toliver36In a few days my birthday will mark the three-quarter century point. I have been wondering what changes I will notice as I edge towards becoming an octogenarian. One thing I have noticed already is the discrepancy between what I want to do and what I actually can do. In the enthusiasm of carrying out some plan or activity, I get overly ambitious, deciding or agreeing to do something only to discover I haven’t got the energy to carry it through. These little defeats seem to occur more...
latest release – A SINGLE STEP – AVAILABLE NOW!
Finally – the 3rd book in my 3rd Age trilogy, A SINGLE STEP, is published and available as a paperback or an ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Booklocker.com or through any bookstore. To preview the first two chapters free, just check my blog post for March 9th to read it online. Your comments and reviews would be appreciated in return for a free copy of the ebook – just let me know and I’ll send it to you.
Senior house moving – stress -full or -free ?
Selling your home is supposed to be one of the most stressful things you can do – right up there with getting a divorce or a death in the family. But what if you have all three together? This past year has involved me in all of them and I’m starting to feel some side effects. For instance, I spend a lot of time going very purposefully from one room to another, intending to accomplish something from my growing to-do list. I begin to do the task, only to abandon it part way through because I...
After downsizing – what next?
Ever since we sold the house, we get asked the same question by friend, relative or stranger – what are you going to do now? It’s as if it unnerves people that you’ve popped out of your pigeon-hole and not immediately gone into another. Almost as if you’re vaguely perceived as a threat – a loose cannon. You’re forced into creating plausible scenarios tailored to fit the questioner – from sensible to frivolous according to how you read the level of concern in their voice. Apart from the stress...
GERONTOCRACY – ugly word for an ugly situation
On the eve of a trip which will take me half way round the globe from Vancouver to Paris – and back again a few months later, I should be full of anticipation and excitement. In the past, I would have been. But now, things have changed. Too many difficult questions have been avoided or evaded in order for me to indulge myself with this journey. Up until now, I’ve managed to suppress them but yesterday they were triggered afresh by an article in the Toronto Globe and Mail. The writer shoved my...
Paris – 2nd Impressions
As the old saying goes, you don’t get a second chance at a first impression. But it’s been so long since my first impression 50 years ago that it almost seems that way. In that long ago time I had hoped to live and work here in Paris but I couldn’t make it happen so I de-camped to England where I lived and worked for the next half century, biding my time. During that period I made several forays back across the channel but only for holidays or short breaks, never to stay to live and work....
SENIOR PARIS
My elderly mother-in-law used to regard going to the local post office in the village where she lived, to buy a stamp, as her day’s outing. The rest of the family thought this was very amusing, including me. Yesterday, I finally bought a stamp. One full month after arriving in Paris, I’ve discovered where the local post office is. Until you find yourself in a place as appealing as Paris, you forget that people back home are not satisfied with an email. Something more is expected of you. Like...
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012
Maybe this year it’s the women’s turn at last to sort out the mess that we men have got us into? Recently, I’ve seen and read some encouraging signs that this could be the case. And the bulk of these women are 3rd Agers too. If we look at the Alberta tar sands for example, several of the First Nations chiefs are women and they are the most active and vociferous in defending their lands against the inroads of the oil corporations and their destructive pipeline plans. Ranged alongside them is...
A Farewell to Paris
In a few hours I’ll be on the Eurostar to London and 5 days later I’ll be back in Vancouver. Will this really be a farewell to Paris or only an ‘au revoir’?Three months is not a long time to fulfill a lifetime’s dream but it may have to do. It has been long enough to get over the feeling of just being a tourist and start to be recognised by some of the locals who now smile and greet me in the neighbourhood. It’s been long enough also to realise that at 75, my ability to become a fluent speaker in French will not happen. So, unless I’m happy to be a wistful expat, forever on the outside of
Occupying Paris at 75
Martin Luther King Park, in front of our appartement, is a large sprawling area of former railway yards which was supposed to have become the Olympic Village if Paris had been chosen for the 2012 Olympic Games.But London won that dubious honour and is now busily bankrupting its citizens, adding to that long list of hopelessly indebted cities who have unwisely been host to the Olympic Games in the past.On top of the current financial crisis, it is ironic that London has willingly added to the UK’s already staggering debt burden.Paris, meanwhile, has acquired the land and is constructing the largest