Michael Harling's Blog, page 20

Practice Retirement Half-Year Review

Come September my wife will have been on her practice retirement for six months, so I think it’s about time for a review.
All in all, it’s going well. There are no more morning rushes, followed by panicked returns and frenzied searches for whatever it was she forgot. It is, as I often tell her, like an endless weekend.
The transition period went smoothly, as well, with only a minor hiccup in my morning routine. Prior to retiring, my wife rose (unwillingly, it must be said) at 6 AM, got ready fo...

America

Oh, yeah, we went to America. Sorry, I kinda forgot.
We left over a month ago and got back three weeks ago. And by the next day it seemed to slip into the past, as vacations are wont to do. I think this trip, more than others, slipped my mind for a variety of reasons: it was a shorter trip than usual, we didn’t take any side trips, and the weather was just the same as in Britain.
The decision to cut the visit short was based on our initial decision to go in July. I knew it would be hot, and the...

Another Day in Paradise

Here comes another beautiful, sunny day. When will the torment end?
Brits are happiest when their weather is awful. Oh, they’ll complain about it, and claim to be tired of grey, wet days in June, windswept Julys and August afternoons that require a puffer jacket and wellies, but deep down (actually, not so deep) they’re reveling in their misery. But what would you expect from a people whose finest hour was when the Germans were dropping bombs on them?
Accordingly, this spate of hot, sunny, summ...

Isn’t That Special

I’m on the Special K diet, and I’m pretty sure it’s all my fault.
We were visiting my son in America the other week and he and his wife told us how they had taken the Special K Challenge* and had both lost a significant amount of weight (as if they needed to; she’s a marathon runner and he’s an ex-marine and still in prime condition). This diet involves having Special K for breakfast and lunch, and a light, nutritious meal for dinner, for a period of two weeks. I noted that I liked Special K a...

Too Old to OCD

Here we are, flying across the Atlantic again. Our 13th Trip is behind us so I’m not waiting for anything to go wrong again. I know it will but I’m a little more insouciant about it now.
If you count all the times I have done this flight, including those without my wife, I have done this trip 17 and a half times (the one-half being that time I came over to England and never returned) so there is very little to surprise me anymore.
Traditionally, I get through a flight by bitching about each of...

Choiring Along

I haven’t updated in a while, but that doesn’t mean I’m not doing anything. I’m actually a lot busier now than I have been in a long time. It’s just that I’m not doing anything you’re likely to be interested in.
Aside from our calendar of social engagements (bit of exaggeration there) and random domestic emergencies (broken windscreen, waiting for a mattress to be delivered and then wondering how we’re going to get rid of the old one), the activities filling up the bulk of my time include wri...

Glory, Glory

I have been living in Britain for over sixteen years now, and in my earliest days here, I heard about an ice cream concoction called a Knickerbocker Glory. It was, they told me, the ultimate childhood treat, a combination of ice cream, whipped cream, sauces, sprinkles and other yummy stuff served up in a tall glass.

It sounded like something I needed to try, so I kept searching for one, but they were nowhere to be found. The more I looked, the more elusive they seemed. My friends assured me th...

My Name is Michael

I’ve just had what you might call an intervention.

I guess I was in denial. You know the tune: I’m not dependent on it, I’m just a casual user, I can quit any time. It’s a comfortable little lie to live inside of, until something happens…

So, yeah, this morning, my Smartphone broke.

I visited most of the seven stages of grief—desperation, disbelief, bargaining, anger, hope—everything except acceptance. I performed CPR (Continually Pressing Reset) and tried defibrillation by plugging it back into...

Practice Retirement

My wife begins her retirement today. Sort of.
She’s actually been off for the past four days, but that doesn’t count because it was the Easter Holiday weekend and she’d have had it off anyway. Also, she’s not really retired, she’s just sampling the life of leisure to see if it suits her. It’s a sort of practice retirement, to see if she’s ready for the real thing.
Most people don’t find retirement difficult, but my wife has one of those jobs that defines you, like police, fire fighter or serial...

First World, Third Age, Thirteenth Trip

Years ago, before the notion of leaving the States occurred to me, if someone had said to me that, one day, I would be sitting on the quay-side, in Malta, gazing over the sparkling Mediterranean Sea and thinking to myself, “I liked Cyprus better,” I, literally, could not have believed them. It would have been akin to attempting to convince me that one day I’d be sitting in a café on Mars thinking, “They don’t do a grilled cheese here the way they do on Moon Base 7.”
I am here to tell you, howe...