I am
surrounded by people I know who are either recently retired, talking
about retiring, or reducing their working hours. It's my age – and
theirs - of course. So, for a few months now, this topic has been in
the forefront of my mind, and it had made me a bit restless. Retire
as soon as you can and enjoy life while you are still able is
something I often hear – but what would I do to fill the time? I
feel like I need at least some sort of plan - don't worry about
that, just do it and you will soon find things to fill your days.
Hmmm. I don't feel ready to retire just yet, but at the same time working five
days a week holds no attraction anymore (and we are in the fortunate
position that I don't really need to work full time from a monetary
perspective). So I made the decision recently to reduce my working
hours, something my employers were amenable to. Today, therefore, was
my last working Friday. Four days (also slightly shorter) working and
three days play seems a good work-life balance for the time being.
That gives me a bit more space to think about what shape retirement
should actually take. I guess I'm on retirement's nursery slopes.
The car
boots have shown some promise this year in the early weeks of the
season proper. Let's hope this continues after a fairly dismal 2015
and 2016. I was chuffed to pick up a copy of Kool & The Gang's
Wild And Peaceful album for 50p last weekend. Kool & The
Gang, at least in their early Seventies incarnation, have always been
a favourite band of mine but I had never owned this particular album
before. Singles such as Funky Stuff – which is on this album
– and Jungle Boogie* were
some of my earliest clubbing memories, and on the back of such
singles they became known a s a funk band. But they were always so
much more than that, and there was always a large dash of jazz to be
found in the grooves of their albums of the time, as you will here on
the title track.
[* EDIT: I must be going blind in my old age; Funky Stuff and Jungle Boogie are both on this album, as is Hollywood Swinging. I was probably as guilty as the rest of us at the time for thinking these would be the highlights of the album and the other tracks would probably be just funk heavy soundalike tracks.]
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