Sunday's spotlight - Retirement

By guest blogger Pete.

To visit Lincoln today you would find it hard to believe that, at one time, it was one of the heavy industrial centres of the U.K.. It was a Lincoln factory that produced the first tank for World War 1 and even aircraft production has taken place here. Today, though, all that is gone and the city has just one remaining heavy industry, named Siemens. Ownership of that group has changed hands fairly often over the past few years but it does appear to be stable at the moment with management talking of moving their city centre factory to the outskirts at North Hykeham.


Near by Grantham, where we once lived, has also suffered the same sort of loss with, amongst others, the closure of Coles Cranes and Avling Barfoot - the latter produced heavy industrial plant. This week a large dairy in the city was forced to close with the loss of 126 jobs. The other four diaries at various locations in the UK - all farmers' cooperatives - have followed the same fate and local farmers have received no income for May's production. Lincoln, at one time, as known as "Bicycle City"; today it's known as "Retirement City".


This recession is also having a say about when folk can retire. Private pension funds have been badly affected by the recession; many of those due to retire have felt fortunate if they've been able to carry on working rather than exist, as many retirees do, on a reduced pension.

Retirement is not looked forward to by some folk. But if you can afford it then it is definitely something to recommend. I wouldn't advocate a "couch potato" approach to it but then if that's want a person wants then who is to deny them that? There is, in most cases, no need to give up activities when you retire even though, at some stage, this may be unavoidable. It's rather a time for doing what you want to do when you want to do it. One of my neighbours - an old boy of 94 - advised me when I first retired to get all the chores done in the morning and have the rest of the day for yourself. He's still doing his own garden and house work - even goes for a walk every morning to collect his newspaper and the ingredients for his lunch.


I find that retirement is a time for indulging in hobbies. For me that mainly involves photography and the manipulation of photographs. I hope this week's photos show some of that despite their size. It's great fun. The first photo was the original one I took; the second some of the detail was removed to give an overall impression; the third I used high definition rendering; and the fourth was simplified but with colour exaggeration!


Answers to previous weeks' questions:
1) "TWTWTW" = That was the week that was.
2) "Where in SFIT" = Where in San Francisco is this?

By the way, the dvd/video sage is over. Got the machine back before Christmas after all!!

Go on looking forward and not backwards.