While cleaning my electric razor a clip that holds the blades in place flicked off and disappeared down the plughole. I wasn’t too worried as I was due to replace the shaving head shortly. It was only when I found that new heads were no longer available that I started to fret. With replacement head […]
Waiting for the start of this week’s Pilates class I chatted to my neighbour about how, in ten years of classes, I’d never progressed from the intermediate class. I added that while I would like to say ‘I loved the class’, but the truth is that it hurts. I added that the reason I keep […]
In a bid to embrace change (or is it accept the inevitable!) I am in the process of giving up my landlines, bidding farewell to the two strands of copper that first arrived in the house almost 100 years ago and replacing them with a single glass tube – not much thicker than a human […]
TV today has a raft of programmes all built around the same theme – all of us have too many possessions and these shows encourage you to let go of at least 50% of what you own with the promise that you’ll enjoy the remaining 50% far more. Recently I found myself with an opportunity […]
Surrounded by intelligent women I have little choice but to become fully aware of the latest trends. Palm oil and Ultra-processed foods are the current focus but, luckily for me, we do not simply ‘jumping on the band-wagon’ of either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but trying to understand the science behind the hype. Pam oil was […]
A key theme emerging from EML’s research into living longer is the importance, over time, of maintaining a balance across different aspects of life. At different times we inevitably get dragged in one direction or another – and that’s fine; the important thing is to restore the balance when the opportunity presents. Many people get […]
The day after one client ‘retired’ he took all his business suits to the charity shop. For him they were a uniform and this marked a clear ‘transition’ – the end of his ‘first career’ and a first step forward to what comes next. Another took over a decade to discard the last business suit […]
Traditionally, once you stop working, you enter ‘old age’ – and from there, there is no return! All that is changing and these days ‘old age’ subdividing into ‘old age’ (the point your first career stops) and ‘frail old age’ (when ‘whatever is going to get you’ starts to emerge). Old age is the world’s […]
When Bismark created the world’s first state pension scheme in the 1880s he never expected to pay out – it was simply a creative (and seemingly popular) tax raising exercise. Life expectancy in Germany at the time was 48, so 65 was selected for benefit payments to start, thus ensuring there were few, if any, […]
When something comes along that sends an established market into turmoil it is usually described as a ‘disruptive technology’. Recently I have spotted at least two such changes. When EML started I saw a friend had a home office printer/copier/scanner which looked ideal – and so it proved, but with one big drawback. The unit […]