About Chequer Creative

Getting older, maybe retiring, has the possibility of being the last great adventure. As a friend of mine puts it, it’s like being a student but with money. Even if you don’t have too much money you may have time. Time you can use to pursue your dreams.

I created Chequer Creative to document my last great adventure, celebrate my creativity, and hopefully provide a positive role model of an older women. I want to celebrate the positive side of getting older, focus on the opportunities it brings and, in my dreams at least, create a community of women who are embracing a creative third age.

Older women have a tremendous opportunity to make a difference in the world. We can help combat ageism, we can model many different types of happy and fulfilling lives in retirement and we can live a creative life in ways that may not have been possible when we were working or raising children.

I hope that you will come on this journey with me and share your insights along the way.

Love Barb x

PS if you’re wonder why ‘ChequerCreative’ its because our home is one of Salisbury’s medieval chequers

About Barb

Hi I’m Barb. I retired a year ago following a 35 year career in the public sector. I have been married to Brian for 44 years and we have one son. Like many people there was about 20 years of my life where I was focussing mainly on two things, my work / career and bringing up my child. These two things pretty much took up all my energy for a long time. In 2010 my son headed off to university and I suddenly had time, but what to do? More on what I did over on the ‘My Story’ page.

We had always planned to downsize (the garden at least) on retirement so around a year before we were due to retire we started looking around. We had already settled on Salisbury, a medieval cathedral city just into the south west of England. Of course we found the perfect house straight away and ended up moving rather sooner than intended, leaving us with a long commute for the last few months.

We have now been here 2 years and we both love it. The decision to move from the country into the town has been a huge success, we can not only walk to the shops, theatre and cinema but can also be in the relatively open spaces by the river in a matter of minutes. Then there is the Cathedral and Close and any number of beautiful buildings to see. I do miss our large garden a bit but am loving our newly designed tiny courtyard space.