My love of sixties music is well documented, well, at least on these pages. I hear the music, my feet start tapping, and I want to sing along (depending on whether anyone is in hearing range), and dance.
And so it was that an impromptu suggestion to hold a Dance Night in the Retirement Village I live in, ended up being a monthly event.
Dance Night #3
On Saturday night our third event will unfold. The process is simple.
Residents and guests turn up at 5pm. We order pizza’s for anyone who wants to partake of sustenance (without bringing their own), the Bar is open (to keep us hydrated), and I’m the DJ (because I want to choose the music).
Yep, I know, it’s kind of like cheating, but that’s how it is. I have a Spotify account, the one without advertisements, and I load up a different playlist for each dance night. Saturday’s list is done, all eight hours of it, and I’ve tested it heaps of times to make sure every song is my favourite. And every song passed the pub test, well, my pub test, not necessarily anyone else’s.
I make no apologies.
We won’t get through eight hours of music (more likely three), but randomly playing the songs ensures a relatively unbiased mixture. However, I may will override some songs in favour of my absolute favourites, and claim it as DJ privilege.
The Searchers will set the scene with WhenYou Walk in the Room, and in case you’ve forgotten who will take you home, The Drifters will remind you if you Save the Last Dance for them.
The Righteous Brother’s Unchained Melody is for Maddy and Jan, because they dance so beautifully together, and for the rest of us incurable romantics, because we love the song.
Helen Reddy will remind us of our girl-power with I Am Woman, but I’ll save that for the end of the night.
Somewhere in the middle we’ll get a bit of pelvic-thrust happening with the Time Warp, and I’m sure Elvis will inspire some hip-swivelling when he tells us about his Good Luck Charm.
If you happen to tread on your dancing-partners toes, Frankie Valli reckons Big Girls Don’t Cry, but Eden Kane will tell you that Boys Cry When No One Can Hear Them. We’ll see.
Dusty Springfield Only Wants to be With You, while Cilla Black argues that Anyone Who Had a Heart would love her too.
Is there no end to the love?
The Everly Brothers will be Crying in the Rain and Gene Pitney knows It Hurts to be in Love, so maybe Skeeter Davis was right, and it is The End of the World without your love.
The magic songs of the sixties (and other decades) will boom through the speakers and go straight to the heart of those of us who remember when each song was released, and who sang it. Trust me, we know all the words.
We were teenagers then, and we’ll feel like teenagers again, when those songs touch our hearts on Saturday night.
Image from Pixabay
Post Script: Spotify is no substitute for having a singer or band at our Dance Night. When we were teenagers, we didn’t have Spotify. But now we have singers, like local entertainer, Chris Harvie. Chris knows our favourite songs and sings them beautifully. We are working hard to get some funding so we can pay Chris to sing at our dance nights, when he is available. When he isn’t, we’ll have Spotify.
Anyone who knows me well, knows about my coffee addiction. It’s only a one-cup-a-day habit, but I can’t start without my morning cup-of-joe. And today I proved something that I had suspected for a long time: it’s in the beans.
Let me explain…
In June 2015, while on a short holiday, I stopped for a coffee at a cafe in Murwillumbah (a Northern NSW town). Hmmm…. the coffee went down exceptionally well, but I wasn’t sure if it was as much about the ambience as the actual coffee.
The original Re: Cafe-Nate cafe in Murwillumbah
The day I left Murwillumbah to return to Central Queensland, I visited the cafe for another coffee. The drive to the airport took about two hours (less for everyone else – I’m one of those slow drivers), but all the way to Brisbane I could taste that coffee. It lingered on my taste buds and sustained me for the entire trip.
It was at that point that I realised I had just savoured the best coffee on the planet.
The purpose of my visit to Murwillumbah was to catch up with a past work-colleague that I had kept in touch with over the years. She had just bought a unit in a Retirement Village and was keen to show it off.
As I walked around the village and met the friendly residents, I was impressed by how happy they seemed to be.
But I was only sixty-five – yep – retirement age, but still working and loved my job. I figured I’d dust off the chalkboard and hang up the chalk for the last time (well, shut down the Smart Board, actually) when I reached seventy. So I smiled back at those friendly faces, while thinking, “I’m not ready to retire yet”.
Fast Forward a few days….
I’d unpacked from my holiday and come to grips with the fact that I’d be back at work in less than two days, and with it came all the last minute preparation that needed to be done.
The first day of Term Three started in the usual way – crossing paths with colleagues elicited the usual “How was your holiday?”, followed by “holiday…, did we have a holiday?”.
Teachers around the world probably share the same greeting on the first day of a new term. The minute your feet hit the pavement leading to your classroom, your head starts buzzing with thoughts of kids, and playgrounds, and classrooms, and timetables, and parents, and – wait for it ‘Reports’. Yep – those dreaded reports start weighing on your mind from the first minute of the first day.
All thoughts of the past holiday are pushed way back into your long-term memory, to make way for all the urgent here-and-now commitments to be held securely in short-term memory for another ten weeks.
And so the memory of my holiday became another blur, until……
… the day wore on, and the problems escalated.
I went home that day absolutely drained. I was tired but there was no time to rest. Paperwork had to be done at night, as well as preparation for the next day.
From a deep, dark corner of my long-term memory, the smile of those happily retired people in Murwillumbah crept up on me and made their presence felt.
And then the memory of that little cafe in Murwillumbah emerged through the fog of ‘To retire or not retire; that is the question’.
The memory of the mellow taste of that divine coffee came flooding back.
”Not ready to retire yet?…”. “The heck I’m not ready to retire!, bring it on!”.
Day Two of Term Three
“Hi Laurel, have you got a minute?”, I asked our Principal. “Sure”, she said. “What’s wrong?”.
“I need my two-days extra leave. I need to get back to the Gold Coast”, I said….
“Haven’t you just been there” she queried?
“Yep, but I need to buy my Nursing Home for the future”
I imagine you can picture the look on her face, not knowing whether to laugh or have me committed.
She laughed (luckily).
Day Four of Term Three
Gladstone Airport was a two-hour drive away; followed by an hour(ish) flight on the little Dash-8 Qantas jet to Brisbane. I’d pre-booked a rental car and was soon hurtling along the M1 towards Murwillumbah (just south of the Gold Coast, on the NSW side).
For two days I looked at units, in that little Retirement Village where everyone seemed so happy.
One of the first ones I looked at had solar panels on the roof, a veranda across the back, and a front porch where I could sit and enjoy a coffee in the sun.
The unit was being renovated with new paint and carpet, and an overall modernisation. The view from the back veranda was of trees, and the bowling green was not too far away.
I looked at other units with different floor plans and views, but kept going back to that first one. I absolutely loved it!
The price was reasonable, but I wasn’t sure of how much any extras would be, so I made an offer that included a bit of a buffer, just in case.
It was a couple of weeks before I heard back from the sales agent and we were able to agree on a sale price that suited both parties. I signed the contracts a couple of weeks later, and on the second-last day of Term Three, the unit was mine.
The lure of that cafe across the road from the Village helped seal the deal. I could just imagine sauntering over there for a cup of that amazing coffee, whenever the whim took me.
I moved into my unit at the end of Term Four. And I spent a lot of time in that cafe over the Christmas holidays.
As I got to know Josh better (the owner of the cafe), I talked to him about the coffee.
“It’s in the beans”, he said. “You have to start with good beans”.
And Josh started every cup of divine coffee with Dancing Beans, just to prove it’s in the beans. But never underestimate Josh’s ability to pour the best coffee – he is a perfectionist Barista.
My trusty Rocket Giotto Espresso machine goes everywhere I go (on a permanent basis), so the first thing to be set up in my new kitchen was the coffee machine. And now I had access to those good beans and could make a coffee that (almost) equaled the ones from Josh’s cafe. Josh would sell me the beans whenever I needed them.
But, as things go, Josh moved on and sold the cafe, which means I now have to order the beans online.
And that is where this story stems from… I was so busy last week I forgot to order the beans.
In desperation, I bought some local beans from the supermarket yesterday. They came with a recommendation from the manager, but I was still nervous as I made my morning cup-of-joe this morning.
And rightfully so.
As I finish the last dregs of my coffee, there is a slightly dry, almost bitter taste lingering, and no, I didn’t burn the shot.
The only thing different is the beans. The double-shot started pouring at five seconds and finished at twenty-six seconds; a little longer than I would consider a good pour, but within reason.
But the taste is not there.
Today I’ll be ordering the beans from Dancing Beans Roasters in Ipswich, and in a few days I’ll be enjoying that mellow, divine tasting coffee that I have loved for more than five years.
A friend posted an interesting Article on Facebook today about the drain of experienced teachers in Australia. So, where have all the teachers gone?
They Have Retired!
Or at the very least, they’re thinking about it. Years of experience and skills walk out of the classroom every day, leaving a void that is hard to fill.
I retired almost three years ago from a teaching career that spanned the eighties, nineties and more than the first decade of the 2000’s. My career took me from Jelly Pad to iPad, and everything in between.
Experienced teachers are disappearing into the sunset
Why did I retire?
The pace of teaching has increased to the point where it is hard to keep up. We’ve gone from teaching the three R’s to teaching so much more, including how to function in the modern world of technology (cyber-safety). The curriculum is at breaking point and I shudder every time I hear ‘why aren’t they teaching that in schools?’.
I loved my job and gave it 100% of effort, but I found it hard to sustain the long hours.
It was time to go.
When a teacher retires, they hand in their laptop and their identity. A teacher’s world is contained in the files on the Government issued laptop; when they hand it back, their teaching world ceases to exist.
Departure time
But the retired teacher goes full circle – they embrace retirement with the same enthusiasm and passion they had for teaching when they were a new graduate. The difference is – they are now the boss and work to their own hours.
I’ve come full circle
But my heart is still back there in the classroom, wanting to help just one more student, or another parent battle the maze of paperwork to have their child diagnosed and accepted as having extra needs.
Should we try to lure retired teachers out of their new comfort zone and back into some kind of meaningful relationship with classrooms?
A lot could be gained:
We could salvage some of the knowledge and experience that walked out the door with the retiree
new graduates could be mentored – something new graduates identified as an area of need
the agility of mind that took teachers from Gestetner machines (if not, Jelly Pads) to Smart Boards and iDevices could be put to good use in the busy classroom in a meaningful way
Supply teaching is available to retired teachers, but it doesn’t offer the opportunity to pass on the experience of years of teaching. And it doesn’t highlight the depth of skills of the older teacher, especially in managing difficult behaviours and diverse classrooms.
New graduates start their teaching careers with enthusiasm, passion and a lot to learn – as we all did. They are the first to arrive at school each day, and usually the last to leave – at least for the first few years. The smart ones take advantage of senior teachers on staff and ask lots of questions – others prefer to learn the hard way.
Was it easier back then?
How did we go from Jelly Pad to iPad?
How did we move from chalkboard to Smartboard?
Where and how did we learn ‘the look’ – you know, that look that stops a wayward student in their tracks – without a single word?
How did we manage a classroom of over thirty students, many with Special Needs, without a teacher-aide or Special Education support staff?
How did we cope with thirty 4 and 5 year olds in their first year of school – on our own?
What could retired teachers teach new graduates that would help them over the five-year hump?
If only there was a way to bridge the gap between retired and newly graduated teachers – it would be a win-win, and the children in today’s classrooms would be better off.
Our Prime Minister surprised me yesterday when he gave the Closing the Gap Report. To get better results, Mr Morrison offered to wipe the HECS Debt for new graduates who offer to teach in remote areas.
I applaud the offer to help new teachers find a job, but our most vulnerable students deserve the expertise of our most experienced teachers. An ideal way to marry experience – with the exuberance of youth – would be to offer incentives to retired teachers to mentor new teachers in remote areas.
Weekends: those magical hours between Friday night and Monday morning. You close the door of your office on Friday afternoon, and look forward to two days of blissful R&R – that’s Rest and Recuperation in old Military terms. There’s nothing like waking up on Saturday morning, knowing that you can roll over and go back to sleep. The weekend looks good from any angle!
But what happens when the weekend loses its lustre? What happens when the weekend becomes just like any other day?
We call it Retirement!
When you close the door on the office for the very last time, you know you’ve hit retirement. The defining line between weekdays and weekends disappears. Timetables are for bus and train trips, and reports only relate to weather. Work!, becomes a dirty, four-letter word (anyone remember Maynard G Krebs’ reaction to the word?)
Retirement – the new phase of your life where – Yes!, the world really does revolve around you. Possibly for the first time in your life you are free to make decisions that are best for you: “Will I go out today? Nah… I think I’ll sit on the verandah, drink coffee and read a book.” I can do what I want, when I want.
When you settle into retirement, either every day is now a weekday, or every day is now a weekend. I chose the latter. Those days that start with M are no longer feared or dreaded.
Cup Half-Empty or Half-Full?
Mine was always at least half-full, but since I retired, my cup is closer to full (usually with coffee). I have filled it with all the things I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. While I was working, every time I came across something interesting to do, or new skill to learn, I promised myself that I would do it when I retired. Needless to say, the list of things to do and learn was pretty long by the time I closed the door on my work-life.
Working my way through the list!
The first, and most important task was to learn to write creatively. My career was filled with factual report-writing. And there’s nothing like report-writing to stifle any creativity that you may have had prior to your career. Reports: a case of re-telling ‘the facts, and nothing but the facts’. Not much wriggle room for being creative.
And now there’s my Blog – where I get to try out different styles of writing. There is still a lot to learn, but I think I’m slowly moving into a zone where I feel more confident. I can relax a little, and really enjoy the whole writing experience – well – as far as my experience has taken me so far. I’ve only just started flexing my creative muscles so I know I have a long way to go, but I’m definitely enjoying the journey.
Being retired, and being the centre of my own Universe, means I can be flexible. I can write when I want to – not when I have to.
But What About the Challenge?
Ah, yes, the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Where am I up to?
I had a bit of a chuckle when I read the topic for Day 6 – which is roughly where I am up to – despite it being the tenth day of October. My first thought was, ‘Weekend, What Weekend?’. Every day is a weekend.
And I guess that answers the question…
I have posted Days 1, 2 and 3. I’m skipping Days 4 and 5 of the Challenge – until later. So that means I’m up to Day 6. Just saying….
The bell signals the end of learning for another day. Students make a rush for the door, and the temptation to join them is overwhelming. You sit down at your desk and dream of the dawn of a new tomorrow. A tomorrow with no bells; no lesson plans; no marking; and no report-writing.
When you are a teacher, the lines between day and night are blurred. Three o’clock signals the end of learning for students, and the start of paperwork for teachers.
It’s going to be another long night. Before you start tomorrow’s planning, today’s marking screams at you. Thoughts are sloshing around your head – and they need to find their way into the books to be marked, before they settle into a pool of useless, random words. Leaving the marking until later never ends well. So you open the first book, pick up your pen – and start.
Image from Pixabay.com
And Lunch?
Image from Pixabay.com
Your stomach reminds you that playground duty kept you from the staffroom, for yet another lunch break. Along with the empty feeling in your stomach, you crave coffee. Another one of life’s simple pleasures that eludes you in your teaching day. Hot coffee and students don’t mix – Workplace Health & Safety posters adorn the staffroom walls. No chance of forgetting. You make a mental note to stop by the coffee shop on your way home.
When is Enough, Enough?
The teaching weeks roll into teaching months. Before you know it, you’re beyond retirement age, but you are still on the treadmill. Love for your job, and dedication to it, are no consolation for the tiredness you feel. That weariness that chases you down at the end of each long day. Your non-teaching friends are in bed at a reasonable hour – you are up late, planning and writing reports. It takes its toll. Your health starts to flash warning signs – Enough is Enough!
And one day it all comes to a grinding halt. The plans you made to keep working until your seventies, not that you are too far from that magic number, disappear. You wake up one morning and think “I can’t do this anymore”. And that’s the day the resignation papers fall out of your pocket – onto the Principal’s desk.
The dawn of a new tomorrow
When I closed the classroom door for the last time, I didn’t have time to think about it too much. As soon as I made the decision to fill in the retirement-forms – I booked a cruise. I needed something to separate my working-life from my new retirement-life. And I needed something to console me in the raw days following my departure from the world that had absorbed me for more than half my life.
I poured myself into planning for the cruise from Sydney to Singapore. That trip was to close the door on my working life – sealed shut – never to be reopened; and it worked! I came home refreshed, renewed and excited about settling down into a normal life.
Or, So I Thought!
The years of getting by on less than eight hours sleep had become stuck somewhere in my Body-Clock, and it wouldn’t budge. I found myself unable to put my head on the pillow before midnight – but I was still waking up at five or six in the morning. The problem was, there was no planning or report-writing to fill the evenings. I subscribed to paid television – but that didn’t work; there never seemed to be anything worth watching.
I started writing. I had always loved writing and promised myself that one day I would write a book. Perhaps that ‘one day’ had arrived.
The website I dabbled in, while still teaching, suddenly had meaning. It had been sitting there, half-baked, for years. Now it was time to get it into the oven.
And the idea of a Blog started to gel. I’d been hearing about, and reading blogs, for a long time.
Writing; Website; Blogging
The three started to overlap, then merge, until it was only natural that they would become one. And from the ashes, my Phoenix arose.
My humble musings from the early days are often painful to revisit. But put into perspective, they are a yardstick by which to measure the distance I have travelled. I can see the improvement in my writing, in my website management, and therefore in my blogging.
Writing within a time-frame and to a specific topic has reined in my verbosity. The challenge dictates a blog-a-day for thirty-one days. You can’t allow yourself the luxury of extra words when the clock is ticking away beside you. Well theoretically, anyway. I still need to work on the length of my blogs. And that is a work-in-progress.
MaureenDurney.com is keeping me focused. It is absorbing me – drawing out the passion that I used to pour into my teaching. It is my new life. Learning new skills is exercising my brain, just as Professional Development did in my teaching days.
And The Book?
The book is another work-in-progress. And the Ultimate Blog Challenge is pre-requisite learning before launching full-on into it. With my long teaching days behind me, and with the dawn of my new tomorrow, I can now devote my life to Blogging.
With all the tripping around I’ve done this year, my blogs are all over the place. The China trip has been fleetingly touched on in other areas but has somehow missed the dedicated space it so truly deserves. So, here it is!
In The Beginning
It all started with a conversation with Molly, the sales agent, in July 2015. Settlement on my new unit was due to happen around September – we hoped – but Molly was going to China to visit the Aveo campus in Shanghai and hoped to be back in time for settlement. She wanted to be able to hand over the keys in person when I took ownership of the place I’d call home in my retirement years. As Molly talked about China, my mind went into overdrive with thoughts of potential travel opportunities – but the idea slipped quietly onto the back burner – there were more pressing things that needed my immediate attention, not the least of which was actually buying the unit, packing up my world out in Central Queensland, and making the long haul back to civilisation. Oh, and somewhere amongst all that, actually securing a transfer with my job. Even though I was buying my retirement place, I wasn’t ready to sever my ties with paid employment just yet. I figured I had another 5 years, at least, before I needed to think about hanging up the chalk (whiteboard markers to be politically correct) and close the door on my long teaching career. After all, I still loved my job.
So, no more thoughts of China entered my head until I had moved in and was a few months into being settled in the unit. By this time I’d even committed the unthinkable and resigned from my job, but that’s another story. So when I opened the mailbox that cold day in July and found a note about a meeting to discuss a trip to China, for anyone who was interested, I was in. I put the date in my diary and when the big day arrived, armed with my trusty new camera, drove to Robina for the meeting.
It all sounded good, and I was pretty sure it was something I really wanted to do, until Suzy, the presenter, mentioned there was a Starbucks right next to where we’d be staying. That was the game-changer for me. My next question was ‘where do I sign?’. I love Starbucks, but again, that’s another chapter, for another time.
The plans slowly unfolded. There were emails back and forth between the travel agency and AVEO organiser (Suzy). There were numerous forms to complete, more dreaded passport photos for the Visa and thoughts (a few anyway) about what to pack.
Since then, the plans have unfolded, the itinerary is finalised, and the packing is about to start in earnest. With the departure now only days away, the packing is slightly overdue, but I’m confident that I’ll get there. Morning will come a little earlier on Tuesday, with the bus picking me up at 6 am. From Murwillumbah, we’ll travel to Robina to collect the Gold-Coasters, and then it’s on to Brisbane Airport. I’m guessing the day is going to be very long, as we make our way to Hong Kong to meet up with the travellers from Sydney and Melbourne. We will all then board the flight to Shanghai, where we’ll be met by our tour guide for the drive to our accommodation at the Shanghai Campus. From then on it will be full speed ahead, with every day being packed with great things to do.
