Should retired couples spend time apart?

I am in India this week. When I was working I used to travel here quite.a lot because I had teams in Delhi and Chennai. My last visit was in February 2020. I had meant to return that autumn, to say goodbye to my teams before retirement. Unfortunately the pandemic scuppered my plans and I was not able to see my teams in person, either in the UK or India. So this visit is my chance to meet up with some of those ex colleagues, as well as a chance to see some of the areas of India where I have never visited.

The India Parliament buildings from one of my walks
this week

I would love to have brought my wife, Mandy, but she would have hated the noise, the mix of wealth and poverty, and the spiced food which characterise this wonderful country. So we are away from each other for two weeks. Since I retired, this is the first time we have been apart for so long. For much of that time have lived every moment together, in the small tin can that is our narrowboat.

Given that for much of my career I would be away from home during the week, it is amazing we have not killed each other, being together all the time. There have certainly been moments when I have thoroughly irritated Mandy. But being together has become our new normal, and I have to say that being so far apart this week is feeling very odd. We video chat every day, but I am used to sharing my adventures and I am missing her.

But I know that logically it is important we retain our own identities. We are more than just a couple and this holiday is giving me a chance to do my own thing while no doubt back in Scotland, Mandy will be relishing having her own space. I am only three days into the trip, and by the end, I hope to have relaxed into solo travelling.

Do you think spending time apart is good for a relationship, or should we just be enjoying our time together? What do you think?

February 10, 2023 0

Is this my last year skiing in the alps?

I didn’t learn to ski till I was in my forties. I was the kid that hated sliding in the playground, and saw nothing to enjoy in sliding down a mountain. But my wife really wanted to ski, and after several years of holidays that I did not really enjoy, I finally got the hang of it, and since then have loved skiing. We skied at least once a year until 2020, when we stayed in Morzine just as the pandemic was breaking. This week has been our first week on the slopes since then, as we came back to the great resort of La Plagne.

Last time we were here was five years ago. La Plagne is quite a high resort for the French Alps, with our hotel at 2100 metres, and the tops of the mountains over 3000 metres. At this time of year it should be guaranteed great snow, and back in 2018 the drifts were well over my own height.

This year has been quite different in the French alps, and just two weeks ago La Plagne was grassy hills and patches of ice. Fortunately last week it had the first big dump of snow, and so conditions have been good for us. But even then, by the end of the week the snow has been skied off on some of the steeper pistes.

When we started skiing, some of our favourite resorts were around 1500 metres, such as Soldeu in Andorra, and Courchevel 1550 in France. These days, even with artificial snow blowers, these are no longer great ski resorts. I feel that our days of skiing in the alps may be over.

I expect that for some readers of this blog, you may be considering me pretty privileged. If the worst that the global climate emergency brings is a change to my vacation plans, then lucky me. But it is still a reminder- a reminder that global warming is real, is happening and will change all our lives. Because it is progressive, climate change does not make the news every day, but it is probably the most important story in my life, and probably yours. I make no excuse for having flown here, and for keeping my gas central heating on when we get home at the weekend. But I have learnt to love skiing, and maybe this will be the last year with sufficient snow to make it work.

Has your life changed due to the climate emergency? Will things ever return to “normal”?

January 27, 2023 0

Using up my air miles

When I was working I had teams in India and used to visit quite frequently. Over the years I built up 106,000 Emirates air miles, which are soon running out. This has given me the opportunity to try to use them up and get myself a final trip back to India to see my old friends. This blog is about the challenges that I have faced trying to book. It is a real first world problem story, so if that is going to irritate you, please stop reading now!

106,000 miles sounds like a lot. It would take you over four times around the world. When airmiles first started they would relate to how many miles you could get on a free flight, but these days, they are just points. I think airlines try to give you more so you think you have a big number but they aren’t actually worth as much.

I did lots of research, found some dates in February next year, when the prices are lower, and looked at return flights between Glasgow and Chennai and Delhi. I found that if I could do a flight to Chennai, I could do that with my miles plus airport taxes, and then pay for the return from Delhi. Unfortunately this didn’t work. Turns out that flying into one city in India and back from another does not count as a return, so costs nearly double. It also turns out that you can’t go one way on miles and the other with cash. You have to choose one or the other.

Emirates do what looked like a solution where you can use cash and miles, but when I tried that, the miles were worth very little, and again it was too expensive. But then I received an email telling me that till the end of the week I could buy additional miles with a 35% discount. This would be a solution that could work. I could buy 71,000 extra miles and then fly to Delhi and back using miles alone.

But then I hit technical problems. The website took me through the whole process, as far as taking my credit card details and checking with my bank, before saying “There has been a problem” and dumping me out. Emirates told me I was using the wrong browser, so I changed that but no success. My bank tells me that there is no issue at their end. So now I am sitting here, waiting for “the back end team” to call me back, and hopefully give me a solution before the offer runs out tonight and it becomes too expensive again.

As I said earlier, I know this is a first world problem, and I am very lucky to have the opportunity to even consider a flight to India. I also know that long haul flights have a massive carbon impact, so maybe I should not be going. But India is such a great country, and I have so many friends that I never properly said goodbye to when I left work, due to the pandemic.

Any thoughts?

May 27, 2022 7

Why spending a month away is different

We have been in Orkney for a while now. The first couple of weeks were very like any other vacation. We had our sons with us and we went to see all the famous tourist attractions, such as the Ring of Brodgar (standing stone circle) and Skara Brae (neolithic village). It was a great break. But it was not really why we came here, and this week has felt different. It has been wet and windy all month, but this week particularly so. So there has been more hunkering down in front of a fire, and less tourist stuff. I have read a couple of books, and watched some new films. It is very chilled.

But I am not the kind of person to sit still for long, so I have been out discovering the less famous sites in Orkney. It is a quite incredible place, full of history. At low tide we walked across to the Brough of Birsay, where the vikings became Christians and started a monastery. Near Finstown, I climbed down through a roof hatch into Wideford Chambered Cairn, hidden on the side of a hill, where Neolithic people buried their families. We found the ruins of a rare circular church, at Earl’s Bu, next to a Viking drinking hall. Despite sideways hailstones in a gale, I found the Brock of Borthwick, an ancient tower on the edge of a cliff. It feels as if there is history around every corner here.

These are the kinds of places you never have time for in a short vacation, the kinds of places known by locals. And I have found that talking to local people has been another difference. Perhaps also because we are out of season, I feel that we are treated less as outsiders on this trip. I have met fascinating people. I had a personal history education session from a guide at Maeshowe visitor centre. I found out about Stromness in the Royal British Legion Club. The local butcher knows me by name.

I even heard about a place called “Happy Valley” which I have not seen in any of the tourist books, and has no signposts. Orkney has very few trees and has quite a bleak landscape. So 70 years ago, a man called Edwin Harrold bought a cottage on a hillside and over his lifetime, built a special garden around it, with trees, flowers, brooks and waterfalls. When he died, he passed the property on to the council and it is maintained free to visit. I am guessing that few tourists discover this special place, and when I went to see it, I felt there was no-one for miles around.

So it does feel different. Indeed, Mandy & I have been considering staying even longer. I suspect we will decide to come back to civilisation for December, but we do feel privileged to have shared these very wonderful islands for a little while.

November 19, 2021 0