Is the Old Giving Way to the New?

The Christmas season has left me with a couple of memorable, and significant echoes.  Both came to me from the lady with whom I spent five days between Christmas and New Year, my closest cousin.  At some point during the holiday I had been explaining some intimate detail of my personal financial records; she commented, "Once an accountant, always an accountant!"  Then in an SMS exchange after my return home, I'd confessed to being so engrossed in what I had spent the afternoon doing, that I almost forgot to prepare my dinner.  My choice of words to do so suggested that I had felt guilty about this situation, and prompted the exhortation, "Relax! You're retired now!"

These comments, particularly the second one, crystallise the fact that the transition from work to retirement, far from being overcome by a year of playing one as the foil to the other, will still take a while to achieve.  My present life pattern is very much desk-based and, as I told my optician the other day, I do spend a high proportion of my day looking at a computer screen.  Many of the disciplines that have been established and developed since I ceased to be a salaried accountant continued, of necessity, all through my second career as a courier; others, more personal, continue still, and will do so for the foreseeable future.

Although a slightly more balanced timetable is beginning to emerge, the very fact that I refer to it as a timetable does, in itself, give the lie to any claim that this is a significant move from the rigidity of the past to the liberty of the present/future!

The common characteristic of a number of items so far in this very young new year is a need to chase things.  When I cancelled my courier insurance after I'd stopped work, the broker told me that I ought to receive a cheque for the proportion of the year when my van would no longer be on risk. 'within a month or so'.  By coincidence, this sector of the business has now been transferred to a different office of the company, and when I called them to see where my cheque had got to, I was told, "I don't know why they told you that ... it's quite likely to be up to three months!"  Although, financially, this is not good news, it does mean that I can legitimately park the matter at least for a few more weeks.

Then there is the matter of the registration document for the car that has replaced the van.  The small fragment of the previous document, bearing the reference V5C/2, refers to sending this to DVLA if the new document hasn't arrived within four weeks.  By the start of this week, four weeks had elapsed, so I downloaded the form V62 to send with it and filled it in.  As I searched the fine print for the address to which to send the pair of them, I discovered another 'but relax!' clause. "If you do not receive it within this time, please allow six weeks before contacting us."

Following my visit to the opticians I now have up to three weeks to wait for my new spectacles, and with all these things dropping off the immediate 'to-do' list, life is beginning to lose the sense of urgency with which the new year began.  I noticed the other afternoon that I was yawning, in a way that indicates neither hunger nor fatigue, but rather in the manner of chilling out, as if during the second week of a summer holiday.

I think an attack of relaxation might be coming on ...!