Retired or just tired again

Retirement, they say, is a time of quiet relaxation and restful contemplation of life. I’ve discovered, however, that it doesn’t have to be that way. 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I’m just tired. That’s because I’m not sure I’ve ever been busier than I am now. It doesn’t matter that most of the things we do are for pleasure. They’re just as exhausting.

Take walking, for instance. That seems to be our main form of exercise these days. It takes me back to my schooldays, when one of my main pastimes was walking on Dartmoor. Moor walking, we called it, and I’ve never done more walking.

These days I’m not quite up to the distances I did then. It’s one thing to be seventeen, another to be four times that age. Sadly, it doesn’t give you four times the energy. Where once I walked 25 or 30, these days I’m doing well to manage 15 or 16, and even that’s a cheat: the 25 or 30 were miles, in England, the 15 or 16 are kilometres, in Spain.

Still, it keeps me in form. I know that because afterwards my feet hurt, my back feels bent out of shape and my legs are stiff. As a good Puritan Englishman, I know that if it hurts that much, it must be doing me good.

We’ve just got back from four days of hiking in the spectacular mountains of North Eastern Spain. Not the Pyrenees. The mountains we visited are rather lower, though you could have fooled my legs.

Caves are great

So are strangely eroded rock faces

Clouds can do curious things too

Water can be impressive...

... especially in lakes

Walking in glorious landscape was the principal, certainly the ostensible, reason for the trip. We got plenty of that. But to be honest, just being with the group was pleasure enough. That’s down to the organiser, Javi as he’s known (pronounce that initial J like the final sound in ‘loch’ and the V as a B, and you won’t be far off). You may remember him. He’s skilled at bringing together people, most of whom are a delight to know.

Javi, our intrepid leader

And the team (most of it)
It was the company that made the trip

What’s more, almost all were Spanish. The four days with them constituted a serious immersion course. We’re immigrants keen on assimilation, so it was great to get that boost to the slow progress we’re making in learning the language. 

Are you familiar with Murphy’s Law? The general principle that if something can possibly go wrong, it will? If, for instance, you drop a piece of bread on the floor, it’s bound to fall buttered side down. There’s a great story about all that.

“Just what is Murphy’s Law?” a schoolkid asks a teacher at a dining table.

“I’ll show you,” says the teacher. 

He quickly butters a slice of bread and throws it across the room. It falls to the floor. But it falls butter side up, not down.

“Now that,” says the teacher, “is Murphy’s Law.”

Murphy’s law hit us when our coach boke down. That was the coach that got us to the lovely province of Soria in the first place, and then took us each day to the start of our walks. As far as the walking was concerned, that didn’t matter, since there are plenty of great hikes and we went for one close to where the coach had failed. 

The far bigger problem was that this was the day of our great lunch, the one booked in a restaurant famous for its lamb stew. Since the hotel where we were staying didn’t enjoy or, sadly, deserve the same high reputation for its cooking, we really didn’t want to miss that meal.

Fortunately, this is Spain, and such problems are merely small flaws in the bountiful tapestry of life, whose splendid colours and joyful patterns minor inconveniences only underline. Eventually, another coach showed up and took us to the restaurant. We were late, but ‘late’ is a concept that needs careful interpretation in Spain.

I haven’t yet entirely freed myself of the Anglo-Saxon definition of ‘morning’ as ending at 12:00 noon (“12 pm” as it’s often called these days, a curious usage since “pm” means after 12:00). In Spain, “morning” seems to mean “up to the time when I have lunch”. Now a lot of Americans regard 12:00 as the appropriate time for lunch (some even start earlier), and many in England would go for a time around 1:00. Spanish restaurants don’t even open that early. I once tried to book a table at 1:30 in a restaurant that claimed to open then, only to be asked whether we could make it 2:00 instead.

Still, even the Spanish reckon the morning’s over, and lunchtime well and truly arrived, by 2:00. Certainly by 2:30. So showing up at 3:30 rather pushed the definition to its limits. Or beyond.

It also meant that we finished lunch at just before 7:00. Again, I know that I’m only applying alien (i.e. Anglo-Saxon) habits here, but that I feel is beginning to stray into what I would call dinner time. 

Long table for the long lunch

Of course, to the Spanish, that’s far too early for dinner. But it would pose a different existential question: with lunch ending so late, how would we get time for a siesta before bedtime?

Besides, we still had a duty to perform that day. Like last year, we had to collect sloes to make the traditional drink of Patxarán, which involves steeping the fruit in aniseed liquor. It was getting dark. So we had to be quick with the sloes.

Quick sloe hunt

No one felt like dinner that evening, so instead there was a group singalong. I have to say that my sons, always delightfully supportive to their poor father, long ago made it clear to me that I was completely wrong to think I sang badly. The truth was far worse than that. 

I had a term’s singing classes at school. At the beginning of the following term, I turned into one of the longer corridors in the school and spotted my singing teacher appearing at the other end. I’ve never seen anyone execute so smooth, graceful or rapid an about-turn and disappear back up the side corridor he’d emerged from. 

I got the message.

So I didn’t stay for the sing-song, fine though the voices were. Instead I wrote my first draft of this post. And then turned in. I knew next day was going to be the toughest of the lot. One of those walks where you struggle uphill for ages, only to find yourself at the bottom of the steepest climb of all. In this case, a fine little peak with a good scramble over rocks at the top.

Top of the world (well, locally at least)

Still. I felt at the top of the world when I got there. The wonderful views, in excellent company, took my breath away. Just like getting there left me breathless.

Ah, the joys of quiet retirement.