So where does the time go? I would venture to repeat, 'never a dull moment'. It has been well over fifteen years since retirement. Isn't the concern rampant that, once having retired, time will drag and there won't be enough opportunity to fill it all in satisfactorily, to ensure we're constantly challenged physically and mentally so we can remain alert and vital?

Yet it has been and continues to be our experience in these years that there never seems to be enough time to get everything done that we anticipate, that we involve ourselves with. Each day has its own challenges and we struggle to meet them with the time allotted in the discrete 24-hour-period. The seasons change bringing with them alternate strategies to take advantage of the time we have to slot everything into.

Simply maintaining ourselves, the amount of cooking, baking, cleaning and household repairs required to meet our needs is time-consuming. There are those quotidian routines like walks in the woodlands close by our home that imbue life with a further appreciation of our place in nature that during the course of a working life are confined to week-ends, when they can be squeezed in.

Food shopping and preparation, looking after two little animal dependents, supporting the needs of extended family, involving ourselves in interests pertaining to art and culture, all take significant bites out of the time given for each day's concerns. The retirement years are, famously, the "golden years", those times of rest and relaxation. When travel and gardening take precedence over early waking hours and the rush routine.

Rest and relaxation also up there in the consumption of time, but vaguely and somewhat thinly allotted. Necessary, however, and when during the day the afternoon beckons for a rest, it is time to regroup, to think, to compose a poem, to read the daily newspapers, to speak with a grandchild over the telephone and occasionally, remotely, help with their homework.

There goes the time.