Bye bye work, hello freedom #onelife:liveit (Revisited)

In December 2016 I took early retirement after working for the County Council’s Adult Education Dept for 11 years. I was trying to think of what to write on Facebook that would be quick, succinct quirky post which told people I was leaving but that wasn’t too maudlin or annoying.

Over the past two years my working environment had changed out of all recognition and I wasn’t enjoying it any more. Work had changed from years of me ‘living to work’ and morphed to ‘working to live’. I calculated that I’d worked in Education for 27 years. My goodness, where has that time gone? And if anyone’s reading this who has also had a career in Education you will know that it’s a never ending cycle. With ‘new’ ideas being dumped on teachers/educators from a great height on a regular basis. Not all of them made sense and once you’d been in the game for long enough you saw the same ‘new ideas’ coming round and round again. So I’d had enough and I wanted out.

I thought to myself, who am I saying goodbye to, work colleagues? I’d already worked 3 months notice, so no not really, I’d said my goodbyes personally, had lunch / coffee with the people who meant the most to me, I’d had a ‘bit of a do’ and got my card and voucher, so really it was about ‘announcing’ it to the world to ‘friends’ far a wide who didn’t know that I would be giving up work completely at the ‘tender age’ of 57. How lucky am I! How jealous were some of them!!

I can’t believe that 4 years have passed since then and I can honestly say I haven’t missed it one bit. Our lives have changed so much. We now own a villa in Crete (www.villamarene.com) which we live in for most of the winter and rent our during the summer.

We spend our summers on the move usually in Europe, in our Motorhome aka ‘The Beast’ but we always make it back to Blighty before August for the cricket.

Our lives are far more physical than they have been in years stuck behind a desk! When we do arrive in Crete we have quite a large garden so we spend the first few weeks chopping, cutting, weeding and burning. Then there’s the annual painting and decorating to be done, anyone who has a property here knows the problems the humidity and sea air causes, ie blowing plasterwork, flaking paint not to mention how many dirty fingerprints guests can leave over a season! And like any house there are always maintenance jobs to be undertaken. We’ve become quite friendly with Stella, who works in our local hardware, store as we seems to spend weekly visits for paint, taps, toilet seats, screws, etc, etc.

It’s not all work and no play by any means, my guest website (www.villamarene.com) gives us an excuse to go out and about visiting places and trying out new restaurants. I have become very partial to eating in the Cretan mezze style and actually prefer the vegetarian options to the meat.

So we start the summer season in the MoHo feeling quite fit having completed all the winter work, so walking around medieval towns seems relatively easy (unless you are in Lisbon in May and it’s 39 degrees).

I’ve also managed to squeeze in 4 lengthy trips to Australia to see my ever increasing number of grandchildren much to my pleasure (but leaving is getting more and more difficult each time 😢)

We spend our time in Blighty catching up with friends and family, revisiting National Trust places, going to the theatre and cinema, and sometimes taking the Beast out to places we’ve not been to in the U.K. like Scarborough, Fowey and St David’s. Not forgetting the annual trip to my nephew in Anglesey where we abandon the Beast on his drive and drink all his gin!

I still have to wait another 5 years until I’m eligible for a U.K. pension and until then (and hopefully for a long time afterwards) I’ll enjoy this nomadic lifestyle.

#onelife:liveit

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