Where would I be without You Tube?

 

 

 

 Retirement.

It comes to us all, like death and taxes (to paraphrase Sam Clemens), but I'm betting I'm not the only one to neglect planning for it. But it happened, incredibly four years ago already, and without a backward glance I walked away from the workplace with a spring in my step (as far as dodgy knees and hips allow, in any case).

A weight fell off my shoulders. I had plans, places to go and things to do. A backlog of books to read. Others to write and one to (finally) publish. Time to relax a bit away from the business treadmill - time for myself. Sure, money would be tight, but that was inevitable: I had been very well paid for several years so was bound to take a bit of a hit because, in retrospect foolishly, I hadn't saved as much as I should have. But that was ok, I decided, I'd manage.

I soon discovered it wasn't quite what I had expected. I'd not done my sums right at all, maths never being my strong point, and my income plummetted far more than I had anticipated when the salary was replaced by pensions. To make matters worse, during the good years I had failed to msake voluntary contributions to top up the funds, too busy having good winter and summer vacations with my family and enjoying good meals out. Investing in the present rather than the future is never a good idea...

Then Covid came along and blew the entire planet out of kilter - and of course my life too. Travel basically stopped, people worked from home or lost their jobs altogether, economies collapsed and everyone was stuck indoors for safety (or had to wear masks and sometimes gloves when going out, say for shopping) while the scientists and doctors fought to engineer a cure and save lives respectively. It took a couple of years but they managed it, by which time I had been quite ill with the virus myself (and I'm still carrying the consequences in various ways), and everyone tried to get back to normal. All things considered, I, and my nearest and dearest, didn't fare too badly.

Economies were inflated by governments injecting huge sums of money to support struggling businesses and the new unemployed - and I'm not being critical at all, it was needed - , and that has inevitably caused inflation rates to jump alarmingly. I'm no economist, obviously, and I'm sure there are yet other reasons for the parlous state of European and British economies (not least Bloody Brexit and the War in Ukraine) but what I do know is the costs of everything have shot up and my pensions haven't. The result, inevitably, is that it doesn't go far enough.

Times are indeed tough, but we're managing.

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But my retirement plans have been shot to Hell in a handcart.

The reading is going ok, slow but sure (like many things, that Covid hangover has had an effect, in this case focus issues), and the writing improving. The books are still either unfinished or unpublished, but after a very slow couple of Pandemic Years I'm getting back into the swing of it (as this ramble demonstrates: the words come at odd times and not how I originally envisaged them - this is my fourth re-write of a relatively small piece - but at least they do come) so I'm happy with that.

I have time to myself, though not as much as I want or expected. Partly this is because I still have my family responsibilites (and thank God for that!) and they have increased with the acquisition of Lulu, a soppy but adorable English Bulldog who demands my attention too. The kids are old enough to be left to their own devices, whether during term or vacation time, but Lulu - not so much. She needs exercising and feeding at certain times that don't always coincide with the kids being here (my Beloved is at work full time) so I can't hop on a train to, say, Białystok for a wander and a change of scenery for a day or two - even going into town to meet a mate for lunch can be a challenge.

In any case, money is still tight. Besides the inflation stuff (currently 13% here and rising) that I mentioned, there is another major issue that I'm not going to detail here - at least not now: maybe in the future - that is also very restrictive. Trips anywhere are difficult to organise and even more difficult to fund, at least for the moment. I'm hoping we'll be back to relative normality come 2023 and I can dig the passport out again. Despite all the Bucket List items I had, and indeed have added to over the past months, since my retirement I've made only a handful of out of town trips: a couple to the Baltic Coast, a couple to England and one terrific two week trip to Switzerland (I wrote about that at length in earlier blog posts). Nowhere near what I had planned and to nowhere new - the Bucket List has nothing ticked off yet. So I have some ground to make up.

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I've watched a couple of videos on YouTube recently about retirement planning (not the financial variety). They were both from a channel that carries an extensive catalogue of videos from the TEDTalk series. This is an organisation, I believe American, that runs a program of big conferences with an extensive range of short and invariably entertaining lectures on every subject under the sun. I watched a few relating to mental health and coping with problems therein a year or so ago and found them helpful.

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across one given by a retired University professor that was funny and serious and pertinent all in one go. He basically talked about the importance of (non-financial) retirement planning - about setting goals beyond spending every spare moment on the golf course (which I can't afford to do and in any case don't play); not cutting yourself off completely from friends and family by, for instance, moving hundreds of miles away to be by the sea and achieving the ambition of permanent vacation; of finding things to occupy both your mind and body; and above all about meeting other people and finding new interests. He gave some examples that work fine in your home country perhaps but must be difficult elsewhere, when language issues creep in. But it was a good talk, and gave me food for thought because I had done little of that.

A couple of days later, a similar talk popped up, this time by a younger psychotherapist and counseller, that was equally interesting and thought provoking (if not quite as funny). It said much the same thing only without the golf analogy. The conclusion in both talks was that the people who enjoyed retirement most, and who benefitted from a long happy and healthy life after retirement tended to be those who had actually done some planning, set out their goals and interests and plans properly before leaving work. Half-assed walking away with some vague ideas but none about how to realise them was simply not the way to go. But it's basically what I did.

So I'm doing a bit of re-planning right now: I have some ideas that, maybe, one day I'll achieve and chronicle here. So watch this space.

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And mention of YouTube brings me finally to what this piece was supposed to be about (see what I mean about the words flying off in unexpected directions?), when I first had the idea and jotted down some notes: "Where would I be without YouTube?"

Now I realise the platform deservedly has come in for a lot of criticism (and still does), and is certainly not perfect. It's the primary repository for scare mongering, misinformation, conspiracy theories and assorted other social ills that in my view are making a right mess of society these days. But in my view, calls to regulate it more closely are misplaced: the internet was designed to be the home of free and unfettered information - good, bad or indifferent - for everyone - and I have no problem with that. There's some wonderful stuff there but also a whole lot of pure shite.

And, yes, I accept that's a matter of personal taste - which is what makes policing it next to impossible, in my view. In any case, I truly believe the internet is like Pandora's box: once the lid is off and the stuff inside - good and bad - has escaped, you'll never get it back in and close the lid again. What's done is done, and we users must police oursleves rather politicians police the web.

I spend a lot of time on the platform. For a start there is the subsidiary YouTube Music, dedicated to, well, music. It's owned by Google (not exactly a plus point but still...) and a year or so ago became the replacement for Google's own music streaming platform: we users were effectively forced to transfer our library of music, whether down-loaded or ripped from CDs as much of my own was, that was stored in Google's cloud service into a similar storage in the YouTube Music bit of the cloud and into your own account (of course with your main Google account sign-on). Bit of a chore, but what the hell - before I did so, I looked at YouTube Music as a guest, tried a few searches for obscure 1960s prog rock stuff and was nicely surprised by its content. So I duly opened my account, moved my Library over, created a shortcut on my command line and use it quite a bit (though perhaps not quite as much as Spotify). Parenthetically: I've just dipped into YTM and there is absolutely no sign of all "my" stuff, the Library I moved over from Google Music - Christ only knows where it's all gone but it's a good job I kept a copy on my hard-drive....

The real pleasure for me in YouTube is the range of video content on the platform that covers, quite literally, every subject I can think of (which is a lot) and many more besides. But you knew that already. As someone with, I like to think, a decent range of interests, it's been a Godsend these Covid years, especially as my travellin' days ground to a halt. For a start, I can get my football fix, my club's match highlights, player and management interviews quickly - it's the only way, given the Vanerama National League South is not covered by any tv or satellite channel operating in Poland. I can dig out documentaries on some of my favourite bands; arguments about who was the better drummer, Keith Moon or John Bonham (IMO technically Bonzo but for creativity and unpredictable genius Moonie); old Monty Python tv shows; WW2 documentaries; movies about why DeLorean failed; which is the best browser today; commentary and opinion pieces on the parlous state of British politics; and old and forgotten sci-fi movies. It's all there, in black & white and living colour, and much else besides.

What makes it indispensable for me is that I can browse it and find so much travel related content to not only entertain me but inspire me too. I ignore stuff by airlines or travel companies or tourist boards - the professional stuff - because all of that is essentially there to sell a product or a country and hence is nowhere near objective. OF COURSE Lufthansa is going to plug its Business Class as being the best in the skies (it isn't), OF COURSE WizzAir is going to push its low fares (but check the small print on the website for all the extras and understand its refund policies), and OF COURSE SNCF is going to say its TGV service from Paris to Milan is the best (ignoring competitor services offered by rival private train operators at a lower price for an identical but sometimes faster journey).

No, I search out the army of vloggers, independents like you and me, that travel at their own expense on these trains and airlines and coach companies and cruise lines (and in the odd occasion when the ticket is provided by that airline or train operator, own up to the fact) and provide warts-and-all films of their experience, good or bad. And in a non-boring entertaining way.. I have a list of perhaps a dozen Channels that are my Go-To's, and they rarely, if ever, disappoint. I've subscribed to them all so get Notifications for their weekly output.

Some focus on airline travel - be it Economy Class exclusively or Business Class (or a combination thereof). They give detailed videos: toilet and lounge reviews, good food or inedible, lie-flat beds or cheap seats, legacy carriers or the cheapos like RyanAir. I don't always agree with their opinions (and why should I?) and tell them so in the Comments: had some fun dialogues doing that. Favourites here include Simply Aviation (it does what it says on the tin: flying only, mainly Economy Class); DennisBunnick Travels (Aussie tour operator tours the world in Business and First Class - something I will never do now); and, now and again, NonStop Dan (Swedish/American kid uses only Business or First Class and whinges about how BAAAD it is...).

Others focus more on rail travel, and provide similar videos to the flight ones, again in an invariably entertaining way. These are probably more relevant to me, since the prices and locations are more likely to be within reach - from Warsaw I can get trains to pretty much anywhere in Europe (after a bit of research). For these vlogs, my Go-To channels are Superalbs Travels (young English guy who is very good indeed at foreign place name pronunciations - even Polish and Turkish...); Dylan's Travel Reports (young Yorkshire bloke and his girlfriend go all over the shop in trains); and The Man in Seat 61 (close to an industry sponsored channel, but the routes covered are the kinds of rides I want to take and the linked website is a great source of booking informations and prices).

Coach travel is another popular category, and many vloggers combine all three for often entertaining films where things go wrong. Here, try Planes, Trains, Everything (Scottish guy tries a Paris to London trip using pre-Eurostar routing - train to Calais, ferry to Dover, train to London - and is beset by line closures in France, restrictions on foot passengers on the ferries and train strikes in Britain); Noel Phillips (English guy suffers stomach and heat problems in India and Africa and the US while journeying on awful airlines, filthy trains and Greyhound buses - but eats a lot of chips and curries), and, slightly more upmarket, WinginIt!Paul Lucas (former civil servant does flights and long train trips, typically in First or Business Class, but sometimes Economy - and some of the train trips have been epic....lucky bugger!).

There are others I dip in and out of when something pops up on my feed that catches my eye - notably Tips for Travellers and Emma Cruises (middle aged Englishman and young English woman who specialise in cruise vacations: not sure I fancy that - the thought of being stuck on a ship with two or three thousand strangers for a fortnight does not appeal to me at all - but perhaps a trip along the Rhine or Danube on a smaller vessel and only a hundred other people might be fun).

I had a good find a few weeks back where a guy tried to explain how far back in time an Englishman could travel before being unable to understand the English being spoken - turned out to be soon after the Norman Conquest. Another compared and contrasted provision for cyclists between Swiss cities like Zurich and Geneva and Basle with Canadian cities like Calgary and Windsor Ontario - the Canadians did not fare at all well. He made a similar film relating to the Swiss rail system and the Canadian, and once again the Canadian system fared poorly: surprisingly Calgary, one of the biggest cities in Canada, isn't served by a single transcontinental rail service - it doesn't even have a station for freight. Gas guzzling cars and trucks rule the roost there.

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Go to YouTube, type in a random search query - Firefox, say (since I'm giving that browser another run out, and liking it: it's definitely been improved lately): I just tried it, and the top choice was a clip from the classic 1982 Clint Eastwood film of that name (it's a top-secret Russian stealth plane that he is sent by the CIA to steal), followed by a film about why the browesr and its Mozilla Foundation must survive for the sake of the internet, followed by another clip from the movie, then a guy explaining why he's ditching the browser for something else.......and so on. Pages of suggestions.

And its the same for pretty much everything. It certainly beats the hell out of daytime tv here because I know I will definitely find something I will enjoy, something new that I haven't seen before, rather than an umpteenth Top Gear or Doctor Who re-run or awful local soap opera.

"Where would I be without You Tube?" Climbing walls, quite probably.