A day at home (or retirement on trial)

As I have two days to take off before the end of the year (or lose the holiday if I work them) I decided to take today off and have a bit of a foretaste of retirement. I still woke at 7 a.m. , made tea and got Tom up to go to school. Sara took Mary to school and then went off to Weight Watchers after much persuasion from me. I spent the morning tidying and updating my blog as well as writing two articles for the Parish Magazine. Sara returned from lunch and we had rolls and soup. This afternoon I rang our holiday resort to find out about meals. Seems all will be taken care for us. Tonight I took Mary down to Sandy Balls Leisure Park in the New Forest for some ice-skating. We had a great time and I am pleased to report that I didn't fall over. The ice was rather churned up though with quite a lot of novices on it. It is amazing how warm you get skating around for 45 minutes, hungry too. Mary and I found a chippie in Fordingbridge and shared some fish and chips in the car. She is great company and I am really looking forward to being able to spend more time with her after January. Tonight, whilst writing up this blog, Malcolm phoned me from Liverpool to say that he is also being made redundant and discussed with me the package they are proposing to give him. He wanted my view on whether to take it. The deal he is getting is excellent and I recommended him to accept. I also told him my news about leaving my Company on a good package and retiring in February. We agreed that we should meet up in February either in Liverpool or down here and spend a week relaxing and getting over work!