People say that travel broadens the mind and it’s probably true for many people, but I’m not convinced that my mind has been broadened, maybe just bent a bit out of shape. I seem to end up with a smattering of impressions and odd nuggets of information from every country I visit. After a month…
In Praise of January
I know that January is generally not that popular, but I think it’s much maligned. I admit that it’s not the glitziest time of year and it definitely suffers when compared with its flashy predecessor. January is to December as a sensible pair of walking shoes is to a glittery party dress, but there is…
Do I have to make New Year’s Resolutions?
I just don’t think I can be bothered this year. There are lots of ways I should improve and lots of things I should be doing, but if I didn’t achieve them in 2019 I’m not likely to achieve them in 2020 either. I can’t imagine that people are any more successful at keeping New…
The Post-Christmas Review
I love the week between Christmas and New Year. Peace descends and all the frantic socialising, cooking, shopping, present-wrapping and frenetic organising is over. Everyone has retreated to their own homes to lie low and eat their Christmas chocolates undisturbed. People in the media refer to this time as ‘Twixtmas’, but I’ve never heard anyone…
Are Christmas songs bad for your mental health?
I think that the secret to enjoying Christmas is, like everything else in life, managing your expectations. I have modest expectations of the holiday season – I think the weather will probably be damp and grey, but I will eat some nice chocolates and enjoy the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special. The only way to…
Travel whims
Sometimes I wonder why people choose to travel at all. If you’re travelling for work or visiting people, fair enough, but why would you put yourself through all that hassle without a good reason? If I’m honest, travelling is enormously inconvenient and frequently uncomfortable as well. Unless you’re fabulously wealthy of course, which most of…
My favourite things
With dire warnings of climate catastrophes hanging over us and the upcoming UK elections, with the results ushering in who knows what calamitous state of affairs, my brain is desperately seeking a ray of light to get me through this darkest of months. So, I came over all Julie Andrews and decided to compile a…
The never-ending demands of retirement
I had no idea that retirement would be so demanding. I looked up “retirement” in the Cambridge Dictionary and it is supposed to be “the point at which someone stops working”. To me this conjures up images of infinite leisure, but fond thoughts of doing jigsaw puzzles and knitting jumpers are quickly receding. I realise…
Can you ever go home?
Although I grew up in Ontario, I have lived most of my adult life in the UK, which means that visiting Ontario is not really like going home, more like visiting my youth. And who doesn’t want to visit their youth? I never really had a proper adult life in Canada. I lived there in…
So how disorderly is my retirement? Am I letting myself go?
I’m starting to think that the name of this blog might be misleading. Am I really letting myself go? How disorderly is my retirement? Maybe I’m deluding myself and this latest phase of my life, far from being a retirement of wild and reckless abandon, is really no different from any other except that I’m…