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place i quite like a bit of tidiness and a smattering of cleanliness but this is never and i repeat never up to the standard that my fine wife likes to live by and i am now at home far more than i used to be from time to time this causes a hint of tension that leads to a definite improvement on my part at least as i see it a nagging doubt remains though that the improvement is probably not good enough and it is definitely useful to pay some attention to nagging doubts of that sort rather than to allow them to slip all too easily out of awareness these moments also lead to finding good and noble things to do that take one out of the house as well as the odd convivial conversation indoors about the division of labour my strong advice to all men who have retired is to re think your standards around the house learn to do more cooking vacuum under and behind things rather than simply what you can see above all just get on and do it don t wait to be asked and then go out and find other standards to uphold which brings me to standards of dress and general deportment this again is something that needs to be said only to men women naturally maintain the highest levels in these matters as a retired man matters of hair length including unfortunately nose and ear hair that seem to put on a growth spurt after retirement don t often reach conscious thought and changing one s jeans more than once a month or so seems a bit much take heed such ways of being do not go down well at home do your best around the house try to stay looking reasonably sharp in other words the maintenance of standards begins at home don t worry too much about people even in public notices not knowing how or when to use the apostrophe or even to know what the apostrophe is the difference between its and it s is hopeless now and the use of an apostrophe in any plural word is becoming commonplace just don t worry about it although did i just hear how about pudding the keddle on from across the room and before you comment think of john kenneth galbraith s words where humour is concerned there are no standards posted by kenneth strongman at 8 21 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels over the hill dealing with retirement having nothing to do with pilates this post first appeared as a column in the good living section of the press christchurch ken strongman the other day i was on the outskirts of a conversation between my lovely wife not retired and two other fine women of our acquaintance the discussion was energetically animated or animatedly energetic comparing the breathing techniques used during pilates and yoga it was something to do with the stomach hollowing on the in breath in the one and the out breath in the other a surreptitious mental probe of my stomach as i attempted to breath in this exciting atmosphere suggested no movement at all thus i was provided with another good reason to have nothing to do with either pilates or yoga in any of their forms other than some confrontations on the squash court with other aged partners my gym preferences centre on the cardio rooms and in particular the cross trainer we even have one at home bought by my wife in an enthusiastic moment but to what i think is her delight used by me at least it is being used the cross trainer is in my view one of the great inventions one can go at any speed with any resistance including some at the top end that are impossible to move against for any length of time using arms and legs legs only and even arms only if one pretends that the legs cannot move of their own volition all the while a heart rate measure reassures one that life goes on and the calories are being counted i really hope that those calorie counters are roughly accurate although there is no way of checking if not there is considerable room for delusion there are some unusual possibilities that i have not yet been game to try on what i now regard as my personal cross trainer i might sometime have a go at the arm blaster how can that work but am definitely not game to try the x mode most odd though is the glute kicker while there are quite a few people i wouldn t mind kicking in the glutes i don t often deserve this myself and am puzzled as to how the machine would accomplish it i ll only ever find out by mistake sometimes it is worth trekking to a gym to use another style of cross trainer surrounded by other enthusiasts rather than by cars and ladders in the garage these public gyms are a mixed blessing there is much comfort to be gained from sidelong glances at bodies in worse shape it is to be hoped than one s own and there is some misery to be gained by unwitting glances at the other sort the real problem is that with the ageing frame the best that can be hoped for is a sort of maintenance rather than aiming at the fantasy body that prompted earlier years in the gym so it is usually best to keep one s eyes to oneself in the gym it helps concentration although it is pleasant to be asked by some young thing how to raise the seat on the bicycles the down side comes with the knowledge that for oneself it always has to be lowered rather than raised thinking of gym conversations one encounter began with a question from another ageing semi jock having glanced at me he asked how many are you pulling at first puzzled by this since i was not sure that i was pulling anyone and in fact i d probably forgotten how to i smiled politely come on he said how many i clicked and told him how old i was he grinned and proudly told me his age which was a couple of years more than mine i m not sure what he was proud of perhaps something like having made it longer than me in the gym i don t know what has happened to him but he s not been around for some time and i m unsure whether i m pulling my years or they are pulling me just as a footnote and in case inspired by this column you are thinking of looking in at a gym beware the changing rooms if you have not been in one for some time you will find that they themselves have changed the showers are individual and have locks on their doors and there are electric hair driers chained to the wall are these the expectations of youth as winnie the pooh has it a bear however hard he tries grows tubby without exercise posted by kenneth strongman at 8 17 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels over the hill dealing with retirement doing time this post first appeared as a column in the good living section of the press christchurch doing time ken strongman being a retiree bears an uncanny resemblance to alice having disappeared down the rabbit hole it s to do with time at the best of times time is a slippery concept on the one hand it can be measured with a degree of exactitude enough to excite a pedant i have no good notion of what an atomic clock is nor how it might work but it can certainly give those who want to know a very precise notion of what time it is of course the moment they know the time that time has changed so they can never quite capture the moment at least not at a human level and herein lies the rub as a member of the work force one has to arrive at work at a particular time give or take usually give and one has to leave at a certain time usually with a bit of take appointments have to be kept roughly on time a ten minute leeway being within acceptable limits in our culture but far more important than this is subjective time this allows some things to pass in a flash time spent with particularly loved members of the family for example whilst the same period of objective time with or without the atomic clock can last interminably so work is time driven and after a decent period of adjustment retirement isn t subjective time is to the fore getting up in the morning no longer has a sense of urgency the morning newspaper seems longer than it once did the days merge what day is it becomes a frequent question this is not creeping senility although such unwelcome analyses do sometime appear unbidden it is simply that the days no longer have a distinctive flavor to have the weekend be little different from the week takes some getting used to the tyranny of the clock is muted as time goes on for go on it certainly still does there can slowly develop a slight resentment of any appointment at all this tendency disturbs in many ways one does not want for instance to lose all standards and turn into an aging hippy letting it all hang out there s enough of a tendency for various bits to hang in unaccustomed ways without adding to this particular decline the answer lies in giving some structure to the non working week care has to be taken though thoughts of structure could drive one to religion at least one day in the week would be different from the remainder fortunately there are other ways of bringing this about quite a few retirees of my acquaintance start or in some cases continue going to the gym regularly terrific fixed points in the week and one is doing oneself some good probably more about this gym behavior at another time it is not all balm to the troubled spirit the gym is one thing cafes and coffee drinking with friends is another shopping for bargains wasting hours finding unwanted items on that wonderful garage sale trademe there are many possibilities for structure but they do not include watching sport or old movies on the box for most of the waking hours and some of the sleeping ones as well or reading pulp fiction or not too much of it anyway in short one has to provide some of the structure that working life used to burden one with subjective time can hang heavy but structured objective time has no value associated with it if and when one gets away from racing against the clock it simply provides a framework against which one can attempt to optimize one s experiences of subjective time it is no easy matter though one does not want the day to be mainly composed of time so absorbing that it seems to flash past because then time is passing too quickly and one is naggingly aware that there is less and less of it remaining a thought of which one stayed blissfully unaware throughout those working years it used to be said that one has to find something to do in retirement what this really means is that one now has the time to get to grips with the nature of time and how to spend it wisely of course but not too wisely in this context wisdom smacks of a slightly unwelcome rectitude it s best to chase fun in whatever way works always keeping a touch of the permissible disreputability of increasing years as j b priestley said a good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours posted by kenneth strongman at 8 13 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels over the hill dealing with retirement over the hill over the hill the beginning this post and all others in the over the hill series first appeared as a column in the good living section of the press christchurch ken strongman retirement is an event that looms for months if not years before it begins there is to be an occasion of some sort a dinner a party some type of farewell function it is a moment or two during which a presentation is made of something that one would probably never otherwise own and there are speeches the best of which sound disturbingly like obituaries although with luck the retiree also has an opportunity to speak even to recount some scurrilous and embarrassing stories and to say a few things that have long been waiting to be said the event occurs and is borne with a mixture of dignity and good humour a nagging feeing of wishing to go disgracefully held at bay unless the drinks have slid their way too easily into an empty and somewhat tense digestive system but that this event is not retirement becomes apparent during the next few weeks and months the farewell event has been nothing more than a rite of passage a way of being eased from one state to another from being a vibrant member of the work force to being a marginally less vibrant member of the non work force after the wedding comes the marriage retirement is a process that simply starts with the big event and then extends in numerous directions for some indeterminate length of time it begins with a feeling of having broken up from school with the prospect of the holidays to come and so it is for a few weeks until one realizes that the holiday is perpetual or at least that it will last as long as one lasts oneself this realization is the first of many that come thundering into consciousness with a clash of cymbals echoing somewhere in the background thoughts then turn away from holidays to vague ideas about what is expected of one in retirement the spectre of the gradual approach of a zimmer filled life enters unbidden odd little prompts occur at the time when one would normally have been rising from another night of semi refreshing sleep to slide through the daily ritual that led one to work but these prompts lead nowhere other than to existential thought oddly the world seems to be continuing without one s help how can this be morbidly is this what death will be like see how the thought processes are tending to deteriorate of course this is not like death since one will presumably not be around to experience its aftermath so inevitably one starts to look ahead which is after all what one has been doing throughout life but one rapidly learns not to look ahead too far the inevitable end point starts to approach too fast for comfort without much light shining at the end of that particular tunnel fortunately the alternative soon arises from whatever bit of creativity that hangs over from a lifetime of misuse retirement allows a whole new set of possibilities one is free to roam the world in search of almost anything with nothing other than the exigencies of domesticity to get in the way the world at large has expectations of retirees and it might be fun to see what these are and to dispel them and the good thing about it is that it gets one out of the house much to the relief of anyone else that remains in it an end point the trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off abe lemons posted by kenneth strongman at 8 10 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels over the hill dealing with retirement older posts home subscribe to posts atom labels crime fiction 6 over the hill dealing with retirement 4 television 2 links brian edwards media real estate agent tips for first time home buyers 7 months ago reading the maps links 5 years ago beattie s book blog unofficial homepage of the new zealand book community university of otago two honorary doctorates to be awarded in may 7 years ago art life tv etc on climate change 13 years ago about me kenneth strongman professor emeritus psychologist critic writer view my complete profile blog...