refinement NOT retirement!

PICKLEBALL IN THE COTSWOLDS Hi, this is Tony Coe again with the Refinement NOT retirement podcast.  Today I want to talk about Pickleball, the fabulous sport with a quirky name that has brought enormous joy to our lives. Pickleball has taken the USA by storm in the past decade.  This new sport’s growth rate in America has been phenomenal, and now it’s spreading like wildfire in the UK and across Europe too. It's even arrived in rural England, in an "Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty" called The Cotswolds. Imagine a sport that combines the best parts of tennis, badminton and table tennis - that’s pickleball in a nutshell.  If you like any of those sports, you’ll likely take to pickleball like a duck to water!  It’s a game that doesn’t take long to pick up - and it’s far less physically demanding than tennis.  Best of all, older people can defeat young’uns with guile because there’s a lot of strategy and finesse involved. This means it’s a fantastic, cross-gene...

  Hot Tub Bliss in a Cotswolds Garden This blog post is about our latest episode of our unique refinement NOT retirement (RnR) podcast, a show which advocates REFINING your life in preference to retiring from it. My name is Tony and I co-host the RnR show with my WONDERFUL wife & life partner, Christine. On the show in this latest episode , Christine and I share one life-refinement that has filled us with daily JOY and happiness out of all proportion to the financial investment we made in it.  (This one, let me tell you, was a big contrast to our narrowboat experience!  Do listen to the 4 episodes of the podcast which cover that story, if you’ve not already done so. Clue; it ends in a nightmare!) Our time on this planet is so short, it pays to make life-refinements (i.e. enhancements) as early as you possibly can, instead of waiting for a “retirement day”which may never come; or you might leave it too late to truly reap the benefits of the refinements you make. So we...

What WILL Christine say about this? Strolling in Kensington Mews before we escaped the rat race Without telling Christine, I snuck up to my man cave and made a monolgue episode of our RnR (refinement NOT retirement) podcast in which I explained how I'm REALLY feeling about quitting work.   I asked Christine if she'd be willing to listen to it on her own and then immediately come back l ive on air to give her reaction to my thoughts. Christine WAS willing, and here's the episode where she gives her reaction .

  On our narrowboat's maiden voyage Not all perceived refinements turn out to be positive. Let's just say for starters that our narrowboat experience wasn't ENTIRELY Tickety-Boo! In our last blog/podcast, Christine and I talked about our escape from London to The Cotswolds. Now that WAS an entirely positive change. A refinement! When we first started looking for a place in the country shortly after the COVID pandemic hit, I had the bright idea ( and this is Tony talking here ) that we should also buy a narrowboat.  I was absolutely delighted when Kiki (aka Christine) agreed and, as she always does, threw herself wholeheartedly into BOTH projects - i.e. finding a new home in the country, and purchasing a narrowboat. The first potential new home she found even had a 120ft canal mooring at the bottom of the garden.  At that time, we’d decided on having a new narrowboat built. Thank goodness we changed our minds about that idea! Since I was a small boy, I’ve been obsesse...

  Christine & Tony strolling in Hyde Park before the Great Escape As you now know, Christine and I consider ourselves to be in “refinement” (not retirement) but we have most certainly retired from the business that we’ve owned and operated together for more than 30 years. But we think we’ve been “in refinement” since a long time ago - refinements meaning changes we’ve made (both big and small) that have enhanced our lives. A major life-refinement for us was a relatively recent one -  our escape to the country, or more specifically, to The Cotswolds . For more than a quarter of a century we had been living and working in the heart of central London.  Our property was in South Kensington a few minutes walk from Kensington Palace and The Royal Albert Hall.   We lived in a flat within a building constructed in about the mid-1800s.   The property also contained our company’s premises.  It was a fantastic set-up that worked brilliantly for us. The ...