Monday 8 May
Liz was home for the weekend. An old school friend of hers was being married, and we were all invited to the wedding, at Allerton Castle. It was a splendid occasion, in a magnificant setting.
The only trouble was that I needed to wear a suit for this event. I scarcely ever wear a suit. In fact I only have one reasonably new suit. But it is made from a heavy woollen material, far too hot for a warm spring day. The only alternative was to get out an old summer suit from the back of the wardrobe. I know for a fact that this suit is 27 years old, because I remember buying it when we were living in Philadelphia in 1979. I haven't often worn it and it's still in pretty good condition. It is made from a lightweight material and is a pale greyish blue colour, just right for a wedding. The big question was, could I still get into it?
It has to be admitted that I have put on a few pounds since retiring. Liz and Mary have both commented on this, although their references to a beer belly are wildly exaggerated in my opinion. When I tried on the old Philadelphia suit I had a bit of a struggle to get the trousers buttoned at the waist, but the jacket still fitted perfectly. I think that's pretty good going, to be more or less the same shape after all these years.
There was a lavish reception after the wedding, and I had more than enough to eat and drink. But I wasn't conscious of the trousers being too tight, and they didn't feel at all uncomfortable. The suit has gone back into the wardrobe, ready for the next wedding, whenever that may be, and I'll try to shed those few unwanted pounds round the waist before then.
At the very back of the wardrobe there's an even older outfit, a dinner jacket that I have had for 44 years. I have definitely changed shape since that was new. I tried it on just out of curiosity and there's no way I could possibly wear it. I must have been much slimmer then, not only at the waist but across the shoulders, because I couldn't get into either the trousers or the jacket. Fortunately, I can't imagine that there will ever be an occasion when I'll need to wear a dinner jacket. I'll keep it, though, for sentimental reasons, because it was a 21st birthday present from my parents. They obviously thought that I would move in more formal social circles than I actually have done. I don't remember using it more than a couple of times.
Tuesday 16 May Journal anniversary
It's exactly eight years today since I wrote my first online journal entry. That's long enough ago to get me thinking about how much I have changed since then. The answer has to be, quite a lot.
In 1998, at the age of 57, I was still coming to terms with my own nature, knowing that although I led a perfectly conventional married life, my natural orientation was quite definitely gay. Through the internet I had, for the first time in my life, made several gay friends, and I wanted to join in their circle of online journalling and share my thoughts and feelings with them. Eight years later, I feel very much more relaxed about my situation, and I no longer feel the need to share it with others in the same way. I still like to have this journal, and I'll still update it when the mood takes me. But as you'll have noticed, the frequency of entries has definitely dropped.
Eight years ago, I had a full time job that kept me pretty busy. Now that I'm retired, I find (like most retired people I know) that I'm a great deal busier, and don't seem to have nearly as much free time as when I was employed. That's another reason for the neglect of this journal: I no longer have time to spend evenings writing here.
If you ask me what it is that keeps me so busy that I don't have time to write, I'd be hard put to give a convincing answer. I suspect that it's partly just an illusion. When people retire, and their lives are no longer so pressured, they just slow down and allow fewer activities to occupy more time. If so, then I have to say that it suits me very well. I'm finding that my days are fully occupied but entirely stress-free, and that's just the way I like it. Also, we have lots of time for going on holidays. Next week, we're off to Barcelona for a few days. I'll say more about that in future entries (if I can find the time to write them!).
Sunday 21 May
It has taken a while, but the refurbishment of our family room is now complete. Just about everything in the room needed attention or replacement. The ceiling, walls and skirting had to be painted, the curtains were old, faded and shabby, as were the two sofas and also the carpet. The first items to be replaced were the sofas. Mary loved them and was sorry to see them go, but I never liked their frilly, chintzy style. We replaced them with a sofabed and an armchair. The sofabed is a big asset, in effect giving us an extra bedroom for when the family come to stay with us. But its bold terracotta colour was quite tricky ro assimilate into the room. Neither of us has much colour sense, and we fretted for quite a while over the choice of curtain material and wall colour. I painted the walls in a shade described as "delicate cream", which is more or less what it looks like (but the photo below doesn't catch the colour at all accurately, making it look as though it's green rather than yellow).
I finished the painting on Thursday afternoon, and at that very moment the carpet people telephoned to ask if they could come to fit the carpet the next day. Excellent timing – it means that the painted walls and the carpet will have a week to offgas while we're in Spain. Otherwise, the fumes would be a problem for Mary, with her chemical sensitivities.
Family room: before and after.
Still on a domestic note, our wistaria tree is doing particularly well this year. We bought it as a small sapling soon after we moved here, so it must be nearly 25 years old by now. It is amazingly vigorous, and sends shoots all over the upstairs windows and up through the eaves into the loft. So last autumn I gave it a vicious pruning, cutting it back to within about ten feet of the ground. It seems to have liked this treatment, because it has bloomed better than ever this spring. I took this photo of it in one of the rare moments of sun that we have had in the past gloomy, rainy week.
So tomorrow we're off for a week in Barcelona, where I hope it's a good deal drier and warmer than here.
