Why did I decide to retire and move to live in North Bohemia?

My home in Stará Oleška as it looks today © Ricky Yates

This is a question, sometimes with slight variations, that I’ve been asked time and again this past year. So as this is my four hundredth blog post 🙂 🙂 🙂 , I thought I would put into written form, the answers I’ve been giving to all those who have enquired. I’ve broken the question down into two parts, with four reasons under each heading. If you have further questions, please leave them in a comment and I promise to respond.

Why did I decide to retire?

1. Because I could

On 26th February 2017, I celebrated my sixty-fifth birthday. Although, because of increasing longevity and consequent increased costs, . . . → Read More: Why did I decide to retire and move to live in North Bohemia?

The new house in Stará Oleška

The new house © Ricky Yates

 

As I’ve explained in my two previous blog posts, here and here, and in responding to comments on them, I’ve been looking to buy a house into which to retire, in the vicinity of the north Bohemian town of Decín. This is the promised update.

On Thursday 9th March, I went to view this house, along with Martin Tonder of Vesta Realitní. Having overnight pondered on what I saw, the next day, I sent off an email with an offer to buy. By the morning of Tuesday 14th March, my offer had been accepted 🙂

After a few days delay, I’ve now received translations into English of two documents for me and the current . . . → Read More: The new house in Stará Oleška

From Winter into Spring

After a very cold and snowy winter, as I explained in my eighth blog anniversary post, in the last couple of weeks, Winter has slowly begun to recede and Spring is arriving. Therefore, it is certainly time to get my blog out of hibernation, being very aware that I haven’t posted anything here for a month.

There are numerous events that I could write about but here are just three highlights from the last couple of weeks.

My birthday burger © Ricky Yates

Birthday

On Sunday 26th February, I celebrated my sixty-fifth birthday. This is the second time since moving to Prague, that my birthday has fallen on a Sunday. The last time was on the occasion of my sixtieth birthday in 2012 which was also a . . . → Read More: From Winter into Spring

Happy eighth birthday to my blog

Kostel sv. Mikuláse in Malá Strana © Ricky Yates

Tomorrow, Saturday 4th February 2017, marks a significant anniversary – it is exactly eight years since I wrote and posted my first-ever blog post here on ‘Ricky Yates – an Anglican in Prague’. Yes – eight years on, I’m still blogging 🙂

Believe it or not, this is post number 375. But I have to confess that in the past year, I’ve only managed to add 33 posts since celebrating the blog’s seventh birthday, a year ago. Therefore it sadly ranks as my least productive year 🙁 However, I am proud that if you scroll down the right-hand side bar to ‘Archives’, you will see that in each of the 96 months since I started writing, I have managed at least one post in every single one . . . → Read More: Happy eighth birthday to my blog

When I’m Sixty-Four

Yours Truly on 11th March 1956, aged 4

Tomorrow will be my sixty-fourth birthday. Yes – on 26th February 1952, in the upstairs bedroom of a semi-detached house in Allesley, Coventry, UK, Yours Truly made his entry into the world. Of course, if I had arrived three days later, then it would only be my sixteenth birthday as 1952 was a leap year 🙂 , just like 2016.

The reason I was born at home and not in hospital, was because my two older sisters had been born in hospital. My mother had had no problem with either delivery so was told that baby number three could be born at home. My mother was under the care of her district midwife, a situation which is now much more widely understood by the younger generation, because of the TV series ‘Call the Midwife’. However, I . . . → Read More: When I’m Sixty-Four