Two months into retirement, helping to open a gallery in an old Derbyshire Mill

I am writing this looking over the mill pond, sitting at a desk with an ancient Apple Mac and my even more ancient typewriter. We are going for a retro look. Occasionally the pond is drained to stop the ground floor flooding, but we are a floor up, safe from all but a biblical flood. A couple of days ago two little egrets were searching for food, and Lindsey  tells me that a kingfisher sometimes perches on one of the posts. But today, apart from the moorhens, it is quiet.

It’s been almost two months since I retired. It has taken a while to adjust and to get into some sort of routine, but getting my partner’s gallery into a fit state for its opening on the first weekend of December has given some shape to the days.

My partner is the landscape painter Lindsey Hambleton, of The Hayloft Gallery. She focuses on trees and woods, and works in a wide range of techniques. She has supercharged my enjoyment and appreciation of art. Membership of Kettle’s Yard and the Royal Academy, along with a visit to Pallant House for the British Landscape exhibition, has opened up a world I barely know.

Mill Cottage by Lindsey Hambleton. Slender trees frame a riverside path and cottage, with bare branches and a flush of pink blossom.

The Affordable Art Fairs in Hampstead and Battersea were my real introduction. Each fair runs for four and a half days, from late Wednesday afternoon to 6 pm the following Sunday. Twelve-hour days leave you exhausted, and for Lindsey there is a packed lead-up: finishing work, organising transport to get it all to London, and making sure the other artists whose work she shows have their pieces ready and with her on time. For me it was a baptism of fire. For Lindsey it is stressful and uncertain. Will the costs be covered? Will the selection of work find buyers? In the spring, at Hampstead, she sold a painting of the very view I’m looking at now.

Opening the gallery is partly a move away from relying on two main fairs a year. That, at least, is the plan.

There is a lot to do. The gallery, in the old mill building at Via Gellia on the outskirts of Cromford, has been open by appointment only. It has also served as a storage space for all sorts of things: paintings, furniture, old equipment, new equipment, and a fair number of broken chairs, boxes and packing materials. There are also a few hidden treasures, among them that ancient Apple Mac by one of the two windows. Lindsey wants to keep it for all the photos it contains. We are hoping it doesn’t need a password!

Everything needs to be sorted, repainted and tidied, the walls hung with artwork, and a space created for the ceramics and books that will also be on sale.

The biggest job, marginally ahead of clearing the two side rooms, is the lighting. The strip lights give us both a headache and are useless for displaying the paintings.

As well as being a brilliant artist, Lindsey is a dab hand at a whole range of DIY, and she has worked out how to install lighting that shows off the pictures properly. Apart from holding the ladder and fetching components to hand up to her, I can contribute little of practical use. I’ve even forgotten how to wire a plug. But we now have a line of lights that has transformed the entrance to the gallery.

It’s exciting, challenging, stressful, and a little scary. Retirement, it turns out, means holding the ladder rather than climbing it. But from down here it has opened my eyes to a whole new way of looking at the world, and that has to be a good thing.

The Hayloft Gallery opens on the first weekend of December at the old mill, Via Gellia, Cromford. Find out more at thehayloftgallery.co.uk.