Phase 3 Of My Retirement

I slept well last night but went to bed late, so I was still pretty weary when I woke up today.  I was so tired that I was quite close to skipping my beach walk and taking the short route to Caffe Nero, how glad I was that I made the effort.  As I walked across Clifton Drive, I was stunned by the amazing sunrise, probably the reddest sky I’ve ever seen.  Down on the beach the photo’s were amazing!

I had a lovely time in Caffe Nero, enjoying my free milk and feeling slightly guilty about the fact that I spend two hours there most mornings and don’t pay anything, so I put my money in the tip jar instead.  I was itching to get home though as I had a lot to do.

I’m in a new phase of my retirement now, well out of the honeymoon period (phase 1) and through the crisis as I try to figure out how to adjust (phase 2) , phase 3 allows me to embrace my time and freedom and relish my home making responsibilities.  I’m really enjoying doing the shopping, cooking and cleaning but the novelty will probably wear off unless I keep on learning, so I will be challenging myself to make new recipes, reduce the household waste,  help everyone eat healthily and be happier.

I’m also starting a new system of house maintenance, each week I will nominate a room for a deep clean and refurbishment,  doing all those little niggling jobs that pile up, maybe painting, fixing, tidying, etc, I’m thinking of it like working through a snagging list that we would give the builders when we bought a new house.  We have 14 rooms, so each room gets it’s turn once a quarter.  Next week I will be doing the kitchen.  I started by sanding down and re-polishing the dining table, to remove years of damage from spilled drinks, unfortunately we didn’t have a working sander (I’ve bought one) so it was back-breaking work, but worthwhile.

I also made an excellent, ultra-healthy cheesecake and a very nice dinner for Debbie.  Just as I was finishing up I noticed another dramatic sky and made a quick dash to the beach.  Amazingly the sunset illuminated the eastern sky, almost exactly as it would on a sunrise – very strange and very unusual to have an amazing sunrise and sunset on the same day.

I’ve also decided to keep using my existing three raised beds for another year rather than replacing them and creating new frames.  I’d rather get some experience of the four that I’ve already made, before committing myself to the same design for the rest of the garden.  That means the back garden work is essentially complete, apart from the new ‘potting shed’ that I’m building onto the back of the garage.  The next garden jobs are the wall mounted strawberry growers and creating the front garden vegetable beds that will house the courgettes, cucumbers and peppers.