#213: No-Brainer

It is nice to have finally completed 40 posts for The Reluctant Retiree Abroad.  That pretty well wraps up my 6 week trip to New Zealand.

Now that I have loaded the last picture I realize that I would never have created a travel blog had I not been retired.  For one thing, picture loading proved to be quite time consuming.  I suspect that Blogspot may not be the best program for this sort of thing, but the point is, I had the time.

For that matter, I could never have escaped for 6 weeks holiday while working!  And it was such a rewarding trip even though the weather was very iffy for most of the time we were away.  (I understand that it has shaped up a lot since we came home.  Isn't that always the way?)

So, yes, the opportunity to travel sweetens retirement considerably. It might even be the best thing about my new status.   

#212: Kicking the Hydrangea Habit

It is two days before Easter, and the flower sections of grocery stores are full of hydrangeas.  Purple, blue and pink blossoms as large as balloons are crowding out traditional lilies and tulips.  

For years, I would be all over this display, checking the health of the flowers, looking at the prices, and calculating the possibility of these plants surviving the holiday weekend so that I could use them as part of my up-coming volunteer reception decor.  Often I would conclude that they wouldn’t make it. You get a lot of impact with hydrangeas and a great hit of colour which is why I liked to use them. But they have no staying power, and when they expire, they look very sad, indeed.

I am sure that for years to come, I will instinctively want to inspect grocery store hydrangeas.  Some habits are hard to extinguish.  But like a nightmare from which one awakes with relief,  I can now give myself a shake, and happily move to another part of the store.  Reception decorations are no longer my concern.  I do not -- repeat, do not--  have to worry about the flowers.  

I could always buy a pot of hydrangeas for myself, of course.

Except that I am totally and completely sick of them.

#211: Happy Birthday

Today, April 5, is the birthday of Mavis Dunford, my best friend after I first moved to Calgary as a four-year old.  I lived downtown in a old house at 901-10th Avenue SW, and she lived next door.

We started school together but were never in the same class, although being neighbours, we constantly visited back and forth, and played endless games of skipping, hop scotch, jacks, and “wedding” which involved our getting married to one another on my veranda with Mavis always the bride because she had long hair. We enlisted her siblings to fill in other roles, and celebrated the event with Neapolitan ice cream provided by my mother.

Then we each moved to another part of the city, and while we didn’t lose track of one another until I started university in Edmonton, the friendship was never quite the same.

Nevertheless,  every year on April 5 I remember that hers was the first birthday I celebrated outside of my own family.  I wonder how she is, and I do a cursory search for her on the internet.  This has become an annual event for the past 10 years or so. I have even posted messages on the alumni site for Western Canada High School, but without success.  

This year, being retired and all, I had a bit more time to dig around, but still no luck.  She has disappeared – married, moved away, died—who knows?

If you are out there, Mavis, Happy 69^th Birthday, old friend.  You can still be the bride.

#210: Cake vs Compost

Practically every one of my New Zealand friends has a beautiful garden, and coincidentally, they all have some sort of scheme for composting.  While we were there, I admired home-built composters and heard how they were layered (like lasagna) with horse poo, the secret ingredient.  I also checked out a couple of heavy duty,  plastic compost systems including a very intriguing worm composter that reduced organic waste to compost and potent "worm juice".  (At least that is what my gardening friend called it as she checked on her hundred-or-so red wigglers and their outputs.)

Tonight, as my husband and I went for a walk,  I broached the possibility of  replacing our bottom-of-the-yard rubbish heap with a proper compost bin.  I enthused about the ones I had seen in New Zealand--especially the worm composter.

I should not have been surprised by his response.  We both made that trip, but I was the one who admired various gardens, peering into compost bins.

"Worms would not survive a Canadian winter", he pointed out.

"But we can take them inside", I offered. 

That did it.  He abruptly stopped walking and even in the dark, I could tell he looked appalled. 

"You can look after the compost", he said, "and I'll bake".

I like a man who accepts his share of  household responsibility.  So now I have a new retirement project: set up a compost system in the back yard .  And it should not involve worms -- not if I want a piece of cake.

#209: Best Exotic Hotel Living

When the weather is bad on a Saturday in Wellington, there are not a lot of warm and dry options, which is how four of us happened to go to the movies to see the improbably titled The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  Sunny, vibrant, noisy – it was a perfect choice for a gloomy afternoon.

You don’t have to be retired to like this film, but it is about retirees, a group of Brits who cannot bear the prospect of living out their years in the bland, beige security of a seniors’ community.  They opt instead for the foreign glamour of a residential hotel in Jaipur.  

The cast, including Tom Wilkerson, Bill Nighy, Judy Dench, and Penelope Wilton and Maggie Smith (both fresh from Downton Abbey) is superb.  They are somewhat typecast (Maggie Smith comes to India for hip surgery hoping that no actual Indians will be involved), but the story is not as predictable as one might imagine. These are the feisty old folks we all want to be – edgy, adventurous and open to possibility.

Best of all, they all look their age, and they look marvellous!  Judy Dench is adorable – and wrinkled-- much more appealing physically than she is as the airbrushed Dame Sybil Thorndike in My Week with Marilyn, the film I saw on my Air New Zealand return.

Which reminds me.  The hotel’s complete title is The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the Elderly and Beautiful.

Now there is a residence where I would really enjoy retirement--  especially if Judy Dench were living next door. 

#208: Rolling Along

Little did I know when I first listened to the Beatles back in 1966, that 46 years later there would be an electric wheelchair by that name.  A Dutch company You Q, that sells mobility aids, has been promoting the Beatle on their website.

But Apple Corps (the company formed by the Beatles) protested the use of the familiar trademark,  and last week judges in the EU agreed, ruling (according to the story in The Guardian)  "that there was a risk of confusion with the pop group even though the youth and vigour represented by the group contrasted with the reduced mobility of wheelchair customers.....There was in fact a connection, according to the judges, because some original Beatles fans may now be wheelchair users."

Nice try, You Q.   But it is probably just as well, as far as I am concerned.

At some future date, do I really want to be propelling myself around in a Beatle?  Now, if it were a Rolling Stone.....?

That makes much more sense.

 

#207: Passionfruit Pedant

Are pensioners just naturally picky?   Notice that I did not say crabby or snarky ....just somewhat critical when, for example, certain standards are ignored or flouted.

I fear this sort of behaviour might be age-linked.  How else to explain my impulsive e-mail to Rush Munro's, a high end New Zealand manufacturer of really delicious ice cream?

I just happened to have purchased a container of their award winning passionfruit flavour, and I turned over the package hoping to find out more about the company.  There, on the bottom of the box, was a paragraph about their delight in introducing this product to New Zealander's.

New Zealander's.    That's right: apostrophe = plural.  Another apostrophe catastrophe.

Had this been a one-off sign outside a shop, I would have sighed and let it go.  But I knew that in convenience and grocery stores all over New Zealand, freezers were full of this ice cream, and felt compelled to inform Rush Munro's that they were perpetuating a punctuation error, big time. I told them that the care they took to create a quality product should apply to their packaging as well.

That's all. One e-mail.

Then I issued a warning to my pedantic, former-English-teacher-self. One e-mail was permitted, but this was not to become a habit. No more letters of complaint!  Just because I was retired and had the time,  I was not to give in to every inclination to correction.

And that's a promise.....I hope.