I am approaching 70 . In fact I am galloping towards it , I looked at a note I made in 2014 saying I will be 65 this year , it seems like yesterday . (I was 70 in September just to keep us up to date)
When I was young I did not really think I would get old, I remember looking at far distance dates when certain things would occur such as retirement and becoming a pensioner and expiry of my driving licence and thinking it to far off to be bothered about . It seems suddenly to have arrived and I cant think where the intervening 50 years have gone . So, my driving licence will expire shortly . I wasn't sure quite what to do , would I need to take another test ? I didn't fancy that . The government sent me a form to renew my licence . I was torn between joining the 21st century and doing it online or remaining firmly in the paper age I prefer . I opted to do it online. I started to complete the form when I got a message saying you cant renew the following groups online and should stop now unless you wish to give them up . I wasn't sure if I needed them , I decided to phone the DVLC . Nobody wants you to phone them . It took me ages to get a number . Then there was the usual layers of menus and if you choose the wrong one you end up not with a person but with a website address . Finally the nice man I got to talk to agreed with me I was probably unlikely to want to drive a pantechnicon or double decker bus and I should let it go.
I finished the form and hit send .
A message was appeared saying well done Martin , but , we need just a teeny bit more information so we are sending you a form. What info ? I phoned the nice man again ,easier this time as I had the number and knew the menu . Don't worry he said it does it all the time its nothing and you couldn't have renewed online anyway because you have a paper licence..
2retire2
Thursday, 18 July 2019
My mother said she called me Martin because the name was uncommon (this being back in the day when William , Stephen and David were the sort of names people got rather than Brooklyn ) there were 5 of us called Martin in my year and I went to a small school . But there you go there are fewer of us now. I found a note at one point that Hernan Cortes was given 20 slaves by the natives of Tabasca (I wonder if that where the name for Tabasca Island comes from ) anyway one of the slaves was a women called La Malinche who became his mistress they had a son and guess what he was called - yup Martin !!
Mind you strikes me as an unlikely name for a Spanish conquistador and a 16th century south American women to choose but there we are .
I started this blog in 2016 , mostly for me more a diary than anything else and certainly not something I expected anyone to read . Although its several years since my New Zealand trip it seems interest has suddenly manifested itself in the very small bit I did on Pounarmi which intrigues me . I looked it up because I had written it so long ago and thought perhaps there was more than I remember ,but, no its just a short record of my attempt at the ceremony surrounding the gift from my son . Anyway to those that read and enjoyed it and commented - Thank you .
Thursday, 20 June 2019
Down in Santa Pola we decided to go for an ice cream . Darren asked the girl behind the counter if we could take a picture of us behind the counter , she said yes . the owner turned u as we were arranging ourselves, at first I thought he was angry turns out he was a great guy and was offering to take the picture so we could all be in it
He turned into a bit of a David Bailey and insisted on more pics arranging us and posing us until he had the photo that he was pleased with .. nice man
I wanted everyone to have a good time , to chill and to get away from it all although with three of us now retired , that shouldn't be so much of an issue , but then free from family and in the company of good friends is a quite different experience . At the bottom of the road is the swimming pool and games area catering for tennis , football , basketball and petang
I was comprehensively trounced everytime even though they tried to ensure I won but it was good fun .
Swimming of course was available to those that wanted it and we mostly had the pool to ourselves
Swimming of course was available to those that wanted it and we mostly had the pool to ourselves
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