Winter Lights and Festivities

December 21, 2023 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

Early December was cold and frosty; proper winter weather. I love walking around the village in weather like that, especially when the skies are clear and the sun is at least giving and impression of warmth.

On one rather cold evening, I walked to Forest Green Rovers to see the football team I support. On the way I saw the annual winter light display that Ruskin Mill College hold in the valley the college occupies among the lakes, the ponds and the trout fishery it manages. I was already a bit tight on time so didn’t attempt to get a closer look. However, on the way back – disheartened by yet another defeat in what has been a long succession – I walked through the base of the valley to see the remnants of the display.

*^{Ruskin Mill Light Display Including A Dragonfly Above A Lake and A Mouse}*

Many of the candles had naturally expired by that time and no-one else was about. The atmosphere was a strange mix of festivity and spookiness. The overall feel and several of the individual light-works were impressive. I felt lucky to have seen the display since it wasn’t officially open to the public and it only lasted a few hours.

Jane has been investing a lot of time in getting our own Christmas lights up around our house. We briefly debated whether to put a Christmas tree up this year since we are not at home for Christmas itself. However, I was unsurprised when she arrived back one afternoon with a substantial tree and spent the rest of the day decorating it. Jane loves Christmas and the tree looks lovely as usual.

*^{Domestic Festive Lighting – Door and Tree}*

The festive lighting around the house is also lovely. The excuse for it being even more extensive than usual is that, after several years of talking about having a drinks party for local friends and acquaintances, we finally arranged one.

I think it went well. It was great to see so many locals chatting animatedly with each other. Jane relieved the hospitality burden on us by hiring a youngster to man the ‘bar’. We both enjoyed the occasion while learning lessons about how to improve arrangements for the next one (should we get our act together again).

*^{Plenty Of Festive Lights In Our Bit Of The Hamlet}*

That weekend felt very full because Jane spent much of the next day at our house with her siblings, sorting out a load of boxes of her late mother’s possessions. Good progress was made I believe. However, it’s a big task and there are still a number of crates and boxes in our spare room and corridors to examine. The contents need to split into allocations by sibling, for charity, for the dump and for a celebratory bonfire of family memorabilia that no-one wants to keep. The creation of this last stack of stuff is in line, Jane tells me, with one of several Swedish death-related cultural practices that celebrate the past while preventing our lofts getting filled with junk.

Now, with our Secret Santa presents already bought and no big family Christmas dinner to prepare for, we are in a quiet and welcome gap between our drinks party and Christmas itself. For that, we are off to see Youngest Son and his fiancé in Belfast. I fear we must prepare for a rainy Christmas not a cold, clear one but we are intent on having a great time. I hope all you readers have a great festive period too!

Barnsley and Bath

February 8, 2023February 9, 2023 / fgrtommo / 1 Comment

Despite a few days of frosty mornings, spring feels like it is coming. Cheerful little snowdrops are out in the verges of our lanes. The birds are getting ever more active and noisy. We can open the blinds when we come down in the morning and get the start of proper daylight and the afternoons no longer seem so truncated. There was another heavy frost this morning but another winter is passing into greater light and warmth.

*^{A Recent Frosty Morning – Pretty Though!}*

I need to start getting active in the garden to clear the as yet unharvested leeks and the rotten stumps of chard and beetroot that I failed to harvest or that the deer got to before I could. Unfortunately, the very frustrating back strain I picked up while coughing (would you believe it!) last month continues to constrain activity a bit and I continue to use it as an excuse to restrict myself to extremely light, low-value gardening duties.

I have continued to use walking (plus a few elementary and, I admit, rather half-heartedly undertaken back exercises) as a way of gradually increasing my back’s mobility. In keeping with my wife’s and my joint New Year resolution to get out more when the weather is forecast to be nice, we went for a lengthy walk around Barnsley a couple of weeks ago. This is not the large market town in South Yorkshire but a nearby village in the Cotswolds that we have visited several times before, but not for a few years.

Despite having a fairly busy road running through it, this Barnsley is one of those picture book Cotswold towns and villages that are full of pretty cottages and large rich merchant and manor houses. There’s a popular pub and Barnsley House – previously home to Rosemary Verey, a famous gardener – is a popular spa and tourist attraction. We didn’t visit those but, rather, walked mainly around the village through open fields, woodland and old parkland. The frost made the ground firmer than expected after the January rain and the sky was brilliant blue. It was a lovely, refreshing walk.

*^{Winter Scenes Around Barnsley, Gloucestershire}*

In a further impromptu excursion last week, Jane and I popped south to Bath. The main element of our planned visit was to pick up a couple of loaves of sourdough bread from the rather wonderful Landrace. It’s a great establishment that worked hard to survive the Covid lockdowns and which sells the best bread I know of.

*^{A Great Group Of Trees In The Circus, Bath}*

Bath is a fair old way to go for just bread so we also visited The Holburne Museum. We also had a very tasty and pleasant lunch at the recently opened Beckford Canteen which is a stylish restaurant set up in an ex-Georgian greenhouse.

At the Holburne Museum we bought tickets for an exhibition of Albrecht Dürer’s woodcuts depicting The Great Passion of Christ and the woodcut publications of a number of Durer’s mentors, contemporaries and followers. The links with the development of the printing press and Lutheranism were of interest but we both found an adjoining exhibition of very different, modern art rather more compelling.

*^{One Of 11 Albrecht Durer Woodcuts Telling The Story Of ‘The Great Passion’}*

The core of this exhibition by Alberta Whittle was a collection of elaborately decorated figures representing African slaves in various poses related to limbo dancing. What was enlightening for both Jane and I was the fact that slaves on slave ships crossing the Atlantic in the 18th century were offered precious time on deck (away from the stinking and confined quarters below) in return for entertaining the sailors with limbo dancing. The figures were alongside decorated cartons which, after inquisition of the Museum guide, we understood to representations of the containers that were used for water and cologne used to douse the slave performers so as to reduce their pungent smell while on deck.

*_{‘Dipping Below A Waxing Moon, The Dance Saves Us’ By Alberta Whittle}*

Whittle’s work here was powerful and informative. In the subject matter and use of brilliant colour, it was reminiscent of the exhibition of a huge procession constructed by Hew Locke that I saw at Tate Britain last September. It was the highlight of our day (if only because we didn’t eat the Landrace bakery bread until the following day).

We have a further life highlight planned later this week: our first visit of the year to Edinburgh to see First Grandchild and his parents! I’m not sure what to expect from my dodgy back after being in car for 8-9 hours, but I am so looking forward to being in Edinburgh again.

Then, to hurry along time until Spring is really here, we have booked a few days in Paris. It’s been years since we travelled abroad so I’m looking forward to getting my passport stamped according to the new Brexity rules and being part of Europe again. There’s nice bread there (and in Edinburgh) too!

Climate Change in January

January 19, 2020 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

It seems incongruous thinking about climate change and the Climate Emergency on a day like today when there are clear skies and degrees of frost outside and I’ve just returned from a lengthy walk down icy lanes. However, the recent fires in Australia – many close to areas that we visited during our two relatively recent trips there – and the floods that followed Storm Brendan here in the UK, have underlined that all is not well with the climate. It is increasingly imperative that we act to, hopefully, avert permanent and very significant upheaval to global life as we know it.

Frosty Garden

As readers of this blog will know, for several months, I have been a member of a local group agitating for our Parish to declare a Climate Emergency, to set a target of carbon neutrality by 2030 and to help the establishment of plans to achieve that target. The Parish Council have agreed to take climate change seriously and have committed to a number of measures including mass tree planting. However, beyond this, in practice, we are making only slow progress; we are simply a too small and a too intermittently dedicated group.

Frosty View On The Way To Nailsworth

I am now planning to align myself more with a much larger group of climate change responders in our nearby town, Nailsworth. This group (Nailsworth Climate Action Network) seems to have more momentum as well as size. I’m excited by some of their plans.

One of these plans is to hold an ‘envisioning session’ along the lines advocated by Rob Hopkins at which we will think about what we want Nailsworth to be like in a couple of decade’s time. Rob Hopkins established the Transition Network movement many years ago. Since then, he has developed his thinking to promote the harnessing of our imagination to envision a near future that has responded to the pressure of the Climate Emergency and to measures of well-being and societal health rather than Gross National Product.

Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) and I saw Rob speak in Nailsworth in October last year and he was very inspiring. LSW has read his latest book – ‘From What Is To What If’ – which encourages the reader to use hope and imagination to break out of the current systems and structures we find ourselves in to envision a different way of living. He also provides examples of how others have done this in various parts of the world, and how these can inspire similar action in our own lives and towns. I too must read this fully before our town ‘envisioning event’ planned for June.

Walking Near Our House Between Showers

Of course, all climate change activists encourage us to reduce our reliance on planes for travel. Air travel is apparently the most carbon emitting of transport methods. I have calculated my personal carbon footprint using a calculator provided by the World Wildlife Fund and, while I am just below the average for a UK citizen without flights, with the two flights I took last year, I am almost 50% higher. As I reported in this blog a few posts ago, I did carbon offset one of these flights and plan repeat that process in future. But the impact of flying on the climate is disproportionately high and LSW and I plan to cut down our few flights even more.

That means ‘staycations’ in the UK and train based holidays. We plan to walk some of the north Somerset/Devon/Cornwall coast in June and try a train trip somewhere in Europe later in the year. Holidays in India and Thailand, which we have also talked about, may be now on hold.

Perhaps we will adjust to one long haul flight a year and offset it through Solar Aid again. Certainly we have a strong desire to revisit India and try South East Asia for the first time. And not only do I want to visit these places; I also miss the opportunity to see the world from the window of a plane flying thousands of feet above the ground. What better, often stunning way is there of appreciating both the planet as it is and that we have to act to prevent a climate disaster ruining it?

One Of Those Dreamy Views Out Of An Aeroplane Window – In This Case Over The Alps. I’d Miss These If I Wasn’t Able To Fly

Back on earth, the first signs of weather change and the onset of Spring are emerging amid the sodden ground and current frost. I’ve seen my first lambs, bees, snowdrops and primroses of the year. The dippers and kingfishers are active near the streams again. Excitingly, a kestrel has been hovering over our garden and field looking for strays from a colony of voles or mice that have taken up residence there.

First Snowdrops Of The Year On New Years Day

Early Snowdrops and Bee Activity

There is another uplifting development in the valley I walk through to Nailsworth every day. A swan arrived on the lake there over three years ago. She has occasionally disappeared for weeks but always returned alone and apparently lonely. Last year she produced some eggs and they now lie abandoned on her nest. This week, suddenly, a partner has arrived and so the chances are that they will mate and that new eggs will be fertilised this year. I am so hoping for a clutch of cygnets; fingers crossed!

Early Lambs And Swans In Love?

Winter Catching Up

February 1, 2019 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

At last, a proper winter seems to have arrived. We don’t have the extreme of the polar vortex that Canada and the northern states of the USA are currently experiencing, but we have had some frosty starts and, now, a heavy layer of snow. School seems to be cancelled and kids are in the field opposite the house, sledging to their heart’s content. The silent garden looks magical now it is cloaked in snow. I know it is the increasing climate extremes that are the worry but it is comforting that we can still have real winter weather amid the trend towards global warming.

Snow And Sledging Outside Our Front Door

Middle Son texted to tell us London just has rain and in any case, the warmth of London’s buildings normally means that snow we see in rural areas becomes grey slush in the city centre. However, London has other attractions and I was able to pay another visit last week.

The main reason for the visit was to meet up with some old work colleagues, as we do once or twice a year. We worked together in 1977/8 and those times that were so formative to our early careers remain pretty vivid in our collective and shared memory. We recalled some of those memories again. We also caught up with more recent life developments and steered away from divisive Brexit debate sufficiently to make the get together over beers and curry very pleasant.

When I travel up to London for an event like this I have the flexibility of no time or work commitments plus the availability of a sofa bed in the flat we rent out to Eldest Son. That enables planning of extra-curricular activity to maximise the diversity of fun during my stay.

Almost always, I include a trip to Rough Trade Records so I can work my way around the listening posts there and catch up with latest music they are promoting. This time I also attended one of their free gigs. The band, Toy, is one I have followed since I enjoyed them at the same venue in September 2012. I’ve seen them a couple of times since including, believe it or not, at a remarkable gig primarily for the deaf/hard of hearing in 2015. They were worth seeing for a fourth time and I’m sure they now have even more hair.

Toy At Rough Trade

I also went to the Good Grief, Charlie Brown exhibition at Somerset House. It was interesting to read about, and see through examples, how Charles M. Schultz developed his cartoon technique and characters. The exhibition was also instructive on how Schultz managed, even as a white, middle class and relatively conventional American, to dabble in modern day issues such as gender identity, race, abortion, feminism and psychiatry/mental illness while growing his audience for his modest and understated Peanuts cartoon strips. However, one would need to be a very dedicated follower to review all of the material on show and I think I grasped the main themes without concentrating on it all.

Charles M. Schultz’s Characters From Peanuts And A Sample Early Cartoon

Following a rather overly meaty breakfast (of three separate dishes of merguez sausage, black pudding and chorizo), I headed north to Stevenage for a Forest Green Rovers Football Club away game. I watched us notch up another excellent win with my Best Man (BM) who lives nearby. I then stayed a couple of nights with him and we spent the weekend watching more football, walking around the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) site where he used to work (as we had last September), and visiting St Albans.

Views At The RSPB Reserve, Sandy, Bedfordshire

St Albans Cathedral: Naves, St Albans Shrine, Mosaic Floor And 17th Century Graffiti

I hadn’t been to St Albans for years. It still hold happy, though blurred, memories of my first excursion out of London to St Albans with my now Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) in her unassuming, idiosyncratic but effective Citroen Diane. This time, BM and I visited the Roman ruins, the very old and lovely Cathedral and a very nice pub. But we also saw the lake LSW and I held hands by over 35 years ago.

St Albans: Roman Theatre, Roman Mosaic And The ‘Romantic’ Lake

I had a very relaxed and amusing time with BM. He continues to do big corporate work and travels a lot. It was good to catch up on events in his complex and busy life but also to mentally compare his world with mine. I’m very happy with my simpler, leisure-oriented lot.

Snowy Garden

February Ups and Downs

February 12, 2018February 12, 2018 / fgrtommo / 2 Comments

Long Suffering Wife (LSW) and I have decided February is the month to avoid in the UK. There are just too many dismal weather days in February. We will escape to Cape Town’s drought at the end of February but will plan next year’s holiday abroad to be a bit earlier.

Actually, this week, the weather has been very variable rather than poor. We have had clear blue skies and relentlessly grey drizzle on almost alternate days throughout the last week. LSW and I even managed to get a pretty massive bonfire going to clear a load of long standing bramble piles, broken pallets and old fence posts.

Bonfire As An Art Work? No, Just A Task On The List Done

Like the weather, my week has also been rather up and down.

The lowest point was travelling to Newport in Wales for a Forest Green Rovers game. It was postponed about 15 minutes after I arrived due to a waterlogged pitch (or the fact that Newport were tired after their FA Cup tie in midweek against Tottenham Hotspur depending on one’s level of scepticism). What a waste of time and money!

Newport In The Rain On The Way To A Cancelled Match. Grim!

The week had started well with a visit to my parents in Nottingham. I travel up to see them too infrequently but, now I have retired, I have no excuse. I will take the rusting old Saab up to them more often in the future. The journey up and back wasn’t without its delays but it’s a relatively easy trip. I drive very little – much to LSW’s annoyance – and I had forgotten how good it is to have the stereo and my favourite CDs in the car; it’s a real music cocoon and, in it, no-one cares about the volume except me.

It was good to see my parents. They are in their mid-eighties but continue to live independently and well. Despite my Mum’s troublesome back and a recently replaced knee, they are still mobile and going to occasional films and concerts.

Mum and Dad At Home

They took me to a local gastro-pub that was a cut above the average. One of the things we chatted about was retirement and my Dad’s experience of going through that about 20 years ago. He thought the lessons I felt I had learnt that I described in this blog in December were fair. Like me, he didn’t miss work after retirement. However, he now works very part time in a charity shop and that is something I might consider at some point.

The only wrinkle arising from the evening in a pub was that I was tempted to drink on what I had planned to be a non-alcohol day and to help my Mum out with her (very tasty) venison main course. This early in the year, I think I can spare a bit of slippage against my New Year resolutions regarding drink and weight. Anyway, it’s not every week that I’ll be enjoying my parents company. It was a very good evening.

I slept in my sister’s old bedroom. Like much of the rest of the upstairs, it contains a lot of books. My Dad is gradually reducing the number but I sense that working in a charity bookshop is not helping with the reduction process; he likes books! De-cluttering is not a focus for my parents and it was nice to see lots of things that I remember from my childhood.

Fred: Not My First Teddy Bear But My Biggest

Back at home, LSW maintains a pretty tight, minimalist ship. I brought back a few old board games with some trepidation of her reaction to having more ‘stuff’. I stashed them out of the way in the top floor cupboards but have promised to do a cull of old toys to compensate.

After my return from Nottingham, LSW and I visited Ledbury in Herefordshire with her Mum. It was one of those grey February days but pleasant enough; we’ll return later in the year. Most interesting was a brief sojourn in an unprepossessing pub while I was waiting for LSW and Mother-in-Laws’ shopping to conclude. The pub just had an unsmiling barman, someone determinedly playing the slot machine, a few near-silent individuals standing at the bar and another, like me, sitting at tables at the sides. The pub was ominously silent for long periods but conversations would occasionally break out that were dominated by references to fights and ‘trouble’; it was a glimpse into a different world…..

Ledbury Church Street

I can sense LSW getting impatient with the lack of TV room decoration progress – I need to make the most of the unappealing February weather by getting on with that in this coming week. I have no excuse there either.

Fixing A Pain In The Neck

January 25, 2018 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

Since my last post, Storm Fionn and then a series of grey, wet days have forced the early signs of Spring into something of a retreat. The frozen lake I passed during one of my daily walks last week was a beautiful criss-cross of ice patterns indicating that Winter is not done yet.

Frozen Lake at John Cocks Cottage, Horsley

On the other hand, I saw ducklings on a larger lake a few days later – surely too early! Climate Change or Climate Disruption – whatever we want to call it – is creating some strange and unexpected juxtapositions. The ducks are as good an indicator as any that, for all the brief periods of the extremes of wind, ice and snow recently, we have just experienced one of the warmest years ever.

I’m still struggling a bit with a stiff back and neck (which wasn’t helped by my comical looking fall in the ice a few weeks ago). I have decided to try some new treatment.

Years ago I received treatment from a Physiotherapist for a locked up back and still do the exercises recommended by her (admittedly, rather intermittently). Then, when we were in Australia last Autumn, Youngest Son’s girlfriend – a trained Osteopath – gave me a thorough and very professional osteopathy session. While she demonstrated considerable bravery in offering the session, I showed cowardice at the other end of the scale by eschewing the more drastic manipulations she recommended. Nonetheless, there was some welcome improvement in my movement.

I have therefore sought out some similar treatment locally. Despite the rural nature of where we live, there are a surprisingly wide range of options and number of places to try; health is, of course, a boom industry in an ageing population. I ended up opting for a well-being centre and practitioner that I can walk to and who was recommended by a friend.

It turned out that the specialist is a Chiropractor. I’ve not had one of those before. As I related my medical history, he described the treatments offered by Physiotherapists somewhat disparagingly – there seems to be little love lost between the various physical therapy disciplines – and explained how his treatment would be different from that Osteopaths provide.

I’ve only had two sessions so far so the jury is out on the degree of success the treatment is having. A back and neck problem I have had off and on for months is hardly going to be sorted out in a week. However, I’m sceptical so far.

The type of chiropractic therapy I am undergoing is a ‘brand’ called McTimoney. Its very gentle and largely involves little slaps, flicks, rubs and pokes that are designed to invoke natural body reflexes in a way that realigns things that have got out of sync. That it doesn’t involve much big clicking or crunching of bones and ligaments is good for a coward like me but I wonder if I’m going to see much improvement without more drastic action.

The other concern is that both the previous sessions physiotherapy and osteopathic treatment I’ve had concluded with me getting exercises to do that helped me feel more in control. My new Chiropractor has yet to offer that. It’s not that I want more exercises to do – I don’t do the ones I have already been given regularly enough to justify getting hold of more – but knowing I should do them puts the onus on me rather than simply trying to outsource the problem.

I have a couple of sessions booked so will wait and see……. at least, now I’m retired, I can have the sessions without the hassle of having to book time out of the office or around meetings.

Prelude to Spring

January 16, 2018January 17, 2018 / fgrtommo / 1 Comment

One of the enjoyable things about retirement and, consequently, being able to spend to spend far more time out and about in the country, is that I’m noticing the seasons to much a greater extent than before. In the last couple of weeks I have noticed that the late afternoons are starting to get a little brighter (though the mornings seem as dark as they did when Winter set in). I’m not sure I would have noticed this quiet change sitting under the neon in a London office.

The daily walks to Nailsworth are already revealing the first hints that Spring is not too far off. Small birds are singing a little more vigorously. A pair of little egrets has arrived near the lake I walk past. Long Suffering Wife (LSW) has seen dippers and I have seen a yellow hammer. The kingfishers seem more visible and active. Snowdrops are starting to appear in clumps and the local supermarket has started to stock bunches of daffodils – very helpful in supporting my New Year resolution to buy LSW more flowers!

Spring is Coming!

There are few weeks to go before the renewal of Spring really takes hold but, now Christmas and the New Year are past, I can now envision it – and far earlier, I think, than in previous years.

LSW and I plan to short circuit the wait by having a holiday in Cape Town in late February. This idea, and a separate one to spend a few days in Portugal, is not yet fully planned but it’s nice to have the flexibility to be able to think about avoiding the last vestiges of Winter’s cold and grey.

Meanwhile LSW and I are settling back into our domestic routines – punctuated by a very active and pleasant couple of days in London. The trip was primarily to celebrate Eldest Son’s 30^th birthday but also included visits to Tate Modern, the Whitechapel Gallery, a 40^th floor breakfast and dinner for two in one of our favourite restaurants (Morito).

Three Pieces By Ilya Kabakov At The Current Tate Modern Exhibition of His Work (Not Sure Why I Liked It So Much, But I Did)

Either side of the London visit, LSW has been managing transformation of our muddy car park space into a walled garden. I am trying to balance clearing the fridge and freezer of food left over from the Christmas period with the need to lose the half a stone I put on during it. I have also resumed decorating the TV room; the brush strokes have become more rhythmic since I set up some music facilities in the room but are not necessarily delivering higher quality.

We are both striving to keep up to date with several catch-up TV series, stepping up reading, trying out new venues like the rather characterful Stroud Brewery Bar and getting out to see bands (This Is The Kit were marvellous) and cinema (we can now recommend Brad’s Status starring Ben Stiller and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri in which Frances McDormand is remarkable).

This is fun and I think Spring will be better!

First Daffodils of 2018 – An Easy Way to Maintain My Record of Flower Giving!

2017 Resolution Review

December 31, 2017December 31, 2017 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

I hope that you had a great Christmas.

I enjoyed the festive period a lot, and probably even more than usual. There was variety – terrific Christmas lunch with family, visits from very old friends, and sunny walks with local, relatively new friends. There was proper Winter weather with quantities of snow we haven’t seen for a few years. Critically, for the first time in a while, we had all three sons with us plus the added dimension of Middle Son’s girlfriend and a great friend of Youngest Son over from Australia. Things were going on a lot of the time but it was relaxed.

Nailsworth (My Local Town) In Winter

The snow made the landscape beautiful. Long Suffering Wife (LSW) and I had a lovely walk through it just after Boxing Day with a friend from university (and Best Man at our wedding). His Christmas period visits over the years have often coincided with cold, crisp weather and he wasn’t disappointed this time around. The only down side was the ice which caused us both to fall over like little old men – in my case leaving me with a ricked neck that I am still nursing. Since then, LSW has frequently pointed out the efficacy of actually wearing the ‘Yak Traks’ that aid shoe grip rather than just having them in one’s pocket!

: Snowy Cotswolds

Inevitably perhaps, I ate and drank a lot over the Christmas period. That messed with two of my 2017 New Year resolutions concerning weight loss and the count of no-alcohol days. Before resetting the resolutions for 2018 I have briefly taken stock of how I did in 2017.

Resolution 1: Retire. That was achieved and made 2017 a momentous year for me. It impacted – mainly favourably – my ability to achieve the other resolutions I made a year ago.

Resolution 2: Increase My No-Alcohol Days from 2016 (124 days). I failed on this by 8 days. It is noticeable that the number declined after retirement in July. I used to drink almost exclusively at weekends and, now every day feels like a weekend….. well, it’s harder to maintain discipline.

Resolution 3: Get Below 11 Stone. In practice this meant losing about 10 pounds; I failed. I got close in mid-December but failing on Resolution 2 and overeating during the festive period put paid to success. I feel retirement has allowed more control over what I eat and I am helped by LSW also managing her weight proactively. I can achieve this target in 2018.

Resolution 4: Average 13,500 Steps/Day. This fairly aggressive increase on previous years – as measured on my iPhone – was achieved easily due to my new pattern of daily living post-retirement. My daily average for 2017 was 14,200.

Resolution 5: Read the Daily Newspaper Thoroughly. This was in response to my feeling that my attention span was becoming shorter. I think this had been the result of increasing reliance on the Internet as a way of receiving and digesting news. I felt I was missing out on depth of analysis. Retirement has given me the time to achieve this resolution – although it’s hard to measure the success and impact on my understanding of current affairs.

Resolution 6: Keep Going to Gigs and Cinema. This has been partially achieved in that I have been to lots of gigs before and after retirement. Several recent local ones have been excellent. However, local availability of the sort of cinema I like is very limited now I have retired to the country. I am retreating to boxed sets on catch-up TV and that’s fine for now.

Resolution 7: Read 16 books. Retirement has really helped here and I achieved this with 3 weeks to spare. My most enjoyed book this year was Under Major Domo Minor by Patrick De Witt.

Resolution 8: Buy LSW Flowers Occasionally. This was achieved, although ‘occasionally’ is the operative word here. I promise to do better Dear!

Christmas – A Time To Make New Friends

Time to get busy setting resolutions for 2018….. Have a Very Happy New Year!

The Quickening Pace Toward Christmas

December 21, 2017December 31, 2017 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

In my working life there were, of course, deadlines every week, every day and, often, very hour. I have grown used to not facing them since retiring. Now, the days tend to drift by guided by to do lists with ambiguous or undetermined timelines and I can do what I want, when I want. That’s great. However, the last couple of weeks have seen a quickening of life’s pace, a variety of social events and a few deadlines that have shaken my reverie.

The main imperative has been to complete painting of the window alcoves in the upgraded TV room before arrival of the plumber to install new radiators. My inexperience in decoration led me to be surprised by the need for four coats of paint, day long drying times in between each and sanding down after each intermediate coat; that all created a lead time that left me feeling under significant time pressure. However, I managed to meet the deadline.

This early success (another 90% of the room remains to be decorated!) was despite a brief trip to London to enjoy a catch up with old friends from our time in Kew nearly 20 years ago. We enjoyed a delightful evening party with and then a lovely bagel-based breakfast in two different couples’ houses. Where we stayed overnight was almost directly opposite where we lived for several years.

An even longer standing friend, dating back to LSW’s and my first months in London 40 years ago, visited us in Gloucestershire. We had a few bottles of wine with her, Youngest Son (YS) and his girlfriend. That was sufficient to make the idea of going to the local village disco seem like a good idea. That turned out to be excellent with music expertly sampled from the last 40 years and daft dancing fuelled by inexpensive but powerful cocktails. We had such a laugh! My challenge with the decorating was more than matched by the challenge LSW faced in having to get up at 5am next morning to take YS and girlfriend to the railway station – ouch!

Other events this week have included celebration of the re-opening of the main road between our village of Horsley and the local town of Nailsworth. The closure has been for over 4 months and has been an economic blow for the local pub, The Hog. We had a few drinks there to mark the road re-opening and the end of the ‘rat run’ congestion in the lane outside our house.

I also saw the new Star Wars film with Eldest Son (ES) and YS. I’ve seen all the Star Wars films but I struggle to follow the plot that has run back and forth through them. ES and YS tried to educate me by getting me to re-watch the previous film earlier in the day and their guidance helped. The latest addition to the series is well-made and the formula worked again. It was rare fun to have an outing with two sons.

Amid all this hustle and bustle, dancing and decorating, I have managed a few long walks. The weather has been variable as we have approached the year’s shortest day but retirement offers the chance to get out and about whenever it perks up. I’m very lucky to find myself retired in such a lovely part of England and be able to enjoy it.

Mossy Banks and Big Skies near Horsley

Finally, Happy Christmas to you all. Have a great festive period.

Happy Christmas!

Winter Weather

December 14, 2017 / fgrtommo / 4 Comments

Youngest Son (YS) has just returned from Brisbane, Australia with his girlfriend for three weeks visiting their respective families. It’s lovely to see them again and to have YS stay with us, off and on, for a couple of weeks in between his trips to London, Bristol and Belfast.

The weather has been a bit of a shock for them both though. They swapped temperatures of over 30° in Brisbane for what was, on Tuesday night, -13° and instead of Australian sunshine they got snow, ice then steady rain.

We don’t seem to have had proper snow for a few years and, initially, it is always welcome. It quietens everything and makes even messy areas – like the current building and landscaping works in our garden – look pretty.

YS managed to get his drone up (an essential part of his equipment for his business at Cactus Juice Cinematography) and took some video and pictures. Our hamlet was a picturesque winter scene with a steady fall of snow, whitened trees and happy tobogganers in the field opposite our house.

Drone View of Our Hamlet in Winter

But then, after the initial impact, snow becomes a bit annoying. In part this was because YS had to drive his girlfriend to Bristol so that she could catch an onward flight to Northern Ireland. That was a challenge given the steep roads around us but the village ‘Snow Warden’ had been out gritting and she made it. Others haven’t been so lucky and there have been a few accidents in the area.

A Victim of Black Ice

Back at home, the snow, and its subsequent freezing then melting, highlighted a couple of issues with unplanned permeability of our house. The weight of the snow has also played havoc with the guttering on the shed so the raised vegetable beds are now raised above a big puddle.

Nonetheless, on balance, I think snow is a good thing. It feels like an essential characteristic of winter and a small rebellion against the inevitability of climate change and global warming. Some more snow around Christmas with cold clear days would be ideal (provided it doesn’t mess with the football fixtures!)

Winter View From Our House

Drone View of Sunrise Near Our House

One other impact of the snow, ice and then rain is that it has given me no excuse not to progress painting of our recently upgraded TV room. I can’t remember the last time I did any decorating but it was decades ago. I’m re-learning – the hard way – the need to sequence the process correctly. For example, having carefully put down protective masking tape on the edges to be painted, scraping it off accidentally while sanding down created irritating re-work. But progress is being made and I like the deep blue colour LSW has chosen – a significant departure from her white and grey norm.

A Very Rare Sight of Me Decorating (Applying Undercoat Slowly)

My Retirement Journey

I've Retired! What Next?

Winter