Hiatus

Retirement isn't like going on a holiday. On holiday one can (if it's your thing) totally 'veg out' knowing that when the holiday is over it's back to routine.  I'm not sure I wanted to start my new life style by throwing all routine under a bus, so I didn't change my alarms.  

Despite getting up determined to tackle each day, the time hasn't conformed to any plan I made for it.  Rapid decline of Mr B's mum, and her eventual admission to hospital put all travel plans on hold.  We did manage 3 days camping in East Dorset with Mr B's daughter and two grandchildren in the days immediately following my end of work.  I wouldn't have called it a triumph, but nobody got injured, lost, starved, of died of hypothermia.  

Success can be measured in a variety of ways.

Over the following couple of weeks, while Mr B balanced parental visits in opposite directions from home (they divorced over 40 years ago), I tackled mundane objectives to cull possessions, reduce craft materials, carry out repairs and maintenance, tidy up the garden, sign tax returns, finish sewing and knitting projects, and go cycling more often.

Stella's Voice charity has a local shop/warehouse that takes pretty much anything you might want to donate. We have been making, on average, a donating trip per week for a while - clothes, appliances, furniture, books, china, diy materials.

A local hospice has a charity shop devoted entirely to craft materials. I unloaded fabrics onto them....my new mantra being if I won't wear it, decorate with it or use it for patchwork, it's going out.

Theirs is a shop I dash into, drop, dash out of. Don't linger. 

Despite all the culling, the house does not look Spartan. In fact I can't even see gaps where 'stuff' used to be but is no longer.

Must try harder.

Mr B's mum died last week with lots of family around her.  His sister now has 30 days to clear mother's social housing apartment, and needs all the help she can get. Mr B has arrived home with suitcases full of unlabelled old (very old, as in over 150 years for some of them) photos. Photos I had urged him to spend time going through with his Mum to keep her engaged in the early stages of her dementia.  Photos he now wishes he had gone through with his Mum...... She was an only-child, so there is no one else to tell us who all these people are, or how related.

Loss of family history.

A few of my photos:

Have used up all my patchworking 'crumbs' making random squares.

100's of them.

Have altered 2 pair motorbike jeans for Mr B, and two pair new drill shorts for me.  (I buy mens' shorts and reshape them. Women's shorts are all sort of fashion statements and usually made out of plastic that goes by some trendy name.  I only wear hardwearing cotton drill, knee length baggy fit, with lots of pockets and strong belt loops; the style a friend of mine used to call 'empire builders'. Being khaki coloured is optional.)  Some women age elegantly. While I would love to be one of them, I've never had the face or hairstyle for elegance, so I'm just going for aging disgracefully - in baggy shorts and holey T-shirts (or my boiler suit), and generous applications of dirt and grease.

Yet to apply dirt and grease.

Made a mancala board - still sanding that.

Made aprons out of remnants of cotton and denim stash.

Trying to catch up my one a day sketches - attendance on that has been patchy and I'm about 10 days behind.

Have collected thousands of drinks cans on my litterpicking expeditions, and add them to a community charity fundraiser for Hampshire and Isle of White Air Ambulance.

Happy August everyone and if you can think of no other way to fill your time - label up your collection of old family photos - create a family tree with them.... tell your kids, or your grandkids who all those ancient looking people were and what they did in the world. Pass on the history. Create an oral tradition....