Retirement jottings...

Everyone¹ needs a hobby; something to stave off the boredom.

Once you've entered the diary, you can move between entries by clicking on their "Next" and "Back" buttons. I have an inexplicable but long-standing fondness for footnotes. These have a clickable superscripted² number (see what I did there?) taking you to that day's "Footnotes" section. Return by clicking on the number (or with your Browser's "Back" button, of course). I recently confirmed my footnote habit was already well-established a mere 35 years ago. Must all be part of what dear Mama always characterised as my "butterfly" mind.³

A few words from the diarist

I began this diary as a light-hearted retirement hobby in November 2006, to keep some vague track of what (if anything) I got up to as a man of leisure. Christa and I had no formal plans for my retirement — just as we'd had no formal plans for the 33 delightful years we spent together. Life just kept happening, as it does, and we were largely content to go with the flow. That approach seemed to work, and — like Arthur Dent said in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy — to make some sort of sense!

The diary quite soon took a rather grim turn, becoming a cross between a medical bulletin board (for friends and family), and a pressure-relief valve for me, as I did my best to care for Christa during her final cancer in 2007. Looking back, and having thought quite long and quite hard about this horrible bereavement process, I'm sure the diary helped me keep sane, so I can recommend keeping such a journal for such a purpose. However, permit me the hope that none of my readers has any need for such therapy of their own for many years to come!

Christa's funeral service including the texts I used, and some beautiful photos of her with her ever-present smile. There are another 400 or so photos scattered more or less at random in diary entries. Brief thoughts on marriage, and its aftermath.

Archives

Footnotes

¹  No text navigation across the top? ... upgrade your browser!
²  See what I mean?
³  I'm pretty sure this was never meant as a compliment, by the way, though that's how I choose to interpret it as I like the idea of colourful butterflies flitting around.