walking is the norm and of course there’s my skipping as well. I managed to cross the one hundred jumps mark this week .

I’ve also stepped up my writing. It’s a nice portable activity. All I need is my laptop and I have to bring that anyway to deal with all the official stuff related to my parent’s move.

As well as preparing blog posts upfront I’ve been giving some of my time to writing a proper book. It’s a lifelong ambition of mine so perhaps now is the time to up the ante and get that goal achieved. If anyone else has the same whim I’d say go for it. I can also recommend that you treat yourself to Scrivener from Literature and Latte. I bought it sometime ago. It’s so much easier to organise a big writing project with this than with a Word type app.

What I Chanced Upon

Here’s a lovely little story. On Wednesday I visited the Beecroft Art Gallery. I often go there when I’m in the Southend. As a child I spent many hours in this incredible Brutalist building during its former life as the town library.

The gallery houses interesting temporary shows. While I was there the 60th Essex Art Exhibition was in full swing. It was the main reason for my visit and comes highly recommended. But there was also another exhibit exploring the use of colour and its power and narrative. To be honest, I nearly passed it by as my feet were hurting. But a big spinning colour wheel drew me in. I thought that the wheel would stop on my favourite colour, maybe one of the blue shades. I was a little perturbed when its pointer highlighted the orange section. Rather reluctantly I headed to that area of the gallery to see what I could find.

I view what I found as a minor miracle. Mounted on yes, an orange wall, I discovered a painting by my favourite artist, Alfred Wallis. I’ve written a separate post about how this Cornish fisherman can be an inspiration to those who want to make art but don’t have money to throw at it. I was nearly in tears when I saw this beautiful example of Wallis’ work. It was lovely to get really close up to observe the materials it had been made with.

What We Got For Free

Do you remember the other week I said that we’d picked up a whole lot of free firewood? Well there’s more. While I’ve been away Paul has been filling his boots or more realistically filling the boot of the car.

The quote for our winter logs was three hundred and eighty pounds this year. At the rate we’re going I don’t think we’re going to need to spend that. To put this in context I’ve been thinking in terms of what we can buy with the money saved. It’s about the cost of a single ferry crossing to Spain without our cabin.

I’ve now sent out a plea to Paul. ‘No more!’ Our log store is bursting and we have supplies that will now last us until way into the New Year. I’m confident that we’ll be able to pick up more free wood when we need it too. There are always adverts on Facebook Marketplace.

What I’ve Watched

I’ve chosen to illustrate this bit of the post with a photo that I took the summer. It shows some of the things that we grew ourselves on the allotment and the sweet peas gifted by a fellow plot holder. One of my chores this week has been removing seeds from the dried pods of some of our bean crop. I’ll store them over winter and plant them next year.

It seemed like a big coincidence that we watched ‘Percy vs Goliath’ on Saturday night. Its free on Amazon Prime at the time of writing. The film is based on a seed saving Canadian farmer’s battle with the biotechnology giant, Monsanto. While I found the storyline and the acting a little clunky it gave me a lot of food for thought, in particular about what I might be putting on the end of my fork in the future.

What We’ve Achieved

Southend-on-Sea is, of course, famous for its pleasure pier. At a mile and a third it’s the longest in the world. During a blustery, icy cold walk along it on Friday I took a phone call and accepted an offer on Mum and Dad’s home. It had only been on the market for ten days. Now that’s what I call an achievement!

This meant that I didn’t have to stick around to prepare the house for viewings over the weekend. Nor did I have to accompany my parents into town to get them out while these took place. . So I’ve gone home until more chores materialise

So at the end of the week I was back in Devon and made it before Storm Bert lashed the country. I felt very thankful cosied up by the fire listening to the wind and rain outside.

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.