Time to start registering changes of address at various banks, and paying the first Council Tax instalment before setting up the regular dircet debit. It's very notable that all three banks have quite different security procedures in order to establish who you are, all a bit disconcerting really.
I queued for over half an hour in the Post Office to pay the Council Tax only to discover that a special plastic account identity card is necessary to make a cash payment, or else you have to pay the Post Office two quid for taking your money and passing it on. This I found most irritating. How simple it would have been for the Council Treasury to have included such a plastic card in with their account invoice for the year, but no, I then had to go down to the new library and apply for one (takes three weeks), at the ground floor section next to the internet terminals, which now houses the Connect to Cardiff offices.
The computer network was running too sluggishy to make checking emails a slick and easy experience, which makes me think that someone somewhere has underestimated the amount of network traffic on a sub system with over ninety PCs for public use, plus WiFi connectivity.
Having to learn new ways of doing things took me back to our first few months in Geneva, when banking, dealing with procedures to do with residence, employment, taxation and transport all had to be learned from scratch, even if they all seemed fairly recognisable on the surface. Then it struck me that entering retirement for me involves learning new bits of bureaucracy to do with pensions, taxation and so on, and this makes it equally a 'foreign land' experience.
Everyone I meet wants to know how retirement is going so far. Now I have something to say - it's just like moving abroad.
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