Retirement Today

Retirement Today, a glossy lifestyle magazine for the active retired or those contemplating retirement.

Inside this issue:

Enjoying a Foreign Lifestyle; Your First Resort for Care-free Retirement; New Beginnings; Home and Away; Get Fit with your Dog; Fairtrade Recipes, Berlin:One on Its Own; Trelowarren; About Britain; New Plant Ideas; Gardening News; A Brand Named ‘Old’; How to be a Greener Shopper; Charity News; How do we know what animals are feeling?;

SUBSCRIBE and read more ...

---

Enjoying Foreign Lifestyle

Image courtesy of Galina Barskaya-Fotolia.com

Discovering your new lifestyle
An extract from How to Retire Abroad 3E by Roger Jones, published by How to Books

www.howtobooks.co.uk

Retirement calls for a change of outlook, and for some people the transition from a regular work routine to a less structured way of life is not easy.  For this reason an increasing number of firms are providing pre-retirement counselling sessions for their staff to enable them to manage the transition effectively.  If your life centred on your work you may feel somewhat bereft when the time comes to hang up your boots.

The transition is less abrupt if you have developed interests outside your workplace – as the organiser of a social club, as the leader of a guide troop, as a JP or a local councillor.  Many retired people I come across in the UK insist they are more active now than at any time in their lives.  However, if you head abroad you turn your back on all this, and will have to build your life completely from scratch.

SUBSCRIBE and read more ...

---

Get Fit with your Dog
An extract from Get Fit With Your Dog, by Karen Sullivan, published by Interpet Publishing.

Why get fit?

Fitness is not about being thin, or having a small waist or bulging muscles.  It is a combination of factors that enables us to function at our full potential when we engage in physical activity and helps us to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight.

Physical fitness involves the entire body; your heart, lungs, muscles, endurance and mental capacity.  People who are physically fit have great stamina, strength and flexibility than those who are not.  Moreover, fitness elevates mood and maintains cognitive functions such as memory and the ability to concentrate.  Being unfit does not necessarily mean being unhealthy, but it does put people at greater risk of many diseases, including heart disease and diabetes, and makes it more difficult to perform everyday tasks with ease.

 

SUBSCRIBE and read more ...  

---

Glass half-full

Mike Hardy,
a former teacher for 29 years, talks candidly about living with Motor Neurone Disease
(MND)..
 

 

Mike Hardy, a former teacher for 29 years, talks candidly about living with Motor Neurone Disease (MND).

In 2001 I was 50 and a lucky happy man.  I had a job I loved as Deputy Head of a secondary school, I had a wonderful family and contrary to the trend my endowment policies had paid out double and repaid the mortgage 15 years early. I had worked hard and was looking forward to reaping the rewards with my wife.

Planning for the future
Retirement was years away but we planned the holidays which we could not formerly afford having four children. We planned taking up golf, working on country renovation projects and a personal ambition of mine was to guide people around cathedrals and grand houses bringing the buildings alive.

I was, however, feeling my age with a series of minor problems that my GP said was fair wear and tear for an ex-sportsman.  One little finger was bent. I had pain in my left shoulder and a general feeling of being more clumsy than I remembered. More seriously I was referred twice to the ear nose and throat consultant as my voice was becoming hoarse and weak. He found nothing amiss but I was convinced the symptoms were related and I self diagnosed Motor Neurone Disease (MND) almost a year before the formal diagnosis was given.

SUBSCRIBE and read more ...

 

Berlin: One on Its Own by Joseph O’Neil

© Photo: J O’Neill

“Look!” I say, pointing to the platform across the tracks.
“What is it?” my wife asks.
“A white paper bag.”
“Yes,” she says, incredulous. “It definitely is.”

It was our fifth day there and this was the first time we’d seen a scrap of litter in any of Berlin’s stations.

In Berlin everything is as it should be. Trains are frequent, clean, spacious and bright. Hesitate for a second in a railway station or any of the city’s splendid museums and instantly a smiling attendant is at your elbow, with a “May I help you, sir?”

Like so many of my generation, born in the shadow of Britain’s last life and death struggle, Berlin has been part of my mental landscape since childhood, first as the capital of Nazi Germany, then the fulcrum of the Cold War and finally as a modern European state which embodies our hopes of a new era of peaceful prosperity.  It is Europe’s history in microcosm, a distillation of our past.

SUBSCRIBE and read more ...

---

In with the New Plants by Barbara Segall

Image courtesy Sweetpea-George Priestly

All through the spring and summer nurseries have launched new plants at various garden and flower shows, including RHS Chelsea Flower Show, Hampton Court and Tatton Park Flower Shows.

There are some dazzling plants among the introductions and you are likely to find them at your local garden centres or you can purchase direct by mail order or online from the nurseries.

Get ready for a planting bonanza this autumn, so that you have a burst of colour, fragrance, shape and form awaiting you through the season next year. Although many container-grown plants can be planted all through the year, autumn is traditionally the best time to plant. Plants establish their root systems in warm and moist soils and settle in before winter, so they are not setback by any seasonal changes.

SUBSCRIBE and read more ...

---

A Brand Named Old
An extract from Enjoy Retirement by Janet Butwell published by The Infinite Ideas Company Limited

Teenagers are punks with multiple piercings one year, Goths with black eyeliner the next, and then elegant Romantics! But old people are always just old people.Why? Find out, and avoid becoming a stereotype.

I blame the media and its obsession with the cult of youth.

They worship the ever-changing tides of teen-based fashion, and they show us a
hugely diverse (though always thin) population of young to middle-aged adults, but
when they get around to including ‘old’ people (particularly pensioners) what
happens? It’s that grumpy old sod in the tweed jacket again, or the daft old bat who
wanders around the streets in her nightie.
Yet, despite the bizarre views of the media, we all know that it’s not just teenagers
who change their style. Adults change over the years, as I’m sure you’ll agree if you
think back to your waist-length hair, bell-bottoms and Quo-obsession back in the
70s (OK maybe not exactly an obsession, but admit it, you did that hands-on-hips
dance, didn’t you?).

SUBSCRIBE and read more ...

---

New Beginnings

 

Heather Roberts writes about her new life in The Gambia where she has lived for more than 12 months, after retiring from her teaching job in Devon.

It is Day 3 of the ‘Preparing to Retire’ Seminar for Devon teachers, Spring 2006. Around the circle we go, saying what we plan to do with our lives when the career, to which we have all given at least 30 years service, comes to an end. Many of the group describe their plans to redecorate their house, tackle the garden, spend more time with the grand-children, go for long walks and enjoy cheaper holidays outside school holiday dates. It sounds fine but am I so different in wanting more than that?

Spring 2008
I am relaxing in a hammock, out of the hot sun, under the shady tamarind tree in my compound, watching tiny red Fire-finches and brilliant yellow Weaver birds come down for water. This is The Gambia, West Africa where I have lived for more than 12 months, broken up by 2 extended returns to the UK

SUBSCRIBE and read more ...