Back to work next week after a sojourn to Mexico - but what next?

We arrived home from our holiday in Mexico on Wednesday, finally going to bed 33 hours after getting up at 0600 on Tuesday, Mexican time.

We had a wonderful two weeks in which we did lots of relaxing on the beach or beside the pools. We also achieved the dream of visiting the World Heritage Site, Chitchen Itza. But more of our Mexico in a future blog post.

I have a new to-do app, Omni Focus, and my note for writing this week's blog is 'Back to work next week—but what next?'

It's back to work time next Tuesday. Next week or the week after, I have my yearly Personal Development Review (PDR). It is a known fact that at 62, I'm not really into personal development—well, not at work. This version of a PDR wants you to write goals. My goal is to get to retirement in one piece, and that's what I intend to write about. It will still get me to write a goal for the forthcoming year.

I had intended to retire at 60, but that wasn't possible due to the combination of the 2010 bank crashes, when I was made redundant, followed a few years later by the debacle of Brexit and a Global Pandemic. Baffling government decisions make my state pension age 67 five years away.

I have been fortunate to have received my MOD service pension throughout this time. I am building up an NHS pension, and I need to reconnect with a pension pot I contributed to when I worked with BAE Systems. Unfortunately, that is proving more easily said than done.

But what do I do next? 

We have plans to travel later this year and next, and continuing to work is the sensible thing to do to support that.

I have the option to request flexible working hours with my line manager. Currently, I work 37.5 hours 5 days in 7 days and one weekend in four, for which we receive 'enhancements'. 

I could suggest reducing that to 30 hours and keeping the weekend work. That will give me an extra day off in the week to devote to writing. That would be productive, and getting my novel(s) into publishing could also be profitable.

The downside would be less annual leave pro-rata, but with some creativity, the extra day off could compensate for that at times of leave. There are pros and cons in every decision.

That is what I'm thinking about at the moment. The delightful location of our Mexican holiday was relaxing, but it also made me think about the future. It is time for more me/us time. After all, we're only young once.

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Another wonderful week, but a bit frustrating and annoying for one brief moment

Hola and greetings from the Mexican Caribbean coast once again.

My wife and I are having a wonderful time here. Coming to this beautiful part of the world is a real privilege. It is truly a place that needs to be nurtured, and from its sounds, the government, local governments, and the tourist industry have the place in good hands.

My paternal Grandparents made their last working home for a couple of years in Mexico, in a place that escapes me, much further north towards the US border. My Grandfather was an engineer, and his company, now called The Ashmore Group, built a blast furnace in the mid-1970s.

 

One of the many reasons we chose to come to Mexico was to visit Chichen Itza, the World Heritage Site. That led to a major disappointment on Thursday morning, but more of that later.

Our first trio of the week was to Coba and Mayan Shaman and home. We also visited and swam in a magical underground cenote.

Our trip picked us up at 0630, about half an hour later than planned (we'll hear about a similar problem later). Our guide for the day, Raul, was very apologetic but a knowledgeable host.

To put this in the context of the history of Coba and the Mayans, the Mayan Culture stems from BC times, or whatever we call those times today. The Mexican Government developed the Cancun area, where our hotel was situated in the early 1970s, and this area and beyond was jungle. There were reports of the site in 1842, but it was in the 1930s and 40s before it would be thoroughly investigated. Coba was a major city with 50 thousand inhabitants at its height. It had strong links to major cities in Guatemala and military collaborations.

Walking or rather riding around on a tuk-tuk (poor chap), the site as a whole extends to 80 square miles. We certainly needed more time to go that far. We visited the main pyramid. It is interesting to note that all the pyramids around the globe appear at about the same time. We also visited one of the two ball courts. Historians considered these courts used for religious ceremonies rather than as a sport.

Last Friday was our tenth wedding anniversary. Before the group swam in the cenote, we visited a Mayan Shamen for a blessing. He blessed our wedding anniversary as a special gift, making our visit memorable.

Afterwards, we visited a Mayan family home in Coba village. The lady taught us how to make tortillas, and in exchange, we offered apples. They love apples, but they are not often available to them, and us being able to get them from the hotels makes them very happy.

On Sunday, we made a trip to Playa Del Carmen. A local jewellery company had put on the transport, so we had to spend the first 45 minutes there- a bit like some of the trips we had when in the RMs. We then spent two hours on the tourist street in Playa Del Carmen. We needed the ATM and a visit to a pharmacist, and then we had a couple of rather lovely cocktails. We tried to buy a couple of small bottles of Tequila, the ones with the grub in the bottle, but it was past 5 O'clock on a Sunday, and they were not permitted to sell alcohol after that time.

Then we come to the thorny subject of our trip to Chichen Itza. We had booked this trip on the first morning we arrived. It was why we chose this trip, and we were excited to be going. Our rep noted all our trips on a piece of paper for us, and 0600 was the time for this particular trip. We also had the ticket with 0600 on it as well. We got ourselves out of bed at 0450 and ready for the day. We went down to the reception at 0550 and waited. Buses came and went, but we were still waiting for our bus. At 0630, one of the Bell Boys approached us with a piece of paper. It then became apparent that the trip was due to leave at 0500. The bus arrived at 0520 and left at 0530. We were devastated and angry; we were both tearful. This memorable trip had been cruelly pulled from under us.

Kathy contacted the UK end of the company, but we had to wait three hours for the rep to work in the hotel. She said we sent you a message on the app, but they didn't; it was in a chat room that we didn't use. She then phoned to see if we could be re-booked, and we said we were not paying any extra. It ended with, 'This should be okay for Sunday, but you must realise this is a big organisation'. I had not spoken to this point, but I left the rep with no illusion that we were happy. They needed to sort their communications out correctly, and what she had come up with was an excuse and not a reason for the problem. An hour later, we received a text saying we were re-booked for Chichen Itza on Sunday and needed to be at the reception at 0450.

So there we are. We will be going to Chechen Itza on Sunday. We can have a lazy day by the pool on Monday before leaving here at lunchtime on Tuesday.

It's time for PT in the pool, and then we're on holiday, aren't we?

Have a great writing week, everybody, and I'll catch up with you all next week.

All the way from the Caribbean Coast of Mexico

Today, Thursday, March 9th. I'm writing this from the balcony of our hotel in Akumal Bay on the Cancun peninsular in Mexico. Looking out at the turquoise-blue sea of the Caribbean is a surreal outlook. We're six hours behind the UK, so it is strange when notifications come through on devices for things happening back home later in the day.

It is 0600, that's 1200, back in the UK, and the hotel is starting to wake up. The workers are busy ensuring the beach and pool areas are up to standard. The beach is particularly challenging as an onshore wind brings seaweed from the fields into the bay, which feeds this diverse ecological area of the world. Out in the bay live three species of Turtles and Manatees. We have witnessed a sting ray already coming close to the shore. 

The bird life is diverse. We have already spotted Pelicans flying over. Now, that was surreal, and now an Agouti is walking across the pool deck as I write this. Last night, while walking, a Coati dashed across in front of us. We witnessed a Hooded Oriole flying around the trees, and there were several Great Tailed Grackles. They are the Blackbird/Crows of Mexico, and they are pretty chatty and almost tame as they come quite close to us—nothing to do with the food we have, naturally. We walked along the beach this morning, and one displayed to a female: it is spring.

While back and forth from the beach this morning, two large Iguana's were around the pool. The biggest of the two saw me coming and scuttled underneath one of the poolside beds.

The waters of Akumal Bay are hot, hopefully not too much of a global warming indicator. Today, we donned our snorkels and explored the bay's waters. We saw a few fish and the beginnings of the coral reef, which is a little too far out for our swimming abilities.

Tomorrow (Friday), we are off on our first trip to the Coba pyramids (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coba), the tallest in the world. We are meeting a Mayan Shaman and will have a blessing for our wedding anniversary and a swim in the sacred cenote (a sacred well formed from limestone). Hopefully, we will see more wildlife there. We are then due to meet a Mayan family and make tacos with them. They have asked to take apples with us to give to the family. We're going to Chichen Itza next week and swimming in a cenote there.

It's early days into our long-awaited holiday and tenth wedding anniversary. We have a lot to be thankful for, the trip of a lifetime, for me at least.

I scheduled this correctly to publish at the usual time of 0700 on a Saturday, all being well.

I'm sure that there will be more to report next week.

The next few weeks

 

I have been trying to write less about my writing exploits in this blog than I had initially started out and more on varied subjects. I have concentrated more on my writing for the weekly Substack email.

I will be away for a couple of weeks after this weekend, and as it is the beginning of the month, I wanted to update you on my writing plans.

I am rewriting 'Beasting Dartmoor', my first novel draft. At first, it was proving slow, and the motivation needed to be more on point. No worries, I have been back on form these last few weeks. This week's productivity has amounted to several thousand words back into the novel. I'm now close to 11,000 words rewritten. I have taken advantage of my half-hour break at work and have used my time in the evenings. Within the next few weeks, I will have an idea of when I should complete this part of the writing process, and I can then start the next.

My cosy crime novel has taken a back seat to the rewrite. I may be inspired to write more for it over the next few weeks. I also have a short story, which, out of the three projects, is the most pressing. It's strange how 1500 words can take so much time. But I have a deadline, and I must get it done. I also have a plan for a third novel from that short story. 

I have yet to get too far with setting up my website. I might have somebody complete it, but I must consider it more.

I will expand on the plan for the next few months in my Substack this week. 

As I will be away for the next couple of weeks, there may be a few ad hoc blogs during the week. Please keep an eye out for them.

Have a good week, everybody, and many thanks for your continued support of the blog.