a sideways look

I always enjoy the joke of the signs on these shutter garage doors at Spike Island studios.

From one direction it reads:

If you walk in the opposite direction, you are instructed:

But if you look at the doors face-on the message is not so clear:

 



Which just goes to show that facing things head-on may not always be the best strategy.  Some things only make sense with a sideways look.

weekend

Well, at the weekend my sister finally made her twice-postponed Christmas/New Year Visit. I was beginning to think it was going to be the subject of perpetual rearrangement until next Christmas. January/February also had other postponed visits because of bad weather and illness, so I was beginning to feel a bit jinxed.


Fortunately we were able to assemble the local family for an evening gathering on Friday when we all ate together early enough to accommodate small children’s bedtimes. We also exchanged some belated Christmas presents, which felt very strange! 

On Saturday we went shopping! Not a particularly favourite activity for either of us, but Sheila needed some office clothes and a second opinion, so off we went. We got that sorted reasonably painlessly and met up with Steve for a snack lunch at the lovely refurbished Bristol Guild Cafe.

Next stop was a bit of culture at the Museum where it was the last weekend of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. Footsore by now, we trudged home for tea, cake and quantities more food.

Sunday with visitors always means some kind of walk. So we headed off to Leigh Woods for a wander and even saw a bit of sunshine and blue sky.

It was a very good weekend, so I woke this morning feeling a little more optimistic about the eventual arrival of Spring and the prospect of more trips and visits.

i've got a little list

I’m not one of those people who live by lists, making them every day and obsessively ticking things off, (though I live with and admire the productivity of someone who does). But neither could I live a completely list-free life. They definitely have their uses for efficient shopping, planning for events such as Christmas and generally making sure that things get done. When I was still working I had a daily to-do list to keep me on track and more recently I have discovered the beauty of what I can only call an aspirational list.

Three or so years ago I made a list of fifty things to do before I was sixty. You can see it here. It was a mixture of things to do, things to do more of, one off special activities, regular commitments and plans for the future. It wasn’t too prescriptive. It was fun to make and it was fun to do the stuff and interesting to revisit and see how I had got on. Clearly life has moved on; I am now retired and so is Steve, so the shape of our days and weeks has changed significantly. Spending eight weeks “home alone” in the summer while S was off volunteering on Iona made it reassuringly clear to me that I enjoy my quiet domestic existence with its gentle routine of one or two regular activities, friends and family within easy reach, sewing and knitting projects to keep me busy and creative. I am generally content to take things as they come and make it up as I go along, but there is always the danger of drifting, of frittering, of getting to the end of a day, or week and thinking “what have I achieved?” or “why did I spend the day on household tasks instead of something I enjoy?”

So I thought it was time to revisit the List and make some plans. I started by going back to the 50before60 list and merrily crossing off the things that were done and dusted, or that time had told me I was never going to do. Then I added in new plans; nothing huge, nothing too difficult, but little things to make the future look inviting and to help keep me a bit more focused.

This time it seemed helpful to divide the list into general headings.

PLACES TO VISIT OR REVISIT

• Cambridge
• St Ives
• Penzance
• Leeds
• Roseland Peninsula
• Exeter
• Cardiff
• Rye
• Amsterdam/Utrecht
• Ireland
• Venice
• Vancouver

HEALTH/EXERCISE/SPIRITUAL

• More walking – including more of what I did recently and which I would describe as a sort of prayer walk; spending the best part of a day walking in the city, stopping off from time to time to read a passage or a prayer from a book on pilgrimage.
• Reduce weight by 5% - yep, still working on this one!

REGULAR ACTIVITIES

• Singing with a community choir
• Knit and Natter

CREATIVE

• Finish “jewel” quilt (more on this soon)
• More indigo prep: (I love the dyeing, but stitching and preparing fabrics for the dye vat takes ages)
• Finish my mother’s canvas-work rug
• Finish my Kantha quilted scarf
• Complete green cardigan currently on the needles
• Chart and stitch some needlepoint cushions from a design by my daughter to go with some newly re-upholstered chairs which belonged to my grandmother

CULTURE

• More theatre.
• Regular cinema
• Read at least two books a month
• Exhibitions and galleries

COMMUNITY/FAMILY/FRIENDSHIP

• Spending time with family and friends: one of the most pleasurable activities in life
• Ithaca (our weekly get-together with friends to eat, talk, discuss a spiritual/philosophical theme)
• Share veg garden with H+F
• Support for local initiatives like the Bristol Pound
• Malago WI
  
  DOMESTIC/CULINARY

• Make another sourdough bread starter. I binned the last one when we went on holiday and never got round to starting another
• Batch cooking for freezer
• Making more interesting meals
• Small chunks of house clearing on a regular basis
• Egg custard!! No, I still haven’t got this one under my belt

the summer in brief

How to break a long silence? A quick catch up.

I provided the admin and housekeeping support for our annual Arts Trail weekend.

The Mister was away volunteering with the Iona community and my photos were not as good as his would have been.

I did a bit of solo travel:

• By car to visit my sister and see the Lichfield Mystery Plays
• By train to Stratford to visit daughter, s-i-l and granddaughter and to see an understudy performance of Twelfth Night (brilliant!)
• By train to Glasgow to visit my cousin
• By train and ferries and coach to Iona for a week’s visit and catch up with the Mister
• And back home again by ferries, coach and trains visiting daughter no. 3 and all of her family in Lancashire en route.

I found that journeys completed successfully alone leave me with a real buzz of achievement. There’s something about it that makes me feel capable and alive.

I did the usual amount of knitting and stitching

  We had visitors:

• From Devon
• From Holland
• From the Czech Republic
• From Leeds
• From South Africa
• Daughter no. 3 and two of her littlies
• And currently an actor friend who is rehearsing and performing in Bristol

 That’s a lot of bedlinen!

We have celebrated some birthdays

 

We have had a reunion of college friends some forty years on

We have visited Devon for the Preview of an exhibition by friends

 

We have been to a “secret” gig

Seen a couple of films

Visited Stratford again to see the Comedy of Errors

 

We have watched the Olympics on the telly (and now the Paralympics)

 

I have watched these sunflowers grow painfully slowly to (finally) produce a tiny flower!

retirement musings

I’m a little nervous about posting this as I don’t usually go in for so much self-indulgent rambling online, but writing it has been helpful to me and it’s not offensive to anyone, so I’m going for it. I should warn you that if you are easily irritated by other people’s navel-gazing, you really shouldn’t read any more! # It’s a year since I retired. Fortunately the kind enquiry “how’s retirement?” is beginning to dwindle, because I’m afraid the answer still has to be “I have no idea”! To be honest I don’t think I have adjusted yet, though as my daughter no. 3 wisely remarked when I voiced this thought a couple of weeks ago “What would that adjustment look like?” Well quite! # There have been some very surprising things. My job was moderately enjoyable and I did it reasonably well, but it was never what you would call a “career”. Yet I find that my image of myself was more shaped by my working identity than I realised. I worked from home as the part-time Finance Manager for a firm of architects, so I was used to being home alone and planning my time and getting to the end of a day and feeling that something had been achieved. There’s no longer an external discipline to make that happen.

Before I retired I did a lot of thinking about it, making lists of hopes and fears (which look remarkably similar to the ones Steve has enumerated in his thoughts on retirement). I think my biggest fear was of “drifting” – I’d always envisaged retirement as my opportunity to get on with the things that work prevented me from doing. I wanted to do more textile work and more “art” and above all I wanted to discover whatever it is that will really motivate me and make me feel alive. After a while I realised that like all of life’s major changes – marriage, parenthood, bereavement – no amount of planning and anticipation prepares you for the emotional journey of the real thing; you just have to do it. This fear has definitely been realised! I know myself well enough to know that given the chance I do just drift. I have always found it hard to motivate myself and I get easily distracted, rushing on to the next task before the first one has been completed (which is why I’ve always had such an untidy desk and the kitchen always looks as if the scullery maid’s on holiday). This would be fine if I actually enjoyed the drifting, but so often time is just frittered away on the computer. (I’ve given up solitaire for Lent which has been a great discipline, but I haven’t managed to bring my need to “just check my emails and have a quick look at facebook” under control.) I think to myself that I would like to go and visit the Museum and Art Gallery in Cardiff (a modest train journey) or to go to the British Museum (rather further, more planning required), but the days pass and I still haven’t done them. I haven’t done a great deal in the way of textile work either – and certainly no “art”. So, surprise, surprise – it wasn’t work stopping me from doing those things; it was me. Lack of drive, lack of commitment, these are the things I’ve always berated myself for, so why should I change just because I’ve retired?

#

Another thing which has surprised me is that retirement has felt more like an ending than I thought it would. Our move to Bristol, retiring at sixty – these were things that were supposed to mean that retirement would be a new start with lots of lovely things to look forward to, rather than an end. Over the past year there have been several episodes when I have felt I was balanced on the edge of falling into depression. This has both alarmed me (I really don’t want to go there again) and made me angry with myself – it seems so self-indulgent; my life is fine, I have people I love, who love me, I have things to do and things to look forward to, I am not without value – there is nothing to be unhappy about. And yet, and yet... I have come to the shocked conclusion that although it’s not something I believe with the conscious, rational part of me there is a deep subconscious part that has absorbed the prevailing world view that work and economic value are the things that make us worthwhile.

#

I recently heard an older woman say that she would love to see the northern lights and my inner-meanie said to me “Well that’s not going to happen, is it? She’s too old and she can’t afford it.” And then I felt ashamed and wondered when I started thinking that older people couldn’t have dreams which would never be fulfilled. I suppose a lot of life is about managing expectation – having dreams, but not being unrealistic. Over the years there are many things that we realise we can’t have or do because of money or circumstance or ability and as we get older more of the dreams of our youth have to go on the “never going to happen” pile. So has there been anything good about the past year? Yes, of course, lots of things. I went on a wonderful retreat/reading week at Sheldon, Steve and I enjoyed a brief holiday in Wales and lots of days out during his summer holidays last year. We have seen friends and enjoyed time with family. My days aren't spent entirely aimlessly because I look after our grand-daughters one day a week; I do Stu’s book-keeping, I’m treasurer of Malago WI, we have a weekly meal and discussion of faith issues with a group of friends, I’ve joined a community choir, I read and knit relentlessly and I have done some quilt-making. So actually life is full and rich, it just needs a bit more focus. # Coincidentally, while I have been drafting this post our great friend Si posted a link on facebook to a talk/blog post called Steal like an Artist. There’s some real practical wisdom in there and I am particularly attracted by the advice not to wait until you “know yourself” before you start doing the things you want to do and by the suggestion that you should project the image of the thing you want to be in order to become it. I had a conversation with someone yesterday who asked me if friday is my day off. When I said that I am retired she expressed surprise because “you always look busy and organised”. In the subsequent “what did you do when you were working” exchange she confessed that she had thought I was a psychologist! (I have absolutely no idea why and neither did she seem to). I’m obviously projecting some kind of efficient but empathetic image, which is a comfort I suppose! # I think it’s time I dusted down and resurrected my Fifty before Sixty manifesto and think about a new set of goals and targets. I need to dream some new dreams and make some of them come true. # PS. Blogger is having some serious problems with paragraph spacing at the moment (as others have observed). This is my third attempt at getting paragraphs where I want them to be and I don't hold out that much hope for it being right even now.

comparisons

Not long after we moved to Bristol an American friend arrived to visit us and memorably (if rather exaggeratedly) enthused "wow, I'm thinking - San Francisco!" I think she must have been treated to a switchback ride on the Bristol hills with their fleeting glimpses up the Avon Gorge to the suspension bridge. There are parts of the riverside in central Bristol which show a distinct homage to Venice. The Granary on Welshback, for example - one of my favourite buildings. (photo copyright Linda Bailey licensed under this Creative Commons License)

I was sitting with a cup of coffee on the harbourside this morning, looking across the water towards the Hotwells and Clifton slopes. I thought that the backs of the houses clinging to the side of the hill behind the new apartments reminded me (a little) of an Italian hill town.
And then I thought - why this constant need for comparison? It's Bristol - and it's great. I love it.