Off the Pitch!

"Thass bin a funny ow week!" as my mother might have said.  A funny (in the sense of strange) week indeed.  Let's look at work for a start: 18 jobs, which is quite good, but apart from one - which I'll tell you about in a moment - only one other was over 60 miles, so it wasn't a particularly profitable week.  Most of its highlights came 'off the pitch', to steal a footballing metaphor.

On Monday, as I returned from a hospital run to Addenbrooke's in Cambridge, via a collection from another hospital in Peterborough, Dave my controller rang me because he couldn't track me on his computer and wondered how I was getting on.  Apparently the goods I'd collected were quite urgently required for another hospital.  I took advantage of the call to seek a meeting with him about my retirement, and was told, "come in any time."  I decided to strike while the iron was hot, and after delivering to our customer in Letchworth, I visited the office.

Over the last few weeks I've been playing with figures, to come up with a plan for a 'graduated retirement'.  I've heard many tales of men at this age. One week is work as normal, the next week ... nothing!  And how do they cope with a change to life that can seem like falling off a cliff?  Some find it no problem, with hobbies and outside interests that easily expand to fill the vacant hours.  Others have been so wrapped up in work that life suddenly seems empty.

My father for instance, after a lifetime working on the farm, had quite upset my mother, getting under her feet as he wandered to and fro, not feeling needed in the home.  He quickly found a part-time job at a nearby nursery, where the owner had engaged quite a number of ex-farm workers, who provided agreeable company for each other alongside their work.  Another man, whom I knew quite well, was a church organist; he and his wife were childless, and had plans to travel after he had retired.  Only a few months after he had finished work at an office in the town, he had gone to church early one Sunday to practise the day's music, and was found dead at the organ later in the morning.

I have no desire to be killed off by a sudden change in the pattern of life!  So I'm planning to spend the next two years 'in decline', so to speak.  Rather than simply retract to a four-day week, as some have done, I'm thinking of a working/retired 'sandwich', working full weeks, but not so many of them, and interspersing these with periods of other activity.  Fine plans were - and still are - in the making, but the key requirement had yet to be obtained. Would it be acceptable to work like this?  Hence the meeting with Dave.  It went just as I'd predicted.  I presented him with my plans, we exchanged a few words of explanation, reference was made to his being well satisfied with my work, and within minutes were were talking about the football team that he manages in his spare time!  This formality over, my plans have been taken to a more detailed degree this week, as I've tried to finalise my financial needs and arrangements.

As our meeting took place, telephones were ringing in all directions, and there were frequent interruptions from colleagues.  One call had announced that the customer to whom I had just delivered needed something taken that evening to the far side of Bristol, so as I took my leave I said to Dave, "Can I be cheeky and suggest that I go round to <customer's name>?"  He smiled and replied, "Good idea!" - it was the best job of the week!

With so many jobs this week, there have also been a number of convenient slots between them in which I've been able to keep up with 'stuff' that has piled up on other fronts.  One morning I had just listened to the morning service on my way home, and decided that I really ought to give some thought to my assigned task of leading the prayers in church on Christmas Day.  I'd just added the final full stop to my draft as the PDA by my side beeped to announce the next job!

On another day, the podcast of an excellent talk by Audrey Collins at the National Archives inspired some notes of possible lines of research to discover what my uncles were doing in the First World War, which I hastily scribbled before the next job arrived!  Survivors with common names are among the most difficult to trace, and following up these ideas might utilise one of the first creeping fingers of my retirement!

As my geography teacher once told his class, "The land is like life itself, if it doesn't change, it dies!" - wisdom not wasted!