David

David moved to The Spindles at the end of April 2024, following his late wife’s advice: ‘Don’t become a slave to the house’. 

The early years 

Born in Yorkshire, he grew up in a village called Bramhope. 

“My father had a green grocer’s shop. My parents had no money whatsoever, but I got a really good education at Ilkley Grammar School. That was the making of me. 

“I was good at maths and went into accountancy. I later went into partnership with two others, and we founded our own accountancy firm. I always wanted to be my own boss, and I never regret it at all. I retired when I was 62.” 

David met Jean at school. They were childhood sweethearts and married when they were 23 years old. 

“We met in Austria on a school trip. We were about 15 and were together from then on. 

“Jean and I enjoyed quite a lot of travelling over the years. I absolutely adore the Italian lakes. Garda is just a dream spot. I fell in love with it. I love the food. I love the people and everything. I’ve been about eight times.  

“Jean loved Switzerland. There’s a lakeside in Switzerland, just over the border. 

I remember Jean and I were sitting on a bench at the side of the lake and Jean said, I think I’ve gone to heaven. We said we could live at either side of this border so we could both be in our favourite countries.” 

Jean’s parents were very involved with the local church, and that played a big part in their lives too.  

“I’ve always been quite involved with local community life. I still go to the same church almost every week. I got into amateur dramatics there too, which I loved. I was asked to be the treasurer and started taking part in plays, and then for nine years I ran a youth drama group with 50 kids doing shows. I ended up joining the Methodist players who used to put two plays on each year. For about 12 years I was in every single play. 

“Jean went to a domestic science college in Leeds and did a lot of domestic science training and then, when our first daughter Catherine was born, she gave that up and became a full-time mum.” 

Catherine and Helen 

David and Jean had two daughters. 

“Catherine was the elder one and Helen was four years younger. She absolutely worshipped her big sister.” 

When Catherine was seven years old, she was diagnosed with Still’s disease, a form of junior rheumatoid arthritis. 

“She actually came to the Children’s Hospital in Menston, because they supported children with long term illness who they felt could have an education. She was an extremely bright kid, so she went there, and she did quite well and settled in.” 

Sadly, Catherine’s condition worsened, and she had to move to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, where she died when she was nine years old. 

“It’s life changing to lose a child. Everything else sort of pales into insignificance really. She was such a bright kid. The headmistress from the school here was trying to work out how we could get her to university.” 

Helen went to Benton Park School in Rawdon, and later went to Strathclyde University. David’s thankful for the close bond they have and enjoys spending time with her and her husband, Craig.  

“Now she lives just a few miles down the road with Craig. They play a big part in my life.” 

Losing Jean 

Sadly, David’s wife Jean died in 2012.  

“She had an operation for breast cancer and that went away for quite a long time, but it came back three times altogether. 

“I had to learn to cope.  Because Jean was into all this domestic science training, that had totally been her side of things. She wrote this great long note book out on everything to be done around the house. 

“Sometime after we’d seen a specialist who had told her she’d only got about a year to go, she said to me one day ‘I put some more bits in the book. It’s a sort of a weekly guide to looking after the house and then some jobs that need doing from time to time. I’ve put them in there as well.’  

“I went to read it, and when I got to the end, it said ‘and don’t be a slave to the house. Best of luck.’ And then she put ‘Oh, and I’ve forgotten to say you need to take the fluff out of the tumble dryer.’ I said you couldn’t stop, could you? You’ve done all of that and you couldn’t stop.” 

David kept following those instructions and living by the book for another 10 or 11 years. 

Deciding to move 

Eventually, he decided to move. 

“We lived in Rawdon in a big four-bedroom, detached house with the most superb views over the valley. It was a struggle to part with that. I absolutely loved it and didn’t want to give it up. We’d been there since 1989, but I got to the point where I thought ‘David, what are you cleaning four bedrooms and two toilets for?’ 

“I looked at buying a bungalow but thought ‘Am I going to be doing this again in four years’ time?’ I really didn’t know much about retirement living. I’d been to visit one or two older people from our local church who were in an old folks’ homes, and I knew that I didn’t want to go and sit in semi circles of armchairs. I am not ready for that, so I started looking about a bit. 

“I went to see some other retirement communities, but they weren’t right and then I came across Adlington Retirement Living.  

“I knew that I could do a part exchange, which appealed to me. I agonised over it for a bit because I was very aware that financially you get about 10-15% less than the market value of your property. But I said to my daughter Helen, ‘I’ve thought and thought about it, and at the end of the day, I’m at an age that if I can move to somewhere where I’d really like to live, without me having to put more money into it, then I can accept that.’ So that was what I did. 

“We came to look at The Spindles and I thought this is the one. There’s no doubt that I think I’ve chosen the best apartment too. We chose it because it has all this additional space, including a big utility room, and I can look over the gardens on two sides and see everything that’s going on.  

“I’ve turned my spare bedroom into my own library. I have a big interest in history from about Queen Victoria onwards and in steam railways, so there’s quite a mixture of stuff. I absolutely love steam trains. I was a train spotter. I have a sneaking suspicion that if there were still steam locomotives, I’d still be on the end of a platform.” 

Moving made easy 

When it came to downsizing, David was glad to have the support of The Senior Move Partnership, a dedicated team of moving experts provided by Adlington Retirement Living to help with the process. 

“Choosing what to part with was difficult. My previous house was big. We had an awful lot of fitted storage and we filled it. I had some help from a lady called Kimberly. I found that very helpful. I chose a charity to donate a lot of stuff to and Kimberly got these pink post it notes and stuck them on everything so that the people from the charity knew what to take. She also came up with three removal people for me to see, and one of those was really good.” 

The friendly team and welcoming community at The Spindles helped David to settle in.  

“It was funny at first because it’s such a big change of lifestyle. There are lots of ‘first times’ for everything, like going into the restaurant or the coffee lounge. I quickly discovered that you can just go and sit with other people and everybody’s very welcoming.  

“I have lunch in the restaurant more or less every day and I tend to go and have a coffee in the homeowners lounge afterwards or sit outside in the garden. 

“The whole set up here is really good with lots of different things going on that you can get involved with, which helps too. I go to a quiz every other week and one of the other homeowners started something she calls ‘memory lane’ where we all talk about things we remember from years ago. 

“There’s a gardening club, but I said: ‘I’ve done enough gardening for my life thank you.’ Where we lived, I had a really sloping lawn that I had to mow, and I was struggling with it. 

The homeowners in the gardening club grow all sorts of things in our raised beds, and the Adlington gardeners come and do everything else. Its glorious. 

“When you move here, all of a sudden you’re not looking at jobs that need doing around the house and garden. The worry has instantly all gone away. You see people doing the gutters and you know all these things are taken care of. You don’t have to lift a finger.” 

Being able to use the communal facilities as an extension of his own home, has been an added bonus since moving to The Spindles. 

“I use the activities room quite a lot because I really enjoy doing Jigsaws. There’s a cupboard full of jigsaws. Oh, I’m in Bliss. There’s a cinema room too which I plan to make use of at some point. I’ve always had somebody come to do my hair, so he comes here now, and we use the hair salon. I have a chiropodist too, and we use the therapy suite.” 

A warm welcome and worry-free lifestyle 

David has enjoyed becoming part of a thriving community since his move. 

“The camaraderie is one of the best things about living here, without a doubt, because I see far more people than I ever did. I remember saying once to a lady at church, not all that long after Jean had died ‘You know, I never spoke to a person yesterday’ and she said, ‘Oh, that happens to me quite a lot’. Now I see people all the time. You know, there’s a real community spirit and we’re just having more fun.” 

Knowing the Adlington team are on-site 24 hours a day is another aspect of retirement living that David appreciates.  

“It’s good to have people to bounce things off. For example, I got something purporting to be from Royal Mail about trying to deliver a parcel and it asked for my date of birth. Suddenly I thought, why do you need my date of birth? I was fairly certain it was a scam, but that’s the sort of thing I can just go downstairs and talk to the manager about to see what they think. 

“If I was talking to somebody who was thinking about moving to a retirement community, I would definitely be positive.  

“I think you have to get your head around the financial details. I found the way that they handled the part exchange and everything, was good. It took away all the worry of dealing with a chain. You hear too often about house sales going wrong somewhere in the middle, and then you’re all back at square one. I didn’t have to worry about that and the time it saves is precious.  

“Since I moved in, I have found everything to be even better here than I thought it would be. I thought I would miss the old place, but I don’t. Possibly that’s because it’s such a different life that you’re not really comparing one with the other. 

“Here you have the camaraderie, the friendship groups and all the things that you can enjoy. We spend less time doing jobs around the house and more time enjoying life.”