Author: TrickyAndNIcky

24th August 2026 We like a bit of history here at rockrootsretirement. Barbados and the West Indies, the English Civil War, Shakespeare and the Tudors – we’ve got it covered. So when history repeated itself last week I was inspired to write a few words about it. Spoiler alert: there isn’t much about Barbados in…

11th August 2026 Our removal company set aside two days to pack and begin loading us up before completion day. I thought this was way too cautious, especially when Rob and Andy turned up early at 8am on 20th July. Well, how wrong I was. These two guys really put in a shift, but by…

5th August 2026 Change is afoot – and not just in my profile picture. I’d been thinking about mixing it up anyway when my mind was made up by a friend suggesting that my previous one showed me looking a bit smug and put her off reading my posts! Well, we can’t have that –…

7th July 2026 This is really just a brief coda to ‘History lesson 2’ from 15th May. Having just returned from Barbados we spent a couple of days in Kent and took in the amazing lavender fields at Castle Farm in Shoreham… …before embarking on a walk which took in Lullingstone Castle… …where we bumped…

2nd July 2026 This album was a big seller when I was a Saturday boy in the record department at WHSmith in Wood Green in 1981: I’m not a particular fan of the group myself, but everyone loves them these days and they are certainly musical icons. Nicola tells an amusing tale of being laughed…

1st July 2026 A sense of déjà vu descends. We have form here. See ‘Many hands make light work’, 18.1.25. The original VIPs put in a shift and filled a decent sized skip. You know who you are 😎. Bravo! As I say, that skip was a decent size. You can get a hell of…

28th June 2026 The veteran American director and actor Mel Brooks is 100 today. Every man in my age bracket was a teenager in the late 1970s/early 1980s and will never forget giggling hysterically at the farting scene in ‘Blazing Saddles’ or his turn as Louis XlV in ‘History of the World Part 1’. There…

18th June 2026 In April 1990 my buddy Craig and I embarked on a year’s backpacking around the world. After three extraordinary months in southeast Asia we landed in the Lucky Country – Australia 🇦🇺 . We were the proud possessors of ‘working holiday visas’ which, as the name suggests, allowed us to work and…

12th June 2026 ”We reach!” I always thought all West Indians said this when they were announcing “We’ve arrived!” but my local linguistic consultant tells me it might just be Trinis. Views from Bajans, Jamaicans etc are welcomed. But the message is clear: we’re back. We’ve never been in Barbados at this time of year…