The Next Chapter Begins
So, after 24 years I’ve said goodbye to Transport for London and started out on my new journey into Retirement and Monday 22nd January 2018 was my 1-month retirement anniversary, so still a bit of a novelty at the moment.
They say you should have a plan for when you retire but after 35+ years of working and 27+ of those commuting to London, I think I’m just going to take a bit of time out and not be too prescriptive, but that isn’t to say I don’t have some ideas – I’ve already started this Blog for instance.
It’s funny although I’m an Accountant, or should I say ex Accountant now, over the past few years most of time (when I haven’t been in meetings) has been writing. A page of numbers doesn’t really tell the story so get the message across you need to be able to weave a story around the numbers and make them come alive; and so writing was one of the first things I started to miss when I gave up work and hence why I started the blog. I won’t be weaving stories around a page of numbers anymore, but I will be weaving them around my new life which hopefully you may find interesting enough to read.
So, my new chapter has begun and one of the great advantages of having this new-found freedom is that I can choose to spend a lot more time with our three grandsons, which I’m really looking forward to. And I’m pretty good at helping with homework and building homework projects when the need arises, if I say so myself. Well maybe a little wonky.
What Will I Do With My Time
As I said I don’t actually have my retirement planned out but I’m lucky enough to have a good social network in our village, even though when I was working I was only really around at weekends, so I don’t think I’ll be short of social interaction. The village is small but very active and friendly with quite a few people either working from home or retired.
For a small village we’ve got a lot going on with a regular monthly wine club that I help organise, we’ve only got around 170 houses in the village but we have a regular attendance of our 40 people each month for wine club and we’ve been going for around 12 years!
We also have:
A film club
Book club
Theatre club
Village produce association
Drop in centre
Bake up
Walking club
Wow looking at that list I think there’s enough there to keep me going for a while. I’m especially looking forward to being able to go along to the monthly Bake Up which has been going for about a year and was started by Kieron, our star bread maker in the village who moved here a couple of years ago from London Bridge.
Obviously, I’m also lucky enough to be retiring early and with Mr J being freelance that does give us some flexibility to do some of the things we’ve been talking about for ages but never gotten around to.
So, although the plans aren’t firmed up yet we do have quite a big wish / ideas list, which includes a lot more travelling, I really need to visit my niece on her coffee farm in Peru, visiting winemaker friends, buying a campervan and top to toe road trip in Italy!
Put all that together with the fact that we’re looking to buy a new house with G and the Boys, I think I’m going to be pretty busy.
At least it should give me plenty to write about in the coming months and spend more time being a Thoroughly Modern Grandma 🙂
