Week 904

Sunday, 19th April, 2026

Glorious morning of clear blue sky and strong sunshine. The week ahead is going to be dry and warm. Out door living has begun at last. Gardening is fully underway. Potatoes are shooting; shallots are growing strongly; lettuces are almost ready to be thinned out. The new herbs are out in the beds and the flowers for the public beds are potted up in the cold frames.

Since I bought a house with an acre of land in the early 1980s, I have loved growing vegetables. I was also slightly amused by myself because what I was doing 30 years on was what my Dad had tried to get me to do in the 1950s. He had come from the Dig for Britain generation where every scrap of land was called up to produce food for a war torn country. I rejected it as old fashioned as a child but found myself just enjoying the air, the feel of the soil and the taste of home grown vegetables.

With all the cash I spent on doing it, I could have bought a lifetime’s vegetables but it is the overall experience I was buying. I think, Dad would have smiled with a knowing appreciation even if he criticised my technique. There is a difference between the generation who grew their food because there was no other available and the lifestyle generation of my time. Failure for Dad’s generation would have meant going without. Failure for me means I go to Sainsburys for my banana shallots instead.

Big football match this afternoon but first it is too lovely a day not to walk by the sea and we spent an hour doing just that on a path we haven’t used since Covid times. It was lovely, peaceful and warm with beautiful colours all around.

Monday, 20th April, 2026

The gorgeous days continue. Going to spend the first half out in the garden potting up seedlings. That will complete the first 200. Another 120 arrive at the end of the week and another 120 the week after. I’ve got to get them growing on and hardened off before planting out and established before we go away for a month in mid-June.

Exactly a week ago today, I cracked my ankle really painfully on the corner of the conservatory, slashing it open and badly bruising it. Stupid old man that I am. The problem with age is that the body doesn’t repair as quickly as in youth. This morning, the damage on my ankle is healing up but the foot remains puffy and swollen and the damage has travelled down the bones to the toes with this angry purple colour.

I am still keeping active. I always think it is important to push it rather than use the damage as an excuse to sit around. It may well be that such beligerence has slowed recovery but so be it. Life has to have purpose. Some find it in religion. I have to manufacture my own. I have targets to achieve and I will push on until they are.

If you are retired as I am, you will almost certainly know about the Triple Lock in which State Pensions are increased each April by the highest of three measures: inflation, average earnings growth, or a minimum of 2.5%. Introduced in 2010, it aims to protect pensioners’ income against rising living costs and to keep them in line with the working population. This was particularly important because UK has one of the poorest State Pensions in Europe.

Of course, in the early days of my working life, we were encouraged to see State Pensions as contributory. We paid in Graduated Pension payments in the expectation that our accrued pension pot would keep us safe in retrirement. The nearer you get to retirement, the more likely you are to find out that almost none of that is true. We don’t pay into a specific pot for our retirement. We just pay extra tax which is not hypothecated. Of course, as the retired cohort increases so does the National commitment to fund it. As the workers are outstripped by the retirees, the burden on tax payers increases.

Calls for limiting the State Pension, even making it not a right but a means tested benefit is being touted by the Far Right who are also wanting to rein in what they see as gold-plated State workers’ pensions as well. Gordon Brown saw as important that every citizen had dignity in retirement and gave it this belt & braces support. I was reading a record of our own State Pensions from 2014 and they have now almost doubled in the intervening 12 years. I wouldn’t want to have to live on it though. Of course, it will take a strong government with a big majority to do anything about it. Old people vote and Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.

Tuesday, 21st April, 2026

A bit overcast and chilly this morning. In fact, today is forecast to be our least good weather for the next ten days which are said to be wall to wall sunshine. Even Wales is said to get better weather than us today and that is unheard of. Still, I’d rather be here than in Keir Starmer’s shoes or those of his sacked Civil Servant, Oily Robbins.

If Life gives you lemons … make Lemon Curd. On this day 15 years ago, that’s just what my Chef did. Just 15 years ago today I was a youthful 60 years old and we were in our first week of a 6 month stay in our Greek house. Actually, the weather there was cool and we had the underfloor heating on at night time to ‘air’ the house which had been closed up since the previous October.

This was our first full and continuous 6 month stay and we had arrived with computers and televisions, with groceries we couldn’t source on the island like Yorkshire Tea and Kenco Coffee. Much of this had been packed in huge, 20kgs boxes and sent via Parcel Force from Huddersfield to the small, island Post Office where they only just fitted in the office.What we didn’t need to bring were lemons. We had a year’s worth on trees in our garden which was a joy. If only we could have grown bottles of wine.

In those days, Greek wine was not the best and island wine was so unrefined that it had a tendency to strip the lining from one’s stomach almost as the now infamous Retsina does. I took the advantage for many years of stocking up the car with cases of wine in France and Italy en route both out and returning to UK. This was even more important when we were staying anywhere for 6 months at a time.

What really concerns me is how far all those experiences seem to feel now for a time which ended only just over a decade ago. If they can fade into the mists of time so easily what else of my life will do that

Wednesday, 22nd April, 2026

As forecast, the day has opened with blue skies and strong sunshine which we expect to run for the next few days. I am expecting another 120 plantlets by post this morning. In the past, I would have been sowing seeds to be germinated in seed trays needing warmth on window sills or on the floor of the conservatory windows. I hated doing it although it was tolerated by my Housekeeper.

Nature is a wonderful thing. To think these seedlings have been germinated and grown on in perfect conditions and have then travelled 300 miles and survived the UK Postal Service. They will now be potted up and grown on in my cold frames, planted out in the roadside beds and should look like the flowers on the right from June to October.

On this day 10 years ago, I officially became a State Pensioner. It was in that year that the Coalition Government introduced the Triple Lock. Because I was born on the 6th April 1951, I qualified for the New State Pension by one day. I had to have some luck in this world.

This month all State Pensions increase by 4.8%. This is set against the current National rate of inflation which was announced this morning at 3.3%. Teachers’ Pensions increase this month by 3.8% which is still an increase although Trump’s war and its effect of fuel prices has bitten in to that.

I always find it shocking how few people really understand the concept of percentages. You wonder how they get through life which is full of percentages. It must be like tottering through a fog. No wonder politicians find it so easy to pull the wool over their eyes.

Thursday, 23rd April, 2026

Very warm, sunny day in prospect which is good news for gardening. Yesterday, we reached and stayed at 22C/70F throughout a chunk of the day but I still don’t understand temperatures because the evening fell to just 13C/55F but felt really cold.

Yesterday was so sunny that we were warmer than Athens and we ate Greek last night with Calamari, Salata & Skordalia in the garden. The new seedlings, pricked out, potted up and in the coldframes were instantly affected by the strong sunshine and began to wilt. I just managed to catch them in time and did some panic watering and shading with insulation muslin which I had bought in advance.

This morning, I was relieved to find they had all recovered and were growing on strongly. I have two identical coldframes of this type and I am already realising that at peak times like this I could do with two more. I have 120 more plants to pot up and find protected storage for this morning.

I won’t be in the garden for a while. Just been alerted to a loud noise and discovered a wasp’s nest swarming across my neighbour’s garden around an olive tree. It is the hottest day so far and has already reached 24C/75F in the back garden. By contrast, Athens is just 16C/61F. Bet they haven’t got wasps.

But first, I have to go for Part 1 of my Annual Medical Review. This is always ‘fun’ but I get less competetive about it as I get older. Blood and Urine samples are involved. Weight and Height is measured. I can confirm that I have shrunk by 1.5 cm over the past decade which means I can no longer proudly say I am 6 feet tall. You will note my modern dilemma of growing in Feet & Inches but shrinking in Centimetres. My wife is definitely shrinking. We started measuring her against the garage wall with a pencil line. Unfortunately, the weather soon erased it.

Friday, 24th April, 2026

It turned out the wasps were bees – very long, thin wasp-like bees. They appear to have swarmed off somewhere else which is a blessing. Our neighbour can have her pool-party in peace. We went down to the beach to buy fish. It really is full on holiday weather but with most kids in school and most parents at work, the whole scene was quiet.

There did seem to be an early natural history lesson going on which looked just idyllic. What a playground to have on your doorstep.

And it very rarely gets busy. If you want busy, you have to go to Brighton one way or Bognor Regis the other. We are the retirement home of the South Coast. Health Facilities are fantastic down here because of the age demographic. Even our wonderful Labour MP is Dr Beccy Cooper.

As a member of the South Coast Retirement Club, I was pleased to have Part 1 of my Annual Health Checkup yesterday. Height, Weight, Blood Pressure, Blood and Urine samples sent off for testing. The only difficult bit was the regular discussion about alcohol consumption. It gets a bit tedious and, if I’m asked how much I drink, my default position is to say, Why, how much do you drink? and usually, they sheepishly admit similar levels but I know I drink too much wine.

First thing this morning, I received text confirmation from my doctor that my test results were ‘satisfactory/stable’. On the Patients Know Best app, I looked up the results in detail and, as far as I could understand them, there was nothing to be concerned about which, at my age, is all I can hope for. Still managing to keep the plates spinning at the moment.

Saturday, 25th April, 2026

Sun tan lotion on from the outset every morning now. The sun is strong and the effect is aging, particularly on dry, old skin. I’m lucky, I have naturally oily skin which makes my wife furious as she piles on layers of cream every day. I am a man and averse to putting cream on. I have to be badgered. Still, I don’t do it myself. With all the walking I do, my feet need extra care so my wife files and creams them every day. Slaves are so good, aren’t they? She takes her chance and slaps sun tan lotion on me at the same time which I submit to.

Having lived in a hot country, I am sensitive to the prospect of skin cancer so I don’t resist too much although I can’t be bothered doing it myself. I must admit, I favour an all-day cream because I won’t be doing it twice. It also costs a ridiculous £30.00 a tube so I definitely won’t be doing it twice. What could possibly be in that cream to merit a price of £30.00? Do they think I’m made of money.

I really don’t know when I became interested, almost fixated on money. Strange thing for a poorly paid teacher to do really. In my first few years of teaching, I lived in a garret flat paying £5.00 per week and my salary came monthly paid by cheque which I had to take to the Bank to pay in. We had Pay-in Books alongside Cheque Books.

I’ve just found a copy of a Paying-In Book online to remind myself what it looked like. Often I couldn’t be bothered going to the bank when I was busy working and I once found 3 monthly teaching salary cheques in a Bureau draw that I hadn’t got round to cashing. I lived very frugally in those days.

So it must be getting married that attracted me to cash. We have never had separate finances. We pooled everything from the start and I handed over Day-to-Day management to someone who could be bothered. I just look after the bigger picture. I love Maths, Economics and keeping up to date with investment. I’ve moved from not paying in any paychecks for 3 months to checking Bank, Savings and Investment accounts every morning just as I used to check Exchange Rates hourly at one point.

These are my favourite sites to visit regularly and it is important to constantly keep up to speed. I find them genuinely interesting. My shadow is constantly monitoring where the best prices are for things she intends to buy. Price comparison sites particularly for supermarkets are her thing.

Her iPad is white hot with visits to every clothes retailer known to woman but also all the supermarkets easily available to us here – Sainsburys, Tesco, Waitrose, CoOp, Morrisons, M&S, Aldi and Lidl. She only buys quality but at the best price and when there is a special offer on something she needs, a year’s supply may be purchased in advance.

I bet lots of people are price sensitive about petrol at the moment. Do you use a comparison site for petrol prices, Dear Reader. I have this app on my phone so I know which one of the fifteen nearby outlets is serving the cheapest Unleaded at the time I need it. The government’s warnings about price gouging seem to have had an effect but you can still find a 10p per litre discrepancy across our region.

Saving money through a little bit of effort undoubtedly accrues money and pays dividends – literally – in the long term. Just as a byline, we bought fresh fish this weekend – whole salmon, 2.5 kg of Tuna and 2.5 kg of Swordfish plus a kilo of prawns. The bill at £240.00 was more than the whole of my first month’s salary as a teacher back in 1972. Everything is relative in the end.