A Day in the Life of a Retiree

Today I woke up, always a good thing. My 95 year old father looks in the obituaries to ensure he's not there and the gets up.

I was invited last night at the Cool Country Classic Car Club meeting to join a group that play Petanque Thursday mornings. Now I've never played this before but I'm hooked and what a great way to join in the local community. I met forgetful Frank who turned up late as he forgot it was on.
John brought his tape measure to adjudicate the results and I finished up on the winning team. I actually surprised myself that I was a worthy team member first time up. I'm hooked.
The game was finished with a coffee at a local cafe in Trentham - bit like cycling really but more about that later.

My new friends in the world of Petanque -good thing we have a Citroen and a Peugeot..

That's me all rugged up with the Trentham cold about to have another magnificently successful shot.

I did take a little look at the block which is looking good but with a sprouting of mushrooms or toadstools but because I can't tell the difference, they stay there.

If the kangaroos don't eat these, neither will we!!!!

On the way back home to Kyneton where we are renting, I saw in the corner of my eye a ruined stone building that made me turn the car around for closer inspection. You look at these buildings and wonder who lived here, what was their life like, how did they make their living and was it prosperous? This building had signs of expert masonry.

Check out the precision masonry on the very left. I imagine that this was a very nice home in its glory many years ago.

I finally arrived back home where Sue and I enjoyed lunch together, did some reading, discussed the future of the house build.

By mid-arvo, I decided to take a little 40 km ride in the country through the hills and vineyards out the back of Kyneton. It was filled with a little sadness and then some brightness. The sadness was due to a couple of kangaroo lying on the side of the road which were hit by fast moving vehicles. We see kanga but if you limit your speed, then you have the opportunity to avoid harming wildlife and not damaging your vehicle. A friend of mine rang to say he was going to be late for a ride yesterday as he discovered a dead kangaroo on the road. It had a very young joey in its pouch - he described it as a pinky, a very young joey still suckling in its dead mother.'s pouch. Very sad.....He took it to the Vets and hopefully it will survive.

However on my ride this afternoon I saw a magnificent wedge tail eagle floating on the wind. He was hovering above me for something like 10 minutes and all I could do was enjoy the wonderfulment of this great bird of prey with an amazing wingspan.

Not great photos but it took my breath away for the time he was there.

Hardly a movement of the wings - just floating on the wind

With Lamb Shanks for dinner and after a short black coffee and a glass of muscat, everyday is a new experience in the day of a retiree.

Dinner was absolutely  fantastic.

And in bed before 10ish for a 5.00 am get up to enjoy a ride with my new country bike riders.
Well, the do have jobs to go to.

It's My Time Now

This Friday, I retired from work - 19 years with Australian Clothing Company and prior to that 12 years with Cash's. How's that for consistency? One could say - didn't anyone else want you?

At this age I didn't know what retirement was. How far have we travelled in life.
So far we are the lucky ones and hopefully we now do what we want.

Work has had its ups and downs but mainly ups. The rewarding part was the close business relationships both inside and outside the organization. Ours is a small company but that is what made it special. We had names, not numbers.

I had a philosophy about success - realize your use by date before others do. I had reached that stage and it felt right to retire. I turned 66 this April, one year after our official retirement age, that's if we choose to. The age of 65 is also our opportunity to apply for the pension.

After I announced that I was going to retire I found people were asking what would I do with my time as if I would get bored - HA!
Let me count the ways...............many of my retired friends wonder how they found the time to work!!!

This may have been the start of seriously considering retirement. Sue and I travelled back to France and spent 7 weeks with our friends in the Loire - all retired. Their lifestyle made me envious and inspired me to plan my retirement.
I thank you all so much - you know who you are.

So, where do we go from here? Firstly on Monday I don't need to shave or get up to go to work BUT, I'll be up to enjoy a bike ride in the country, then I'll begin to write the first words from my research of my third book.
Sue and I have the new house project on our block in Trentham that will take much of our time over this year.

Do other retirees look back on their past life or do they look forward to the future - I think you move on to the new experiences while nurturing those precious past memories.

On with the show and a resurgence of this Blog. (I promise)