I’m now a paid up member of the Gosport Shed. This promises to be very interesting as they do some really interesting trips out. The first of the year being to the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton, in Feb. Looking forward to that.

I didn’t get out for a walk today, although I did go into town and meet up with Elayne for lunch at McDonalds. We have some vouchers, except we forgot to take them with us. I had a very nice, but really quite messy burger, that completely fell to bits near the end.

The afternoon was a combination of watching a couple of films. I fell asleep during one, but the other was quite good, and doing the ironing – so at least we got something useful done.

Elayne said something today which caught me by surprise – she’s quite enjoying my not going to work, and being able to do things together. I commented, “so you haven’t developed the urge to kill me yet, then”? She smiled.

Leading on from that, we discussed the lack of structure to the day. We both agreed that we need to do something about that. I for one need to stop going to bed between midnight and 1 AM, because that means we are waking about 7, and not getting up until 9. We need to get to grips with that.

I had a Doctors appointment this morning. We covered a range of topics around my persistent cough and retirement. I felt it was quite useful. I haven’t had a chance to pick up the new medicine but I will do tomorrow. Hopefully, that will help things.

Aurora has been with us overnight. She woke up a couple of times, which was only to be expected, and absolutely fine.

We had a very pleasant lunch in the Gosport Garden Centre.

Aurora went back to Mum and Dad a bit later. It was a very nice but tiring day. Unfortunately I missed the Thursday Night Net, I was snoozing. I’ll try and do better next week.

Why is it, that when i was working, an 8 hour day seemed so long, yet now I am retired it seems so short? it looks like that on a typical day, I am only able to get one or two things done, and then the day is gone – and just for clarity, I am talking about the 9-5 day, even if this is notional in retirement. Even if I don’t have to abide by that day, the working world does, and since it is that world with which I need to interact then I need to go with its flow.

I know what this is going to come down to; it will be my fault. MY day now starts later. The last few monthss of me working saw me at my desk at 0600, now admittedly, i’d stop for a walk at 0800 and might take a slightly extended lunch break. I didn’t massively go over the roughly seven and a half hours that was my working day.

In addition to starting later, I tend to be more relaxed and don’t rush, that means time that might be labelled “wasted”. But, is it me that is saying that time is wasted? If so, then it is up to me to be more useful / productive – what ever.

Do I want or need to do a time and motion analysis of how I use my time? Well, I could – but only if I want to. I’m still in early days, things are in development and so it’s very likely that my useage of time is likely to change quite a bit. So, perhaps I might revisit this question in 6 months time.

I had a couple of things lined up for today, and in the most part, with one exception I didn’t do any of them. I was going to do an e-consult with the Doctor, didn’t get around to it. It’s OK I can do it tomorrow as it’s in readiness for the Thursday appointment.

I was going to do the ironing, and do you know, I just didn’t feel like doing it.

Elayne had gone out for a coffee with her friends, and there was a reason why I couldn’t go out for a walk, but I really can’t remember why that is. When Elayne came back for lunch, we sat in the lounge, and I kept drifting in and out of sleep.

I ran Elayne to her afternoon’s volunteering and came home with the intention of doing something. The closest I got to doing something was watching TV until just before my afternoon medical , which went OK.

I picked Elayne up at around 5PM, and we followed up with a very nice Tuna Pasta Bake. We watched most of an episode of the new Lynley (which we quite like) and then went to the first 2026 Gosport Camera Club evening, which was very pleasant.

Apart from this wretched cough, today has been really quite delightful.

It really doesn’t matter that it was cold, the clear sky gave the sun a chance to share some of its warmth, even if the air had a bite to it. I said hello to several people whilst out on the walk, and we all agreed that it was a lovely day, perfect for a stroll.

It has been successful in another way also; U3A. I’ve paid my subs and sent in my registration, so whilst my membership may not have been registered yet (I’ve had no acknowledgement, but that’s OK, I submitted fairly late in the day. The coffee morning was very informative, and there were 6 prospective members in addition to myself. I suppose the next thing to do is get in touch with the various group owners, and confirm that it is OK for me to turn up. Must admit, not yet sure how that side of it works. I guess I’ll have to find out.

After the meeting, I felt the need to record a little bit of video about how I felt about things. Here’s the link; https://youtu.be/3DQV02WIkjU .

I ended up not going to a cafe for a drink and do my FB post. I guess I should have done, as it ended up being done just a few minutes before my posting of this, which I now have to rush to make sure I keep the daily count going.

We were fairly late to rise, but that was OK, after all, it is Sunday.

Breakfast went well, I’m on a bit of a porridge thing at the moment. We then had a few jobs to do. One of which was to empty the kitchen bins. This meant my first venture into the open for the day.

I didn’t wrap up, as I knew that I wouldn’t be out for more than a few seconds.

The air was chilled beyond cold, but the sun was delightfully warm. I heard the squawking of the Canadian geese and stood and watched a fly over of about 20 of them. They are always a lovely sight, and hearing them squawking to each other is a delight.

It really did make me feel that I should go for a walk. As it happens I didn’t, and I’ve felt guilty about it all day.

Way too late now. Time for bed.

We walked into town again today.

We did the Charity shops.

We ended up at the ferry end of the high street and went in to Cafe #1 for a drink. Cafe#1 is very popular. Understandably so. What with Poppins and the Gallery I’ve now visited 3 Cafes. In Fairness, Cafe#1 is a relatively frequent haunt, so no surprises there.

So, what am I looking for? Why am I working my way around the cafes in town? Well, I can only answer one of those questions at the moment. I’ll be using the cafe on my own most of the time, so I really want something where I feel comfortable and the cafe has a bit of atmosphere. That really is hte subjective bit. I’m not sure what I am looking for, except to say that hopefully I will know it when I find it.

Can’t really say much more than that. .

I actually managed to get out today.

My intention was to get to the nearest bus stop, but when I reached Stokes Road, I was confronted with this.

There’s obviously been a bit of a communications breakdown, as it appears that no noe had told the bus service. I was watching this, heard a bus behind me and turned round to see a No. 9 reversing in to a side street.

I ended up walking into town. I managed to get to the Post Office to do an Amazon return. I even got to the waterfront. Not a lot happening there. But I was thinking about our trip out yesterday, and how nice it was to see a few ships moving around. It reminded me that I should make an effort to get to the sea wall when the weather is a bit (actually, quite a bit) warmer.

I did my facebook post in the Gallery Cafe. It worked very well the folding keyboard was a delight to use. The first FB post in about 10 weeks, which was nice. The cafe was playing classical music at just the right volume – not intrusive, but there. Really quite pleasant.

I talked earlier about a communications problem at the road closure. I think it was worse than I thought. On my return trip, the closure had been lifted and the offending van was just sittiing by the roadside.

It was really nice to get out.

For whatever reason, I was going to give Elayne a lift to the Ferry. It didn’t happen, but we did reach the point where we were sat in the car.

Having reached a point where the decision was made that Elayne wasn’t going to the ferry, I looked at Elayne and said “We are in the car. Shall we just go and spend a bit of time at the waterfront”? We drove to Stokes bay and just parked up for a few minutes. I even got out of the car, and stood in the air for a minute or two – it felt good.

There were quite a few people out walking. Quite understandable. Even though there was a chilly breeze, the sun was warm, but the air was cold. Classically good walking weather.

The Solent was busy. There was a mid-sized container ship heading in to southampton, and a small oil tanker heading out, and then a car carrier was coming in. I’ve just done a bit of research on the The Viking Queen, the car carrier. It can carry up to 7,000 “standard cars” – which really surprises me. I didn’t take a picture of it as we were pulling away, but the next time I am in a position to, I will photograph a similar ship. I also learned a bit about their configuration, as I think they ride very high in the water, and look like they could be unstable, which they obvioously aren’t Here’s a link to some pictures of the vessel I saw today. https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/photos/of/ships/shipid:729334/shipname:VIKING%20QUEEN?order=date_uploaded.

It was really nice to get out. Even if only for a few minutes.

I am not suggesting for one minute that I am not ill. I have had a persistent chronic cough since well before retirement started. A friend has suggested that it could be an intolerance – I think that is a possibility. I have a Drs appointment next week, I’ll raise it as a possibility.

I’ve had two and a bit weeks now of retirement. Now, I have had periods of leave longer than this, but they have usually been because we are going on holiday, or because of Christmas. Either way, at the end of it I’d be going back to work. Not this time. For the best part of 50 years, my life has had a structure to it. Get up, go to work. That’s stopped. Perhaps that is having a bigger psychological impact on me than I anticipated?

I’ve had lots of plans for retirement, things that I want to do. I could perhaps understand not getting on with those plans since retiring – I’m having a real break. Yeah, like – no.

Yesterday, I raised a todo list. This morning I said to Elayne “I’m going back to work”. It was kind of said in jest. But at some point I have to start putting some structure back in my life, even if it isn’t very good. Also, when does this stop? I’m being pathetic.