STOP THE WORLD, I WANT TO GET OFF

It has been commented to me that in "retirement" OG and I have become excessively and sometimes exhaustingly busy. Take the last three days for example. Between us we transported our favourite grandson-in-law between coaching assignments four times, took a great granddaughter to school and back three times, baby sat her sick sister for four hours, went clothes shopping with a granddaugher, took a grandson to buy his birthday present, took him swimming and drum practice, took the car in for MOT, went for a leisurely lunch with a daughter, shoehorned in visits to the dentist, hairdresser and doctors and in our free time watched a bit of Wimbledon!.

The most exhausting part was working out the logistics. This week, because of the complexity of our commitments, I actually had to compile a spreadsheet! Matters were not improved when I suddenly thought that Monday was Tuesday and turned up at the dentist a day early.

And finally…. I was sent this by DogLover. Don’t you just love it?

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?" Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany . Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says Bud. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then Bud says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"
The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?" “You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government", says Bud. "Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about how working people make a living - or about cows, for that matter. This is a herd of sheep. Now give me back my dog.”

RETIRED? UMM? CRAZY? FOR SURE!

One of the news items on breakfast TV recently was “Is retirement like walking off a cliff?”. I can answer that! Yes, it is.

A couple of years ago, for the sake of the continued growth and success of the business, I decided that the younger generation should step up to the plate and I relinquished my day-to-day duties. My dearly beloved (aka Old Grumpy) made no such decision, although, if I’m being truthful, I had hope that he would also do the same and we would then ride off into the sunset together to enjoy well earned “quality time” together. HA!

As part of our retirement plan we bought our lovely apartment in the Swiss Alps. We figured that this would allow our successors room to develop without us looking over their shoulders. I love it and have spent the last few summers there in glorious solitude without OG because he gets bored when he is away from the cut and thrust of the business. So that has been ruled out of the equation as being a viable retirement option.
My next “retirement plan” was to write what is sometimes referred as “the bloody bog” (not, I should add, by OG, who thinks it is a wonderful thing for me to do.) This keeps me amused for all of 2 to 3 hours a week. I also started researching the ancestors - another few hours a week. Shopping is not an even on the radar because I hate it. So…. what to do with myself? I pretty soon I found myself being drawn back into the office just to “check things out”.

At first there was major resistance to this strategy especially when I called them in jest “the bloodless bottom line committee”. “Don’t you trust us?” they asked. We had a few tears and tantrums (mainly from me). I sensed they felt uncomfortable with my presence, but shit, it is my business, so to hell with them. Fortunately we managed to overcome these initial teething troubles and I now feel as though they view me as an unthreatening oddity that goes with the territory!

I now have a very enviable retirement situation inasmuch they make all the decisions and do the work, whilst I get to play with whomever I can inveigle into spending time with me. And, strangely enough, because I am the BOSS, I do find my colleagues most accommodating!

The only blight on this enviable lifestyle at the moment is OG’s health, but we have to believe that this will improve and then I am sure that he will be only too pleased to ride off into this mythical sunset with me.

ELICIT GOINGS ON

7

Today was taken at a more leisurely pace with breakfast at this fabulous hotel on the shores of the Bosphorus, then a cruise up to the Black Sea with more cultural history thrown in, a quick museum visit and back in time for lunch. Once again we were told that this is the best hotel in Istanbul. In fact 6* standard.

The original old Palace building has 12 horrendously expensive suites and conference and banqueting facilities. All extremely grand and, I would imagine, strictly out of bounds to the likes of us. . In fact when we tried to walk on the esplanade beside the sea in front of the Palace building on our first night we were quickly chased away.

HOWEVER, two of our fellow travellers have been in the building and were anxious to show us the extreme opulence of the place. They had sneaked in around the back and with little need for encouragement we agreed to follow them. So off we set, four ladies of retirement age, giggling like naughty children.

They had the red carpets out today and the place was alive with busy worker ants moving furniture, bringing in trolleys of prepared foods, setting up sound systems etc. They were obviously expecting someone very important. I timidly reminded everyone that the Turkish army is very large and we were in danger of triggering a full-scale security alert. "Don't worry, we'll deal with that if it happens". Yeh like deal with rotting in a foreign jail for several years. "Am I the only one with a bit of sense around here?" "Oh come on, lighten up, you only live once". I had found the remnants of the happening, baby boomer, and flower power generation again. We are all around in the guise of sedate suburban retirees.

The amazing thing was that we didn't get arrested and were allowed to walk unchallenged among the throngs of workers to admire the priceless chandeliers, carpets and artefacts that adored this breathlessly beautiful building. Room after room of beauty. I have never, never seen anything like it before, nor probably every will again. I did take a photograph, but I forgot and took it with my camera instead of the BlackBerry, so I can't blog it until I get back home. But, as my ex-friend DogLover likes to point out I take crap photographs anyway. Tomorrow is the big day. We board the Orient Express at 1530 and travel for six days to Venice. If that is as good as our time here we are in for a real treat.
Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

SWIM OR NAP?

Being retired is giving me time to sansy doodle around the town, chill out with my family and catch up with friendships I had let lapse. In fact, now that am building up a bit of a social diary I am wondering how I managed to find time to work.

Today my daughter has invited me swimming, but this is a difficult one because it may interfere with my power nap. Health or indulgence? Umm - I don’t know. I know, I’ll sleep on it and then decide.

More on the “frittering away the inheritance” front. We have recently been told that that the neighbouring studio apartment in Switzerland is up for sale. As foreigners we are not allowed to own more than one property, but this apartment could be integrated into ours to make a stunning home without us breaking the regulations.

If you read my blog on 11th March - Far, Far Away on a Lonely Hillside – you will have read the story of how we first came to buy our apartment on a 50 year mortgage. Well this is the story of how we increased our 50 year mortgage in order to buy the adjoining studio apartment

Are you ready for this? Emailed the bank, within 10 minutes I received a call from the manager, we had a pleasant 5 minute chat. Job done at an interest rate of 2.7%! This is why we love the country so much, the people are practical, un-dramatic, straight down the middle and, best of all, will lend us money.

The advantages of a 50 year mortgage? We get to live in a wonderful place and the kids get to settle up the bill when we go to that great mountain in the sky! A win, win situation.

IF ONLY LIFE COULD BE AS SIMPLE

Another memorable “meeting whilst travelling” was with a young and patently successful couple (judging by their expensive, understated clothes). She started the conversation with “Do you mind us sitting next to you or would you rather be alone?” “Please don’t worry if I start freaking out, 'plane travel panics me, but I’ll try not to disturb you”. With that out comes her laptop and she begins to tap away, I guessed to take her mind off of the journey.

I suddenly realised that I had left my ‘phone switched on and she heard me groan. She volunteered her husband to get my bag down from the luggage rack for me to switch it off, which he did.

I have a very old, very un-cool Nokia mobile that everyone is begging me to upgrade (especially the ‘phone companies). When she saw it she said “Look darling she’s got a ‘phone like you” and then to me “don’t ever think of changing it, my husband says it’s the most reliable ‘phone ever made” at which point he joins in the conversation and confirms “I would never dream of changing mine, the battery lasts forever, the functions are straightforward, the display is clear, it’s very robust and I only want to used it to make ‘phone calls - not to play games, take photographs, surf the net and stuff like that”. I was chuffed to bits especially when it turned out that he was an IT department head at one of the blue chip companies. Wow, vindicated again! I’m so clever. Question - so why does no one ever listen to me?

We delve deeper into each other’s lives. She is a natural sales person asking open questions and soon has me confessing “I’m trying to retire, but making a complete hash of things”.

More probing questions reveal that her mother was in exactly the same situation. Started a business from scratch, bought my new found friend into the business when she planned to retire but, in their case, it didn’t work. “It was her passion and her vision and I was never going to meet her expectations, she sold the company for loads of money. It was the best thing she ever did. Now she really enjoys her retirement.”

I explained that this wasn’t the case with us. Our successors do have the passion and vision (if anything more than us) and they are taking the business places we never imagined possible. The problem is entirely mine. We live next to the office and I’m nosy, demanding to be kept abreast of everything. Her next solution was “well you will have to move then”. If only life could be as simple as a conversation on a ‘plane.

SMART BUT DUMB

At 1710 Davy (aka old grumpy) announced that he was going to clean the car. I asked sweetly if would not have been preferable to do it in the daylight and before the rain came. He wondered out loud what made me such a smart ass and promptly went out to his roomy, brightly lit, dry, double garage leaving me feeling like a fool. Now that’s not very friendly. I think he is having problems with this retirement thing too.

We have friends (believe it or not we do have friends) that actually appear to enjoy retirement. They sanzzy doodle along, doing the shopping thing, playing golf and being very sociable and harmonious with each other. We, on the other hand, may end up murdering each other.

I should explain that we are not really retired, just playing at staying out of people’s hair for a while. When we have lulled them into a false sense of security we will return.

POLITICALLY INCORRECT AND UNGREEN

I have been respectfully requested to make a controlled withdrawal from my beloved business by my gob-smackingly ungrateful children who insist that they need space to develop and now refuse to listen to my very sensible suggestions and directives. In other words, they want me to retire!

I probably should be careful about bad mouthing the kids or they may one day leave old grumpy (my husband) and me to fester in some rat infested “retirement home”.

So, what will I do with all this spare time that I now have? I know, I’ll have a go at frittering away their inheritance money by booking as many airline tickets as possible in as short a time as possible.

My target list is:

Four tickets to Stockholm in May for old grumpy, a couple of friends and me.
Three return tickets to Geneva going out in July and coming back in August. Two for my great-grandaughters and one for me.
One return ticket in August to Geneva for mother of said great-grandchildren so that she can collect them while I stay on to recover.
Four more return tickets to my glorious mountain hideaway for old grumpy and three more grandchildren (who’s mother is leaving them with us while she goes on the “honeymoon we never had” – bully for her)
Two or three return tickets to New York in October. Why two or three? That’s another story.

When I “discussed” my plan with old grumpy he said “if they (and I’m presuming that he means the kids and not alien beings) manage to get you committed I’m not coming to visit you”. I just told him that I don’t need him to visit, as far as I am concerned he can just blog off out of my life – so there.

I actually lied about my “task for today” being a new idea. On the quiet I have managed to ratchet up quite an impressive diary for the next few months that includes

· a weekend in Bracknell in March (I know, probably not the most exciting destination in the world);
· a “one day at a time” weekend convention in Letterkenny, Northern Ireland in April which we may extend to include an “enquire about the ancesters” side trip to Belfast:
· a racing weekend to the Oaks and Derby in June;
· and last, but not least (as they say) a nine-day trip on the Orient Express from Istanbul in September with my mad mate Monica.

Add to this the new target list and I MAY keep myself out of trouble for a while.