When I retired I relished being able to read a book when I felt like it, without the pressure of work obligations keeping me from one of my favourite activities.

For several years I hoped to find a Book Club and eventually rang the local library to see what they suggested.  They gave me the name of a group who met once a month on a Tuesday at 5.30 pm.  The leader was a librarian who worked there but the meetings were held at the Golf Club. I spoke to Ruth, the leader, on the phone, and she told me the next book was Inhaling the Mahatma by Christopher Kremmer and the meeting would be on the 19^th January, 2010.

I found the book hard going but completed it by the day of the meeting.  I was a bit apprehensive about the intellectual rigour of the group but I needn’t have worried.

There were seven or eight all together.  Most people didn’t like the book as a whole, although some liked part of it.  Two had only read two chapters, one had returned it to the library unfinished, two hadn’t read any of it and the leader had almost finished it.     

It was one of those Book Clubs where you turned up whether you had read the book or not.  It was as much about socialising as an in-depth book study. I felt at ease with this group although I was determined to read every book nominated before the meeting.

Thirteen years have passed and still our group consists of the same people plus or minus one or two. When the librarian, Ruth, retired from the library, we all wondered briefly what would become of us.  Ruth decided to just keep on as before, so we still meet every month in the same place to discuss a book, sometimes briefly, sometimes in great depth.  Now we have a FB group so we can communicate with members more easily.  We have tried other venues but keep returning to the Golf Club where we can usually find a quiet corner and we can enjoy the spectacular view out to sea.  Towards the end of every year we all contribute one or two suggestions to make up a list for the following year.  The icing on the cake is not having to cook a meal because we all order at the club restaurant after the meeting.

How I read books has changed a lot in the last seventeen years.  By this I mean it used to be either library books or books I bought from local bookstores.  Now it is mainly library books read on my iPad, downloaded from Borrowbox.  Sometimes I will buy and download a book from iBooks or Kindle. Christmas and birthdays are the main times I buy books unless it is something unavailable in other formats. I love reading on my iPad because I can eat at the same time!

I also belong to another Book Club associated with our Aqua jogging group.  It meets up infrequently and only once since Covid restrictions ended. I wasn’t adequately prepared for the last one as I had read Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus six months before. Alas I had even forgotten some of the characters and felt unable to contribute anything sensible.  Everyone else had read the book and seemed to know it inside out. I’ll be better prepared next time.

As well as Reading my other R is for Recording.  Every major holiday I used to take my Sony HandyCam with me and record every interesting and fascinating moment.  I would then relive my holiday by playing it back on my computer and using the software iMovie, to edit, add music, transitions and titles.

This would then be burnt onto a DVD and an appropriate picture would be printed on the white blank of the disk as well as the jewel case cover.  Friends and family would then be subjected to this modern take on a slide night which would see most of them falling asleep.  To prevent this happening I then made ten minute DVDs with the edited highlights.

Possibly everyone heaved a sigh of relief when I found technology changing around me, rendering my video camera obsolete and my beloved iMovie 6 replaced by a newer version I didn’t like. Some of my aqua and book club friends were showing off their newly made photo books.  All you have to do is download the software from Photobookclub, insert your favourite photos and get it made up into a beautifully bound photo book.  The quality is not quite as good as a printed photo but it is fun to play around with different backgrounds, borders and arrangements. An added bonus is a guest can flick through it in ten seconds and is not held captive by a lengthy video.

I even made a photo book based on my 1918  “A for Ancestry” but named it “The A to Z of my DNA”.

Printing six copies I was able to keep one, give one to each of my children and three to new DNA relatives.  Even though it is nearly 50% text it still came up well as a photobook.

Putting together photos of the first five years of my grandson’s life I made another simple story/photo book which he still loves to read.  He keeps asking for me to make one of the next five years but that is a project still on the back burner.

When I was small my father would tell me stories of “Step and Tear”.  They were two orphans who had all sorts of dreadful experiences but things turned out well for them in the end.  I started telling these stories to my grandchildren but had to make up many new adventures as I honestly couldn’t remember much.  Now I have all these stories on my computer and am looking for a way to make them into a self-published book for the children before they get too old. That is my next project after the A to Z is over.

Think how much photography has changed in the last 17 years!  From having rolls of film printed and waiting a week for the finished result we now have instant access to our photos which as a result have multiplied exponentially. On the computer are slides converted to digital, photos in older software, scans of printed photos, photos not yet put in folders.  Finding photos for this and other A to Zs had been time consuming because they are all over the place. That is another job for the future, organising all the photos into one place on my computer.

Don’t get me started on all those printed photos in boxes, and the ones in photo albums.  I really should go through them and discard at least 50%. 

I just have to get in the mood.