Life Changing Experiences - Part 1

Who is this suave man?

My first ever birthday cake

I'm 60 now - that's a life changing experience if ever there was one.  But not in a bad sense. I LOVE being 60, not least of all because it was a good excuse for a party, and a party important enough that many of my friends made the effort to come along, including ones I hadn't seen for 20+ years (yes, that's you Ann). 

What a great time we had.  It was slightly marred for me because I couldn't do my little 'turn' on the keyboards accompanied by John.  My broken arm just didn't heal quickly enough to allow me enough practice.  Still, it did get me back to playing again - there's always a silver lining.  And the band were as good as ever - even with Chris bashing away on the drums louder than ever!  He says you cannot change the volume with the drums, but he sure gets louder as the night wears on.

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Unfortunately, due to the parsimonious government, turning 60 wasn't as lifechanging an occasion as I'd hoped. Thanks to sex equality (men and women should retire at the same age - and obviously not the lower age),  I don't actually get my pension until January 2012, so can't give up work until then, or we sell our UK house, whichever comes first.  Given the state of the property market I don't think we're going to be lucky enough to get a quick sale, so it looks like next year is the earliest I can retire.

However, since it's down to below 12 months, I can plan and that's most of the fun.  When everything slots in place it will be totally life-changing - we'll be living in France, and able to spend whole days 'pottering' around doing things we like and not feeling guilty.  My brother-in-law took early retirement and went on a course on how to prepare/cope.  The key thing I took from his description, was to make a list of all the things you want to do, but just don't have the time to do.  Then make sure you work your way through the list.  So far my list has been in my head, and several pages long, but now I'm actually going to put in down in black and white (and no doubt constantly add to it).  Here's a start as at 28 March 2011:

• Play the keyboards more proficiently
• Learn more about astronomy (possibly take a degree in it)
• Become more conversant with the formation of the universe - particularly the different theories about the Big Bang
• Actually read the books we have in the library
• Keep chickens and possibly pigs
• Definitely keep goats (think of all that goats cheese, and those goat curries!)
• Grow more food and herbs
• In particular, to have an orchard of English apples in France
• Make pickles & chutneys
• Grow olives and make up lots of flavoured olives
• Scan all my cooking recipes and put them into a database
• Scan all our photos
• Scan and save all the CDs
• Travel more in Europe

.... well, that's a start.  I think I'll continue at another time.

Going back to life-changing experiences, though, planning for a totally new life is really exciting, and I find myself just sitting in the chair grinning like a cheshire cat at time.  Just because we will have a blank sheet ready to write on anything we fancy.  Now that's EXCITING!