Moans and groans
We do like to complain
...and moans and groans is our place to do so!
Moans and groans is a place for us to complain: complain, that is, before we get active in the interest groups to do something about the state of our world.
But moaning and groaning is a waste of life, so get them all out then let's do something more productive.
The US election was quite something
Submitted by webmaster on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 12:24.We Brits are given to looking down on the Yanks as 'Johnny-Come-Latelies' and their elections as a load of vulgar razamataz followd by more of the same.
But this time we clearly got it wrong - well at least with regard to the razamataz though we still have to sea how the 'more of the same' bit goes.
Thank God for That
Submitted by webmaster on Wed, 05/11/2008 - 12:56.As a foreigner to the US elections, I judged McCain to be a decent man handed the poison chalice of the Bush heritage and a financial meltdown.
However, his choice of running mate was a self-inflicted wound of monumental proportions. To choose a lady whose very life style demonstrates an ability to ignore the facts and substitute belief for analysis, who reads no newspapers, who believes that being a 'hockey mum' and a distant view of Russia compensates for a total lack of knowledge of how the US, let alone the world, works.
4000 Spammers and counting
Submitted by webmaster on Sun, 02/11/2008 - 12:54.4000 spammers and counting - we must be doing something right.
Join the Retired but Active Team
Submitted by webmaster on Thu, 30/10/2008 - 00:15.
The Quiet Americans
Submitted by webmaster on Sun, 26/10/2008 - 15:41.A few days ago I was in the company of thousands of young Americans in a field with sea views extending to the far horizons. Though it was late October the sky was clear and blue and though the Americans were young and visiting a foreign country they were quiet and ordered.
The Flat Earth Society is alive and well
Submitted by webmaster on Mon, 08/09/2008 - 10:00.and governing Alaska
It's fundamental
Submitted by webmaster on Tue, 26/08/2008 - 14:50.It's not often that I agree with my brother-in-law
...he's a man who always lives by the rules and I... well I'm a rule breaker, an iconoclast, a pricker of bubbles
Yet yesterday we agreed that the problem wasn't with Christian Fundamentalists, or Islamic Fundamentalists: it's just with 'fundamentalists' and Prof Dawkins has proved once and for all that there is such an animal as a 'Atheist Fundamentalist' - or more accurately a 'Darwin Fundamentalist'.
I used to be a 'has-been'
Submitted by webmaster on Mon, 11/08/2008 - 22:58.My career came to an abrupt and unexpected end!
I wondered who I was now I was no longer defined by what I was
I had been 'the boss' to a hundred or so people, and I had been 'the boss' since my early thirties. 'The boss' was part of my persona; I liked it that so many people liked to work for me, that I had moved on so many careers, solved so many questions, moved so many forward and suddenly that was all gone.
I missed it when it went.
Now I am my wife's husband; my children's father, my grandchildren's grandfather.
I used to be a has-been
Which Theme is the Better?
Submitted by webmaster on Fri, 08/08/2008 - 17:01.Sight Seeing
Submitted by webmaster on Tue, 29/07/2008 - 19:40.
There's a lot of people at the gym in our age range
...and perhaps I'm unduly cynical
...but I wonder about the motivation of some of us!
Some of us are clearly worried about our waist lines and are watching them like a hawk
Others only watch the girls and - shall we say - the dynamic aspects of their excercises
Radovan Karadzic and Retiring to Goa
Submitted by webmaster on Wed, 23/07/2008 - 13:51.The arrest of Radovan Karadzic, in the guise of a harmless if useless practitioner of alternative medicine makes me wonder about the nature of all things foreign. When I worked in Nigeria there was a sign on the main road advertising 'Madame Comfort - Midwife and Cement Dealer', and across the road a native doctor had cures to 'exam failure' and 'wife doesn't love you'.
In who's Interest?
Submitted by webmaster on Wed, 16/07/2008 - 12:25.I visited my Mother this week
She was a wonderful person, she was the mother of five and kept us all warm. well fed, clean and happy.
Now the youngest of us is in his mid-40s and she in in her late 80s. She's had at least one stroke, and is deeply confused.
She's deeply unhappy, but kept alive by a pile of pills. She's tried to kill herself once, but now she's incapable of doing even that.
My wife has a relation who'se 101 and spends her days in silence staring at the ceiling.
In who's interest?
Decoration is not my forte
Submitted by webmaster on Mon, 23/06/2008 - 15:03.Even my most ardent admirer
....would have to admit that decorating rooms is not a forte of mine. i have painted more carpets than walls and the kitchen cupboards I put up for my good lady fell on her just a few months later.
As a bodger I can spot another bodger at a mile - usually I buy their houses.Today I have a professional decorator in and he makes everything look very easy and me feel a bit of a failure. It wouldn't be so bad if the lad didn't look like he was about 12.
My friendly pound
Submitted by webmaster on Sun, 22/06/2008 - 17:06.Some friends are just too persistent!
Ten and more years ago, when I lived and worked in West Africa and lived on a diet of gin and tonic and beer, I topped 16 stone.
My life was not sedentry: I walked to and from my car and often excercised my arm when lifting food to my mouth.
Choice - what choice?
Submitted by webmaster on Wed, 18/06/2008 - 10:26.We're told that we 'baby-boomers' have more money, health and ambition
... than any generation before us. Many of us have bought our houses, and most of us have benefitted from medical treatments unheard of when our parents needed them so we should be pleased.
We should be pleased that our grown up children who can't afford a house 'return to the nest'
We should be pleased to baby sit our grandchildren whilst their parents work to buy the newest gadgets and have the best holidays
The Advantages of Age
Submitted by rogerwebb on Mon, 16/06/2008 - 17:09.
Sometimes it's difficult to appreciate the advantages of age
When your joints creak, more tablets than food pass your lips and your short-term memory starts to fade, it's hard to imagine that 'maturing' is supposed to be a positive process. As a friend said over the weekend, you know you're getting old when you don't have to run to the gents; because it simply and gently seeps out.
The World gets by Without My Input
Submitted by rogerwebb on Fri, 13/06/2008 - 17:44.Its all very strange...
that I'm up with the lark every morning, eager to turn the radio on and suck in all the misery that the world can generate.
... and just of late it has much on offer
What with earthquakes, African Dictators, droughts and floods, every morning I can find enough to get me worked up for a day or more. Bush or Brown has only to open his mouth, another celebrity get arrested for drugs, some guy in Austria lock up his daughter.......
Then I go on holiday and the world is denied my input
...and it didn't seem to notice.
No-Talents
Submitted by Wilde on Mon, 09/06/2008 - 11:16.I've got no talents - make me a star
I watched a programme on the box last night which explained that TV companies find it cheaper and easier to elevate 'no talents' to stardom than to pay real talents to produce real entertainment. The evedence of my eyes says you don't have to be good looking, and that of my ears says intellegence isn't a pre-requisit.
Well I've got no talents so why did they leave me out? I'm only moderately ugly and my family frequently comment on my dimness. I qualify!
The Retired but Active Chat Room
Submitted by rogerwebb on Tue, 03/06/2008 - 14:13.Chat Rooms put you in touch with the world
Chat Rooms are for teenagers- True: many Chat Rooms are designed for teenagers and others are dominated by them
- Retired but Active Chat Rooms are for members only, and we don't have teenage members.
On enforced retirement
Submitted by webmaster on Tue, 20/05/2008 - 11:12.I didn't really want to retire
I made no secret of it. On the one hand i couldn't really afford to retire and on the other what would I possibly do with my time.
The year before had given me a dose of reality: my dear stepfather had a business of his own and carried on with it for far too long - until he was 86 - and took a thriving business down into the dust.
So the questions arise. If it's too early to retire at 65 when is the right time? if that's a different number for different people who is going to tell us?
Group Leadership
Submitted by rogerwebb on Sun, 18/05/2008 - 09:31.
The success or otherwise of Retired but Active
... in its mission to improve our retirement experience depends on our ability to attract Group Leaders with the time and inclination to explain their own area of interest to others.
On Celebrity
Submitted by webmaster on Sat, 17/05/2008 - 18:11.I'm not really into celebrity
When some celebrity turns up on the box, or in the papers, a state of ennui comes upon me. I don't know which one's which, who's on the way in and who's 'so last year'.
They all seem to have appeared, like so many sorts of coffee, at some moment whan I wasn't looking. In any case they're all about twelve years old and with more money than i will ever see. Most of them seem only to be famous for being famous so i can't see that even with my limited talents i couldn't be one too.
