Who's the Daddy: Raising a glass to retirement

Last weekend we had a little taste of what retirement is like– and it was absolutely magnificent.
Who's the DaddyWho's the Daddy
Who's the Daddy

For 48 wonderful hours we had nothing to do and literally all day to do it. No work, no plans, no nothing.

Because life has been like an ultra-realistic version of slow TV for the past 13 months – everything shut and more or less under house arrest – we’ve slowed right down to the pace of the second week of a 14-night holiday at an all-inclusive Mediterranean beach resort, remember them?

Luckily for us, me and the boss get along quite well.

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Maybe she’s lowered her expectations sufficiently after 23 years of marriage to me and a year of all this so an evening in the garden under the stars with a raging fire pit and a chilled glass or two of rosè with Air’s Moon Safari on the Alexa is the 2021 equivalent of a bungee jump out of a helicopter over the Grand Canyon.

But a weekend of sunshine, lounging around the garden she put her heart and soul into (with all the hard graft done by a professional team who did what she asked) does wonders for your soul.

If this is what it’s like to be empty nesters then what were we so terrified of? Another couple of decades at it would be very nice thank you very much. Nothing could break our chill. Not even hot-faced little screamers doing their best to break their parents’ spirit, and ruin our big long dog walks, through Lancaster’s magnificent countryside. Not our circus, not our monkeys. We’ve done our bit – twice – and they’re 22 in November and 19 next week. Sorry if this all sounds smug. Actually, am I balls. I’ve paid my dues, time after time, etc. and like the poem says, they came to the edge, we pushed them and they flew.

On Saturday afternoon daughter #1 pinged us a photo of her view, outside a bar in Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle. It looked pretty smart, to be fair. What you’d imagine heaven looks like. Blue sky, an endless supply of freezing cold pints literally on tap and all afternoon and evening to sink them.

We were with her in spirit. In our little beer garden in a world of our own.

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