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What's your family been up to now?


Devon Malcolm

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7 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

I do love that our generation of Dads just refuse to stop working, mad bastards.

 

Not mine. He laid down tools as soon as he could, to the detriment of his finances. When my mum decided to do some work in the summer a few years ago at the supermarket she used to work at, he couldn't believe it, kept shaking his head going "why would anyone go back to work if they didn't have to".

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my Dad retired early, and always planned to. He did really well for himself in his last few years of work - he'd worked in retail for years (and in factories before that), but when I was about 8 or 9 he went to university part-time, and then did his teacher training and worked as a Business Studies lecturer, and that's the job that took the family to Jersey. By the time he retired, he'd been interim principal at the college he worked at, so was making good money, and being able to retire on good money in Jersey meant being able to live very comfortably back in Yorkshire when they moved back there.

He does some exam invigilating and other odd jobs at a local agricultural college now, so he still works a couple of days a week, but he mostly has a bunch of other weird money-making schemes going on - he's signed up as a mystery shopper for two or three different organisations, he has some thing going on where he has to trial a bunch of products and complete surveys on them in return for Amazon vouchers, and he's signed up to some casting agencies as an extra; he's apparently in a flashback scene in the latest series of The Crown, because whenever anybody wants to film something set in London during the war, they film it in present-day Hull (insert punchline here). He's tried to rope the rest of the family into the extras gig too - my aunt ended up playing the Queen in the background of an advert for a Canadian bank, and when someone put out a casting call for twins, he sent it to me and my brother, and I pointed out that they probably mean identical twins, and aren't after two blokes of different heights and different hair colours, who might sort of look alike if you squint.
 

My Mum was the one I never thought would handle retirement well at all. From the moment she was able to go back to work, she was working multiple jobs, one summer was bouncing between three different part-time jobs so that she actually ended up working considerably more than full-time hours, and didn't have a day off for about eight weeks. Her last job was working in a wool shop, which she ended up owning when the original owner retired. She also did a bunch of volunteering around all of that - she ran our local youth club for years, and in Jersey volunteered at the Zoo, and in a charity shop. These days she spends most of her time knitting, and then selling her wares at craft fares and whatnot.

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My mum's 75 this year, and is still working three days a week. She just loves her job - she's a trade union lawyer. But she's also been determined to keep working for as long as possible because, much as she loves my dad, she wouldn't want to spend the whole of every day with him, because he'd drive her mental. 

She likes going to museums, exhibitions, the opera, the ballet, etc., and he's a homebody whose idea of a good day is spending most of it in the living room watching old United matches from the 90s, and re-runs of Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, OFAH, Dickinson's Real Deal, and Tales of the Unexpected, if not pottering around the house doing meaningless busy-work like re-arranging the spice cupboard for the fiftieth time in a month or climbing one of the fruit trees to prune it (and yes, we are always trying to get him to stop climbing trees at 77 years old, but he's very much of the perspective of "use it, or lose it").

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3 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

My mum's 75 this year, and is still working three days a week. She just loves her job - she's a trade union lawyer. But she's also been determined to keep working for as long as possible because, much as she loves my dad, she wouldn't want to spend the whole of every day with him, because he'd drive her mental.

Well this is the thing, isn't it. For as much as my mum is complaining about my dad still working, when he's at home she says to me, "Your dad's at HOME today, getting on my tits."

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2 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Well this is the thing, isn't it. For as much as my mum is complaining about my dad still working, when he's at home she says to me, "Your dad's at HOME today, getting on my tits."

Yup. One of the side benefits to working away from home, I suppose - if lockdown proved anything, most human beings are not meant to be around each other 24/7.

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1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

my Dad was absolutely adamant that he was going to get into model trains in his retirement. There's an old box room in their place that my Mum used to keep her knitting and crafts stuff, and she had a load of cleared out, put a big table in there, and bought him a load of train stuff for Christmas a year or two ago. He has since barely touched the thing, and is now adamant that he was never that bothered about trains, but that he enjoys making the model buildings and trees and things. After declaring this, my tiny 5' nothing 70 year old Mum snapped, "just make a sodding model village, then!". 

That, and an argument over whether one of the artificial plants in the new fish tank has been directly responsible for multiple guppy deaths now, has been the height of drama in the Bomber household this weekend.

This is me, only I'm 40 and absolutely nowhere near retirement. I'd love to have a room to be able to do all that stuff in it, and I absolutely guarantee that I'd buy tons of it and then never do anything with it. 

I think it's one of those things that I absolutely love the idea of, far more than putting the effort into it myself.

Recently watched this https://www.channel4.com/programmes/little-trains-big-names-with-pete-waterman and also loved this https://uktvplay.co.uk/shows/hornby-a-model-world/watch-online and I think I'd give it a go, get pissed off that I wasn't very good at it and just sulk for a while. Much like my love for Games Workshop when I was younger.

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3 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

I just assume these places are exactly like Del Boca Vista, please confirm.

As much as they can be, situated in suburban Notts. My parents must be unbearable to live with these days; my mum got into a feud with a woman because she brought popcorn to a platty jubes buffet, and my mum and dad played dual roles as the wicked queen/Snow White and the woodcutter/Prince Charming in the panto. It all sounds like a nightmare.

Talking about retiring, my mum is trying to get my dad (75 this year) back out to work so he's not around so much. 

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11 minutes ago, Sergio Mendacious said:

platty jubes

I think I speak for the majority of people on this forum when I say

 

jimmy corkhill ffs.gif

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My parents are now feuding over the bag of sand that my dad has kept in the front driveway for the last 2 years (approx.)

Mum: When are you going to move that bag of sand?

Dad: Why would I move it?

Mum: Because it makes the driveway look messy.

Dad: But it's been there for about 2 years.

Mum: And I've been asking you to move it for 2 years.

Dad: I leave it there because it's dry.

Mum: How's it dry?

Dad: Because it's under the overhang from the front lounge.

Mum: It's dry in your garage, put it in there!

Dad: I'm not having sand in my garage, it'll make a mess!

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