Here, There and Everywhere ... At the Drop of a Hat

 

Today is Alan's first official day of complete and utter retirement.  He's been getting his state pension since February but we had one last contract to honour for our company.  

Now it's done!!

He went to back to base in Berkshire yesterday and handed in his secure laptop, his security passes and a few documents, and now he is a free man.  Although he had worked for the same establishment for the last seventeen years he was, believe it or not, a contractor working for them through our company.  But, as he has been there for longer than a lot of the full-time regular staff, he was given a lovely send off from his long term colleagues.  

He also got a lovely gift of an engraved decanter commemorating the date, and a bottle of whisky to fill it with.  Now lots of you know that he's an unusual Scottish man, as he really doesn't like whisky at all, so I am going to do my old trick of turning it into Blackberry Whisky and it will be ready to drink in a years time, when we will crack it open to celebrate the one year anniversary of his retirement.

We started our new here, there and everywhere, go at the drop of a hat lifestyle this morning and took ourselves to the coast for a walk along the prom, and then had a cooked breakfast in one of our favourite cafés.  Before leaving for home we called into the Morecambe branch of Aldi to compare it to ours ... it's slightly bigger and has a slightly better range of stock, but it was freezing in there.  They are one of the remaining stores without doors on all the fridges and boy does it make a difference!!

We chatted all the way home, in fact we chatted so much that ... for the first time ever ... we missed our turning off the motorway.   Alan had chosen to overtake a convoy of lorries at the wrong time.  We both burst out laughing and said 'it doesn't matter we're retired', yep, we have all the time in the world to do a thirty extra miles circle to home .

Thank you for all the comments on the last post, I'm glad that so many of us are on the same wavelength.  To waylay any worries about me not posting anymore, after much thought I have decided that it's not the blog that is going to vanish in any way, it's all the restrictions that I have been putting onto myself and blogging about that are now lifted.

Yes, I will still be doing most of the things ... saving money, eating cheaply etc etc, after all I am now retired and with the titchiest of pensions until next May, so there's definitely no extra cash to throw around.  But I am not going to let that change the things that I want to do or the optimistic mindset that comes with the freedom that not having to work brings.

There will be some changes, and hopefully you will enjoy them as much as I have enjoyed thinking about them.  😀

I will live my hobbit life happily ... minus the hairy feet!!

 

Sue xx