Day 323 - Decade

 DECADE

Prompt - Decade : Choose a favourite decade and write about it

Decisions, decisions.  Do I choose a personal favourite, when I felt happiest, or the decade before the UK started turning into the toxic shithole it has become in recent years?  Especailly considering that the former is also the most sriking example to demonstrate the latter progression...

My personal favourite has been the decade just gone.  What do we call it?  The Tens?  The Teens?  Whatever name history bestows, it was a hugely enjoyable ten years for me, between 2010 and 2019.  It began with retirement, and the chance to do with life as I wished.  And hten, other than my diagnosis of gout, and the annoyance that breifly brought, it turned into a decade of self development, of change and discovery, of enjoyment.  It took me fro a nice house in Southport to a wonderful flat in Edinburgh.  From a relatively sterile fan of motor racing to an active fan of first hockey, then rugby.  From someone who wrote a daily diary and little else into someone who wrote something, anything, every day, and which would eventually lead to this year of coming up with short stories and poems.  From being moderately fit to being able to walk for hours.  And who had, sort of, returned to gym work.  From being unsure about how th rest of life would turn out, to finding some sense of purpose, and getting to enjoy so much creativity laid before me.  It has been a happy decade.

It also allowed m to develop a new approach to life.  To treat life as a series of phases, either major or minor, and not to dwell too long on the phase gone by, but to concentrae on making the best of the phase ahead.  The most major examples of that were leaving paid employment, and the move north back to my home town.  But along the way there has been losing the social activity of being in the Caps family, the move into the new flat, the recognition that Advocard work was something I was quite good at.  All adjustments to be made, taken into the daily fabric of life.

There has also been my development as a writer (of sorts).  The discovery of 750words and the help that gave me in becoming committed to writing every single day  (I am currently on a 1409 day streak, which started well back into my chosen decade!).  The impetus to start a blog, which has now been going, in fits and starts, for over nine years.  That leading into the hobby of writing reviews of the shows and films I go to see.  And on into what would become the 365 project this year, with, I hope, more to come.

My creativity has extended to the visual, with the enjoyment of Instagram, although I did let myself down by finally buying the DSLR I'd been promising, then failing to learn to use it!

At the same time our new found liesure has increased our consumption of live culture, and sport.  That's been enhanced by the move to Edinburgh.  The golden years were 2015 to 2018, when we truly had life sorted.  Summers spent at all the wonderful festivals - Trad, Film, Jazz, Fringe etc - and a winter of going to our second home at Murrayfield Ice Rink, where we became a part of the furniture, where we elt we fitted in.  It was sad when the Caps period came to an end, but I was lucky to them move on to Edinburgh Rugby, which would ultimately lead on to reconnection with my oldest friend.

In contrast to that hugely enjoyable personal life, the political background has been disastrous.  We moved up to Scotland in 2014, full of hope for independence, and I played a minor role in the campaign, only to have those hopes shattered.  Worse was to come two years later with the madness of Trump and brexshit.  The latter continues to make lives worse, and there's more to come.  But those events were part of the logical flow that began in the eighties, with Regan and the vile Thatcher.  Ever since I watched the rise of far right influence in UK politics, and that is currently our greaest danger.  

Which is why I'd choose the seventies as my best decade in the wider world, alhough less so if you were part of any minorities.  But the far right were a bad joke, with scum like the BNP enjoying risible support.  For all that there were serious problems in that decad, like three day weeks and the winter of discontent, they were share problems.  The UK was a far happier place pre Thatcher's divisiveness, mostly because it was more equal.  And that's something we have to learn to recapture. Roll on Indy...