Blog archive August 2026
25.08.26 / 02 / new glasses
Every three to four years, for the last forty years, I need new glasses. This is primarily because I have astigmatism and the angle moves about, especially in my left eye. With age also comes long sight which increases slowly. About ten years ago the optician said, we can't do it all with a simple lens anymore, you either need two pairs of glasses or varifocals. And I want thinness rather than the fat lens edges that used to come with astigmatism. So my lenses are uncomfortably expensive, and I don't change them until the headaches and sore eyes force me to.
Frames are also not easy. It can be hard to find ones that work with my long angular face. Small differences between frames of apparently the same style make them look odd or awkward. It makes me seem fussy in the shop, but I'm searching for the frames that look natural on my face, just a part of me. I envy people with flat round faces that can wear anything, any fashion.
But I wear my glasses all the time, so the expense and the trouble seems (about) worth it. Success is not being conscious of wearing glasses, and looking like myself.
25.08.26 / 01 / books of obsolete facts
I’ve resumed clearing my parents’ books, the ones we retained as set dressing while we sold their house. My father loved books. Sometimes it feels like we’ll never get to the end, that the books are growing back on the shelves as we remove them.
But what to do with the books that no-one will want, the books of obsolete facts and outdated advice? The books that my father loved to collect. Encyclopedias and dictionaries and atlases. Repair manuals for the domestic items of 1972 or the plumbing of 1986. Tourist guides from 30 or 40 years ago. 1990s guides to the values of antiques and collectables. Learn to drive in ten easy lessons 1987 (with amusing illustrations).
In short, all the books that were useful before the internet.
I feel embarrassed to pass them on to charity shops or second-hand bookshops, who will never be able to sell them. I suspect they have a back-door route to dispose of unsaleable books, but it feels unfair to use them as a waste disposal service. Should I send the books direct to landfill in the general household waste?
Certainly there seems no other fate for the uniformly bound set of Reader’s Digest ‘condensed’ novels, five per volume. Booksellers won’t touch them. Anyone who wants to read a novel wants the whole thing. Most of the novels therein have been forgotten anyway. I’ve read that one can give them to old people’s homes, but that doesn’t seem fair either. The ones that can still read want the unabridged book, the ones that can’t...
But then:
What does one do with the books that ought not to be sold? That ought not to have been written? I have some children’s religious books from c.1960 that are so saccharine in word and picture as to misrepresent the faith and curdle the spirituality of any child. The translated-from-Dutch book of Christmas stories, all tacky or queasily off-key. The pretentious novel about a ‘great artist’. I’m uncomfortable about being a deliberate censor of books, but... I feel like I’m making the world a better place by deleting them.
24.08.26 / 02 / selling and buying
And then I put my mother's house on the market in late May. For a couple of weeks nothing happened, and then we sold it on the fourth viewing. This was quicker than expected. I suddenly had to convert my longlist of properties to buy into a shortlist to view, set up a week of viewings, had an offer accepted on a dream house that had only come on the market a couple of days before, and appointed conveyancing solicitors.
Then a mountain of forms for selling and buying, surveys of both houses - and now we're in the waiting period where the various solicitors do their searches and draw up draft contracts. No way of knowing how long this lull will last. I've never done any of this before.
Meanwhile I have modelled the new house in CAD to see how the furniture will fit - and find out what we have to get rid of.
24.08.26 / 01 / annuity
Not blogging because I’ve been busy. Have you noticed how often my blog entries are late in the month? Because I realise that another month is sliding by and I need to do something. It's not that I don't write blog entries, it's just that I don't finish them and publish. Let’s try and take things in order. I wrote most of this one in April the day after the previous entry.
I lost my job in late 2023, and took a few months off before looking for another one. Unfortunately I had an instinct that my mother’s health was about to take another major downturn. This meant I couldn’t apply for a new job, if three weeks in I had to go and look after her for an indefinite period.
Pretty soon this came to pass, and what I hoped would be a month to deal with the situation became seven months of full time caring up to her death. And then I then had to deal with the estate, to and fro across the country living a couple of weeks at her house and a couple of weeks at home. In all of this there was no clear space - or energy - to get another job.
So my financial position deteriorated. I was able to take my state pension, and then I flipped my work pensions for an annuity. They were due to mature in 2030, at which point I would consider whether to retire, or not. So in taking them a little early I haven’t missed out on much growth, and wouldn’t have had time to recover from losses.
I make it sound quick, but actually the whole process took concentrated work for the first three months of this year. By the time I was ready to appoint a financial advisor I found that I had educated myself on what I wanted, and only needed assistance to set it up.
So now I have an income and don’t need to work. Have I retired or not? I haven’t quite come to terms with the idea. I can still work if I want to. I had hoped to do a couple more major projects, and then see. But can I face the stress, the pressure, the long hours, the commute, the health damage, if I don’t need to? After all, in the old days if I'd won the lottery or inherited a fortune I would have walked. Architecture is at a transition point in this country - major changes in legislation, professional practice, software - if I were 35 I would take these on board and continue, but now? Should I step away, accept that it’s time to go?
And if so, what next? I never feared that I would lack things to do in retirement.
