It's Great to be Retired

I've experienced what it is to be retired this week - my parents certainly seem to enjoy it.

Tuesday morning we went to the village hall to play indoor bowls - actually I was only going to watch, but I was persuaded to play as there weren't many there. I was rubbish at it, but apparently nobody played particularly well so my sporting inadequacies weren't too conspicuous.

On Wednesday Mum and I went into Stockton then met Sarah for coffee at Starbucks - her fiance Jon joined us too. It was great to meet him - Sarah's been engaged to him for over a year. Then on Wednesday afternoon we went to Dalton Park outlet mall. I stayed in Wednesday evening and spoke to Rob and Jen on the phone and skyped with Jill for quite a while.

Thursday was bowls day again - more people there this time, but I was still invited to play. I think if it's possible, I played worse than I had on Tuesday. Then after lunch we were going to go shopping but we got so involved in the daily sudoku and crossword puzzle from the paper that by the time we looked up it was 15:30 and half the afternoon had gone by. We ate early and went to see the play that Dad was doing the sound and lights for - Funny Money, a farce. It was good, but Mum and I both agreed that we prefer other genres of play - farces just make us annoyed that the actors seem incapable of making a decision that doesn't land them in trouble...

On Friday we went to Teesside Park to do some shopping, then in the afternoon we set about dismantling these collages of photos Mum had put together of Jen for her 30th birthday in August. While we were putting the photos back into their albums we spent some time looking through the albums generally - so much time that we only got round to putting about a third of the photos back in their places. We'll have to do the rest at Christmas. Jen arrived in time for dinner on Friday and we stayed in the rest of the evening.

On Saturday morning Jen and I went to Claire and Andrew's wedding in Stockton, then on Saturday afternoon I visited Louise, a friend from school, and in the evening I went with Mum to Middlesbrough Town Hall to watch her sing in Cleveland Philharmonic Choir's presentation of the Dream of Gerontius by Edward Elgar, while Dad went to the last night of his play and Jen went to the evening do of Claire and Andrew's wedding.

After church this morning and lunch, I left Mum & Dad's at around 14:30 this afternoon and got home at 19:30 - the only long journey of the week, as I'd travelled up north in 3 stages of no longer than 2.5 hours each. I had a great week - busy but very relaxing at the same time. And I can definitely see why Mum & Dad love being retirees so much!