‘It doesn’t matter what you were before, David, it’s what you want to be now.’ A friend of mine, not usually one for philosophical observations, stopped my thinking in its tracks with this one. We were on the well-thrashed out topic of retirement—I am entering year two of it—with me peddling my usual stories of feeling less relevant, of missing the action and influence I had at work. This cut-through one-liner is beginning to reframe all of that.

I have been talking and thinking about replacing something lost, rather than doing what did in my later working life, which was to re-invent my career now and again. As a CEO, when I began to lose the thrill of innovation and managing real change for the better, I just moved on, on average about every four years. There was a fairly predictable cycle that went something like this:

First 12 to 18 months—me given carte blanche to create something new or turn around a struggling organisation. Lots of conflict to manage, hard decisions to make, constant opportunities to be a leader, new political, cultural and technical realities to learn about every day. And, more often than not, pats on the back from people I respected, which was nicer than I liked to admit.

Second 12 to 18 months–a new team, some I’ve inherited, some I have head-hunted, begins to gel into a committed, productive bunch who, like me, are having fun doing worthwhile things. Budget problems are solved, old ways are re-tooled with input from the bottom up, new outputs are created that deliver more for the same money, conflicts that have been sapping energy and enjoyment are resolved. Systems, strategic plans, arrangements and partnerships that didn’t seem possible before are begin to emerge with much less friction.

Third 12-18 months—consolidation. We are now a ‘go-to’ organisation, with good people and new funding much easier to find. The few die-hard resistors from the old days are leaving, going quiet, or even having epiphanies and personal re-inventions. The budget is predictable. The new forward plan is well under way and referred to in virtually every meeting in every department. And I am starting to get restless. I know from experience that the next three years or so need to be about doing what we have decided to do well, with less focus on re-thinking the basics. Quality control. Standard procedures. Essential work I feel a deep urge to delegate. I know other people will be better suited to lead through this stage, and it is time to plan my next move.

It was often seen by colleagues as a risky change, preferably to a job referred to as potential career suicide, because I was drawn to the situation of ‘anything would be better than this’ rather than ‘this excellent outfit is ready to go to the next level’. Rightly or wrongly, I always felt, for me, there was actually more job satisfaction to be had with the almost-basket-case organisation. Occasionally things ended badly. I’ve been sacked once or twice when outside forces prevailed, but I always knew the direction had been more or less the right one. And usually, after about four years, the cycle would begin again. I’m lucky to be able to say now that I have no regrets about my professional life.

With all this experience of making a fresh start, what’s so different about retirement? Well, for one, it’s time to stop looking for the pats on the back. ‘High performing retiree’ is not a sensible objective. From now on it’s how I feel I am going about my daily affairs that matters. And the four-year cycle—how relevant is that to the next stage of my life? Assuming good health, I have at least ten, maybe twenty years to go, and it seems a novel idea to plan for several changes of direction in the golden years. But it does make sense—why expect to change the habits of a lifetime? So, to return to my philosophical friend, what do I want to be now?

Advice abounds. One friend said I must get four life domains working well: look after your family ties, maintain good health and fitness, do stuff just for you, and contribute to community welfare. OK, that’s something to hang on the wall, points for the mental whiteboard. Maybe that’s where I can go with my writing for a few days. One domain per jotting outing. I will try my hand with the first one, looking after family ties, in the next couple of days. I sense already the limits of self-disclosure and possible affront to others who might read this. It could end up being safe and bland–let’s see.

Three days not writing. My first failure to keep up my 5 days a week commitment. I’ve been doing well up to now. I think it is major distractions, a couple of personal/family issues clogging my thinking, which make my daily scribbles seem a lesser priority for now. Yet, as the author Ann Patchett says, ‘My husband is a doctor, and he’s not allowed to have doctor’s block. He’s not allowed to go home, sit on the sofa and eat pop-corn.’ She is so right—any plan to get good at something involves disciplined practice, not lots of sitting around waiting for the next big idea.

And I certainly don’t have a big idea to write about, but I know I need to put down one word after another, even if the result doesn’t have potential appeal for newly-excited mass audiences. Who wants to know that I’m a bit knackered after carting a few hundred bricks around my garden in a wheelbarrow? Or that I had a Vietnamese pork and salad roll for lunch? That’s it! I’ll start with the little Vietnamese lunch-shop near our house.

Roll In Saigon opened about two years ago, and there has been a queue out the front, sometimes winding down the street, almost since day one. Their rolls are just about perfect—full of vegetables, a little chilli and the meat of your choice. All for $6.50. They are so successful that the whole family takes a month off at Christmas time, and the queue forms the moment they return. Up till now it has been staffed by the family, but today there is an Anglo young woman on the counter, trying hard to keep up with the flying hands of the Vietnamese.

Actually the garden project is a bit interesting. My partner and I have had a running difference of opinion about whether to have a timber deck at the back of our house. After five years or so I’ve acquiesced, because it is about the only solution we can think of for our messy, uneven bricks, even if it is costly and risks being out of character with the house.

I am a low-performing handy-person, with limited skills and slapdash attitudes. But working alongside a good tradesman, as I have been today, is a joy. Scott has the whole project in his head; beautifully sequenced so that double-handling is avoided, and so mistakes can be rectified before they force a return to the beginning. He has spent time last night drawing up a plan, and explains to me what we will be doing when. It’s all going like clockwork, with none of the mounting costs and crises of confidence I experience on my own: none of the “Oh, I was meant to do that before I did this’ or the ‘No-one will notice’ shortcuts that would keep me awake at night because I know they will put safety or reliability at risk.

Of course, Scott is using tools that are way out of my league; a jack-hammer that I’m sure wants to injure me, and a laser device for taking levels that he says ‘Took me a long time to work out.’ I can’t imagine my chances, but it is a delight to watch as Scott says ‘If you want it to line up with the step at the back door, the deck will be just above your garden border over there’. Right now, experienced DIY-types are saying ‘Well, that’s what you do, duh.’ But I am childishly fascinated by this toy that replaces my guess-work with dead-straight lines. And I’ll take fascination over smug certainty any day. Maybe that sounds smug as well, but I’ll think about it later.

Thankfully, I do have some skills—and brick paving is one of them. While Scott wrestles with the jack-hammer, I have been using some of the bricks we have just pulled up to re-pave the area near our side door. Despite the mounting pain in my lower back (750 bricks, 5 at a time, hurts) I love the result. As one of my friends would say, ‘It looks just like a bought one.’ The levels are a bit informal, but in this context it just adds charm with no loss of function. My place in the team is secure.

After a year in Bali we’ve come back to our house in Adelaide a month ago, and I’m sorting through the impacts of Balinese customs and beliefs. I’m also trying to nail the essence of the ex-pat lifestyle that I found so enjoyable. In the first week, I was loosely observing a note to self to hang on to some changes in me; notably being more outgoing and socially adventurous, while at the same time becoming a better listener. As an expat in a popular tourist destination, the chances of meeting fascinating people are multiplied, and almost nobody seems affronted if you start chatting. (Although, I digress, Russian and Chinese travellers often seem unsettled by these social probings. One Russian woman told me it was just a fact of life in her country that if you don’t know people well, it’s better to be cautious.)

A few weeks later I find I keep slipping back into my quieter self, and I have to make an effort to chat with every check-out operator, every person I know vaguely, even everybody at a dinner party. I’ve been rebuffed by a couple of people—one man who was tucking into fish and chips outside a local shop paused to look mildly annoyed at my ‘that looks so delicious’ , followed by a super-lame ‘nice day for it’. OK, we spreaders of kind outreach can’t expect to win them all, but I am determined to stay on-message with this one.

One Bali behaviour I came to love is best summed up by the phrase ‘bagaimana enak?’ which, loosely translated, means wherever there is the possibility of unnecessary confrontation or blaming, the right question is ‘How do we make things OK between us?’ –or you can just say ‘enak?’ which means ‘all OK?’ Imagine a car has cut across in front of you on your bicycle. The instant Western reflex is to apportion blame, with a presumption of wrongdoing by the other party. ‘Dickhead’, WTF? ‘I can’t believe he did that’. And so on. This dialogue is usually muttered in private, but when it becomes spoken out loud to the supposed offender, matters can escalate quickly.

The Bali way assumes that no-one would want to hurt someone deliberately, and that accidents do happen. The key thing is to check that everyone is OK, and if an argument does start, to jump quickly to ‘bagaimana enak?’—‘how do we get to win-win?’ So the person that almost ran into me on my bike looks anxious for a second, then, seeing I am unhurt, breaks into a beautiful smile and asks me to join in celebrating that we have all survived intact. Which turns out to be surprisingly easy. Instead of riding on grumping about people who shouldn’t be on the road, I find myself smiling about how kind Balinese people are, and how much I love being amongst such a civilised lot.

The very day I came home, a person sped past me on a noisy behemoth of a motorbike, a bit close for comfort. Immediately I started mouthing off quietly. ‘Grow up pal, who are you trying to impress?’ ‘Look who’s got an early Christmas present!’ Etc, etc. Then I remembered. So I tried; ‘It’s OK, I’m not in danger, it’s a busy day, he might be late for work.’ Felt better and rode home in peace. The Bali way.

I’m going back for a short visit in a few weeks. Excited already at re-joining the expats and a few Balinese friends. Changing gears in my social behaviour and learning slowly about the aspects of Balinese customs that still have much to teach me. I’m not starry-eyed—some of the traditional beliefs are sexist and racist, some of the fatalism about the future feels like abdication from responsibility and opportunity—but no culture is perfect. I’m sure I can wring some more personal well-being out of Bali yet.

I’ve just been reading about people in New York with incomes in excess of two million dollars a year who object to being described as ‘affluent’. One woman said ‘having a private jet—that’s affluent.’ It’s easy for me to ridicule her refusal to accept that being in the top half-a-percent of the income curve means you have to cop it when the majority of people see you as wealthy. But am I any better?

I retired recently, and my income is about a quarter of what I had before. That’s a bit worse than many people, because I gave away half my superannuation money in a divorce settlement a few years ago. I admit to feeling a bit apprehensive about happens now; whether I can live well on this. Several people I know well are doing better, with long-term jobs ending in a handsome payout. Am I getting really anxious? Fortunately no, but this article about New Yorkers hit me with a reality check—I am very lucky to be so well off.

I’m still getting more than about 75% of retired people. I also have good friends who live almost entirely on the government pension, who have many less choices than I do. And I have a partner who has retired and has a larger income than me. So, at least while she sticks around, money won’t be a worry. We have no debts, and we don’t pay rent, except on a small on-site caravan in a holiday park. We are planning to go to France and Italy, and maybe also Bali this year. If this was 1950, that sort of lifestyle would mean that we were rich people. In fact, when I was about 40, if you hold told me I would have these comforts at the age of 70, I would have been ecstatic. The fact that so many people have in recent years achieved this level of disposable funds is a lousy reason to look upward at those even luckier, and to feel even the slightest twinge of discomfort.

But, my greedy id whines, if you had more money you could be so much more generous to your kids, and give more to worthy causes. Think of how much joy you could spread around with a million dollars! Hell, in Bali, your pet project trying to kick-start mental health services would be a shoo-in with that sort of money to wave around.

Id, as usual, is a self-serving delusionary, a sort of trickle-down economics believer who ignores the uncomfortable truth that people with much less money than me put more personal and financial resources into the community issues that they care about than I do. All my current giving probably adds up to about 4% of my income. When I was working, it was about 1.5%. Technically, I have become more generous, but that does not bear up under even the mildest questioning.

And in any case, it’s not all about money. Sure, it would be nice to be able to bring more to the table, but it is usually long term commitment that achieves change for the better, not just money. So enough of the frustrated philanthropist already!

I (and my partner) have more than enough to live well, in a lovely house in a great city, traveling once or twice a year, going to restaurants and shows more often than when we were working, and supporting the causes we believe in. I am not going down the slippery slope towards the dissatisfied rich who can only see that others have more. I know that I have enough, and that most people don’t. It won’t be money that gets in the way of a satisfying, comfortable and contributing life for me.

For about ten years, I have ridden around Adelaide with my long-time friend, Trevor. He’s a few years older than me, and we started riding together when his tricky knee made running impossible. I’m only recently retired, but Trevor has had several years to explore routes thoroughly, and acts as navigator most of the time. In fact, we just got back from a very pleasurable 40 kilometre jaunt, mostly along the metropolitan beaches, which look spectacular this sunny morning. White sand, emerald water, joggers, swimmers, kids building sandcastles, people walking their dogs (is a dog on a beach ever not deliriously happy?)

Of course it’s great being with a close friend while we wend our way through parks, along bike paths near rivers and the coast, and stop for coffee and buns at the half-way point. Like most places these days, we are not alone—bike-riding is a world-wide trend for all age groups it seems—but is easy to have heart-to-heart conversations much of the time, except when traffic makes it dangerous and noisy. Today we made good progress on a family problem that I’m trying to think through, and I think I helped a bit with a similar issue for Trevor. We are both fairly good listeners, which underpins most satisfactory conversations.

The only downside is Trevor’s poor eyesight. He is a statistical outlier—one of the 1% to 2% who get a really bad outcome from laser surgery. An irreversible situation he describes as ‘like looking through a smear of vaseline’. As a car driver he has alarmed us all for the last few years, and we are mightily relieved that he has decided to stop. And he has just sold his boat, for the same reasons. I know that hurt. As a bike rider, he has gradually become slow and careful, in contrast to earlier gung-ho denial of a problem. That’s good, but I don’t get quite the workout I need to keep fit. To compensate I career flat-out to his house, and just as hard coming home, so I get about half an hour of the heavy breathing, heart-pounding action I crave.

Even at this stately pace, he is prone to errors of judgement that can be terrifying; going ‘off his line’ into the path of cars, crossing an intersection when cars are speeding into them, doing battle with vegetation at the side of a bike-path. On one occasion he rode straight into a metal post, and needed plastic surgery on his face for the resulting gravel rash. Silver lining—he looks younger now—but it went so close to much more serious injuries. Riding alongside a tram-line, Trevor was trying to go fast enough to get to the crossing at the same time as the tram, so he didn’t have to wait for the traffic lights. Looking at the tram, not the post. His eyes don’t multi-task these days.

He will go out early in the day with me, but not alone, because the morning sun effectively blinds him. At those times he rides close behind me, watching my flickering rear light, and obeys my instructions. This has worked well so far, but I’m not sure other road users or the traffic police would approve if they knew what was going on. I’m happy to help; feels like loving friendship to me. I hope for many more years of this.

Finally. Something good about being in my early 70’s. I read this morning that ‘this age group is tops at mastering vocabulary—all those years of reading paid off’. The study (from MIT) of 50,000 people shows that we are over the hill on just about everything else, (duh) but who knew that we are in peak form using language? I’m not a late bloomer, I’m an age-appropriate scribbler, cashing in on my hard-earned verbal dexterity. This is my time, my golden years. Like my wine cellar, it’s now or never, drink up while you can still remember the difference between pinot and merlot. Knock ‘em dead with lucid prose before you’re a stranger to lucidity itself.

That touches a sad memory for me. My dad was a scribbler too; his genre was letters to the editor of ‘The Australian’ about the topics of the day. Each day he would read the paper, think for a time, usually while watering the garden, then pen a brief handwritten letter and post it. Yes, post it—this was before email. Most were amusing, some very touching, a very few angry. His favourites were one or two lines—he was a haiku addict—and his strike rate was amazing. In five years he was published more than 300 times. The editor sent him personal Christmas cards, and indulged him by printing letters no-one else could have got in. Like one which went ‘Breakfast should be a quiet time. If my wife is reading this letter, could she please pass the vegemite?’ She was, and she did. I asked him once if he had considered other forms of writing, and he replied ‘I’ve got half a million readers now, I’m never going to top that’.

Why a sad memory? One day he announced he was finished, because he just could not think of the right words any more. He stopped playing the piano at about the same time for similar reasons. He couldn’t bear to hear his favourite pieces on CD or the radio because it reminded him of what he had lost. Six months later he was diagnosed with Alzheimers and three years on he was gone. His rapid decline from gifted raconteur and pianist to a distant, confused and unhappy man wandering around in his pajamas haunts me still.

But to return to current realities. I have things to write and I’m in my prime, ready to deliver my personal best sentences! For today’s effort, I’ll briefly mourn the lost readability of ‘The Australian’. OK, I thank it for delivering the good news about my age group today, but I rarely buy it, preferring to read it in a café for free, just skimming for occasional actual news, until I get to the Sudoku. After I (more often than not) stuff that up, I put the paper aside, muttering to myself about rabid, grouchy journalists over-reaching for proof that ‘elites’ have egg on their faces yet again. (I must be in one, how come I don’t feel influential?)

In my dad’s day, this paranoid conservatism was there, in a few articles and letters to the editor, but it was balanced by other world views. Today, The Australian is well to the right of the ‘Spectator’ and not nearly as well written. Consider one headline today—‘We have 364 other days to wear black armbands’. It’s an article written by our chief budgie smuggler, saying that efforts to change the date of Australia Day are ‘Political correctness gone crazy’. And this is one of the more balanced opinion pieces, on a day when Trump apologists, climate change deniers and union-bashers are having a field day. A sad outcome, that this, our only national daily, spends its precious community capital insulting middle-of-the–roaders on most issues, deluding itself that it is the voice of the ‘silent majority’ when it has become no more than the mouthpiece of a tiny minority of selfish, fearful ultra-conservatives.

This morning I looked at my emails and Facebook about 45 minutes after I got up. Sad to say, holding out for 45 minutes is a record in recent times—a feat of delayed gratification that was mainly due to the fact that the phone was flat, and after I found the charger I got distracted for a while. I feel it’s an insult to writing per se to say this, but I’m writing now to avoid looking at news feeds.

This addictive stuff has claimed me, when I’ve thought for a decade or more that I was happily otherwise occupied. OK, at work I checked the emails constantly—I had to, it was a big part of what I got paid for. The satisfying circularity of getting a message, crafting a response with a specific intent to persuade in some way, perhaps getting a nibble of acceptance in reply, then delivering a polished package of win-win proposals to round up the exchange. Let’s face it, I miss all that.

But checking Facebook and Whats App and news feeds and the weather for the 20 to 30 minutes after I wake up? I know I’m joining billions of people, including virtually everyone over about 10 years old in my circles. But it’s time to have a hard think about this.

First, how much more do I really need to know about Donald Trump? He is my daily chance to fulminate about how bad conservative rich people really are. I treat his utterances as the big uncovering, the dirty truth from the mouth of a childish man so self-centred that he doesn’t care if we know. A man who has never been told to SHUT THE FUCK UP. Quite the reverse; he has been mightily rewarded for talking about all the behaviours we know are the opposite of decency.

And there I go again. Searching for the withering riposte that will top the millions of other Trump-reactive words written and spoken every moment of every day. Getting on to the New York Times early tomorrow morning for my next piece of hate-bait so I can start asking people who usually already know—‘Did you see what Trump tweeted today?’ And that’s just one reason I jump to the IPhone. As an aside, whose pockets is this lining, I wonder? People like the owners of the New York Times I guess. There are probably millions of me-types doing the same thing, so somebody must have worked out a way to monetize the behaviour.

Of course I check my emails first. Clearly, it’s important to me to be in loops of communication that stimulate, amuse, inform and validate. But these days there are only really one or two a day that are just to me, and not from someone trying to sell me something. They are rarely urgent, so I could leave them a day or two and no harm would be done. Am I ready to take action on this one? I think I might be. So, deep breath, here we go—I will check my emails once a day. That feels scary, and a bit naughty somehow, and just right, all at the same time.

Now for Facebook. I’m ready! Once a day from now on. Compared to up to five or so times at present. I’d be silly to opt out completely, as many do, because I find some really interesting stuff there. As for WhatsApp and text messages and phone messages, I see no harm there in checking as I see them come in, as long as I’m not in a movie, or a conversation or driving a car.

Which leaves me with the news feeds. This is harder. I’m such a news junkie. I look at the ABC in Australia, the New York Times and the BBC just about every day. As well as reading the actual newspaper whenever I can. Maybe it’s too soon to attempt this degree of rehab; it feels like a major personality make-over. Emails and Facebook once a day. Not a bad start.

The daily task–start writing because I promised myself I would after the short course about writing I joined recently. I’ve started twice—you see that above—in the last five days, which ranks as about a C-minus if anybody is keeping score. The teacher said just get on with it; write about anything; and after a while you will start moving towards topics, genres, forms that satisfy: you will develop your original voice if you have one, but only if you keep writing.

It’s plausible, and I’m not seized with a different theory, so, as I’m sure is obvious, this is an unfiltered, unedited burp of language. How my magnus opus might emerge is not at all obvious to me, but the half day course wasn’t cheap, so why not—I haven’t got a better plan. All I have is a need to write. I have no firm idea about the content, or the audience. I do like long-form journalism, and short stories, both done so well in the ‘New Yorker’, in which I luxuriate every couple of weeks. (yes, I know it’s weekly; mine is mailed from the US and arrives erratically) But I met people in the course who have moved well away from where they started—to fiction from non-fiction, from poetry to short stories, from a memoir to children’s stories.

Last year, I sent a more-or-less weekly email of about 750 words to my family and friends, while my partner and I lived in Bali. It was hugely enjoyable, especially, I confess, when I got praise and encouragement from my little audience. I tried to capture the experiences of being a tourist, of gradually becoming an expat resident. Describing as best I could many of the Balinese cultural, family and community activities and attitudes. Re-telling stories about Balinese life I heard from long term expats, and sketching the personalities of people we mixed with. Hoping I could give a glimpse of the sense of magic I felt, and of the timeless cycles of life in the rice fields and villages.

So I’ve come back to Australia with this sense that I have a new opportunity with writing. I think I have some ability, and I have time. I have acres of time. So much free time that it scares me. Most days, if I wanted to, I could sit down and try to write for a couple of hours. That’s not likely, for now at least, because other activities attract me more, but maybe this will start to hook me in—no way to know just yet. So, new announcement to self! I will do this short writing thing five days a week for another month. That’s about 20 pieces of about 500 words—10,000 words. Impressive. Scary. Today counts as number one—only 19 to go. I do better with targets that have numbers in them. This sounds like a plan.

I’m feeling grumpy about on-line booking and purchasing systems. It seems almost every time I go to buy something—a ticket, a reservation, a service or any product—I have to give multiple personal details for a ‘membership’, or get the app, then take time to get past my reluctance to say my age, my gender, my address, even when nothing is being delivered. Cursing at the ‘confirm your email’ and the home/office telephone numbers when the mobile is sufficient. Peering at the phone with furrowed brow and glum face, trying not to type the wrong letters or numbers, swearing under my breath.

Ok, I know this all takes about five minutes, which is way less than visiting an office or a store, or waiting on a telephone queue. Which is why I do it so often. But the naked lust for a new customer’s details, which will then result in a deluge of special offers, often from sellers several degrees of separation from the first who are now sharing my data, gives me anxieties the way Dave Eggers’ book ‘The Circle’ did. At least if I go to the shop, all I have to do is tap my credit card and politely decline to become a member. Of course, then I am often offered a discount for membership, which is seductive, and I may go for it anyway.

So now like the rest of us, my phone pings and dings away merrily, with emails and text messages urging me to act now and buy whatever. And as they well know, for every fifty I delete, I pause on one or two, and might just buy one. Thereby joining the monthly report stats for the company that shows online marketing strategies like loyalty programs and ‘one chance’ offers do work well enough to justify their investment.

For now I can’t think of a way to opt out of all this, because, I have admit, I buy a lot of stuff. I’m a reasonably well-off retired person with time on my hands, part of a desirable demographic I’m sure. But today, I registered for a seminar which is free, and still had to all of the above. I want to go to this event, and they won’t let me in without a ticket, so now another ticketing agency has my date of birth, my address, my phone numbers and so on. No doubt they will pass them on to third parties for a consideration, along with the type of event, helping to narrow the focus on my preferences for the next purchase.

And it’s global. I’ve just returned from Indonesia, where I’ve been for a year, and my phone is full of blandishments from there, offering deals I’m in no position to accept even if I wanted to.

For now I guess, I’m unlikely to become an old eccentric withdrawing from all this, using cash only, refusing to give my details unless I’m forced to, getting cranky with junior staff just doing what they’re told to. So, regrettably, my advice to me is stop complaining. I will for now.

My shortcomings as a cook are legion. First I am slapdash about quantities of ingredients. An extra splash of oil? An extra bit of chilli? A bit more than half a cup? I tend to do it all and more. My attention to the printed word is erratic—I miss whole ingredients, or put in the oil before I’m meant to, or forget the bit about testing to see if more seasoning is required. Tonight I finished stuffing the squid tubes and sealing them with toothpicks, only to realise I forgot to season the mixture after processing, and before insertion. Much muttering, another swig of sauvignon blanc, unpicking and re-stuffing, then I’m ready to cook. At least this time I noticed before it was too late.

But I do have some successes. The slow cooker, for example, is so forgiving and so simple. It almost always turns out food that’s flavoursome and easy to digest. I do know how to barbeque most meats and vegetables, so I’m a male cliché—the guy you can send outside with that bit of the process. And Greek salad—I am proud of my balanced, refreshing, not too much onion, just enough fetta creations. Only really lovely olives. Maybe it’s because the ingredients are so simple, the combinations so easy to make palatable; or, mundanely, maybe just because I’ve done it hundreds of times.

All this is on my mind with my recent retirement. I have announced, surprising myself, that I will make several meals a week from now on. I’m a slave to my announcements—once made they have to be proven genuine—so now I have the cookbooks/computers out most days, looking for the next recipe that doesn’t involve complex processes like straining through muslin, or lengthy reductions, or whipping to soft peaks.

I have discovered the joys of the food processor. A brand new substance in a few noisy seconds; it’s more fun than a power drill or a water pressure cleaner, which is a big call. This may lead to new culinary heights I’ve never thought feasible for me—but of course I have to get the lack of discipline around quantities and recipe reading under control as well. Speedy mistakes are no tastier than slow ones.

Maybe soon I will be enjoying cooking. Millions seem to. I do hope so, because I can’t see any downsides. Except the nagging feeling that I’m supposed to be attending to weightier matters; that I’m starting to find ways to fill in retirement time so I’m not bored and restless. It’s early days—in a few months I may feel quite differently about this, and about gardening, and Mah Jong, and long walks. Who knows—as Bob Dylan said once, ‘I’m a stranger to my own desires’.