Put up the bunting, Tina Fox, our Director (Scotland) is finally retiring!

This is my second attempt at retiring. I thought I would take up early retirement when I left my post as CEO of the Vegetarian Society in 2006. Instead, I ended up working for the Vegetarian Housing Association and then setting up Vegetarian for Life the following year. Anyone who knows me will be aware I am just not the retiring kind. Although I am looking forward to having more free time, I know I will just fill it with other projects but with no pay. It feels very strange to think that after the end of September I will no longer be a formal part of Vegetarian for Life (though I am still a volunteer and will be giving a talk at Scotland Vegfest in December). I have met my successor, Kim Stringer, twice and am more than happy to be handing over the Director (Scotland) reins to her. I am even happier about handing over boxes of print and envelopes. I am looking forward to having my little study as a ‘real’ room for a change and not the working office that it has been for the last 5 years. I think I will redecorate and refurnish to mark the change and at last I will be able to use that really useful cupboard for items other than VfL leaflets and paper. I will very much miss the board meetings and working with my colleagues at VfL but they are a great team and will no doubt carry on just fine without me. I won’t miss travelling to Crewe for meetings and staying in an overly hot hotel for the night. I will miss the public events and speaking because I like meeting new people. But, guess what, I am now the secretary (unpaid of course) of the Moffat Art Collective and we had a major and very successful event Bank Holiday weekend. After that I have to get some more venues for the group, with one already organised for next September. This group has eleven members all working in slightly different forms of art and although I am not artistic myself I have suddenly found myself making very artistic bunting for the first time!

I am also involved in various other groups in Moffat and have a garden that needs work, so no doubt my time will be filled more than adequately. In addition I have been asked to become a trustee of two organisations. I am still considering that because travel is very much on the agenda and we have to find minders for our 15 year old cat Niamh, which limits the time I can spend away. I have breaks in Budapest and Bruges in September, a friend coming up for a week in October, a break in Perthshire in November and likely one in Liverpool in December. So there will still be plenty of travel blogs and reviews from me to come! Finally I would like to say a thank you to my fellow staff and board members for being such a great team to work with. I feel very blessed that I have actually been paid for working on something I truly enjoy for the last 9 years. I know VfL can only go from strength to strength and continue to enhance the lives of many older vegetarians.