Retirement: The Fast Approaching Last Day
There was a time when I would never have considered retiring and retirement, it wasn’t in the scheme of things, an unthinkable event far, far in the future. And now, here we are, with my retirement date officially set and a considerable amount of paperwork still to be completed, officialdom approached and convinced, plans set and followed through on. Yet, in the back of my mind is that thought, set in stone one sunny day back in 1969, sitting at a desk in a bleak primary school classroom in London, when I patiently worked out how old I would be in the year two thousand, and what I might be doing. I can say with a very strong sense of conviction that the Y2K bug, computers and all similar things surrounding the internet, technological advances and not living in England were not represented on my bingo card. Retirement was not in my vocabulary but, then again, nor was the word work, other than when applied to the threat of impending school homework.
Nearly six decades later, and those sunny days of primary school are not only far away, but could almost be considered a golden age. They were not, I must add, as were none of my school years, public or private. They caused a completely different form of retirement, one which I have enjoyed over those same decades: retiring from society, disappearing from the community which claimed to care for me, and setting out on my own in the big, bad world.
Nearly six decades later, and looking at five days until I hand in my office and company car keys, slide my time card over the table, and walk out of that door for the last time. At least, I hope that it will be the last time, I find people who go back to visit their place of work rather sad, in a way, and do not wish to be numbered among them. This is based on the memory of returning to my main school – a private entity in North Yorkshire which closed many years ago – and being mistaken for someone else, a fictional character, as it happens, who merely shared the same surname, by a teacher I had suffered under for seven years, and completely forgotten by a headmaster who I despised more than I could ever explain. The latter, seeing me in the school grounds a day before the official Old Scholars’ Reunion, took pains to instruct me as to what happens when people are caught on private property.
What, I am now being asked, are your plans for your retirement? Will I be sitting on the couch with a warm beer watching football? Sleeping in late, wandering around the house in worn underwear and a three-day stubble on my chin? Catching up on all the reading that I could have done in my earlier years, but neglected? So little imagination.
I truth is, I shall be doing what I have always been doing, with one exception: I won’t be driving in to work every day. Reading, most certainly, and travelling. I will undoubtedly have my camera with me much of the time, and something of a plan which, knowing myself fairly well, will be concocted on the day and subject to many reviews. I do have plans, but no need to share them with those who will soon be a part of my past, and it is not as if one of them is to fester and wilt with old age. I own neither a couch nor a television, and my three-day stubble turned into a long, somewhat grey beard many years ago. My only concessions to old age have been a trolley for when I go shopping, and a pair of carpet slippers.
Retirement is a state of kind as much as anything else. Some see it as the chance to get out on those world cruises and see something of our planet – from a tourist’s perspective – others as the end of days. For me, it is a continuation of life, with minor changes, as has happened so often in the past. And, yes, as my immediate boss suggested, I do have a calendar with the days being ticked off, but it is in my mind where it belongs. Even that small thing I will not share.
