February 4 2017

SO WHAT ABOUT RETIREMENT?

OK, what is retirement? By the way, or BTW in the modern vernacular, you will have to read the previous post to know what this is all about. For many people it means no longer having to get up, travel to work, arrive at work at a certain time, spend probably 8 hours in the working environment, travel home and then be too tired to do anything else apart from maintain the family home. All of that time is now yours to do what you want with or to do nothing at all.

The problem is that for quite a few of us work has not been like that. We have worked for ourselves. We really have no ordered, programmed day. We fit in what we have to do when we have to do it. Now, there is a certain probability that those of us who have chosen this route actually enjoy our work more. We may even have taken a hobby, a passion, a desire and turned it into a job. You cannot, I believe, turn off passion and desire at a fixed age, in my case, being so old, at 65. For some of you in the future it may be nearer 75 but, hey, you didn’t enjoy rationing, 2 TV channels, smog and fog or normal communication face-to-face so you must have some hardships. By the way this is a wonderful example of irony in case you missed it.

I still have a tremendous love for what I have been doing for the last 20 or so years so why should I stop? Sadly this is a rhetorical question, mainly because I can’t hear you. I say sadly because, alone, I don’t know the answer. I can think of no reason why I should stop. If I did, I could spend more time on my hobbies but although there are several sports I love to watch and even some I can still compete in, watching is still secondary to doing something about which I am passionate. I can still read while indulging in my passion and as several of my hobbies are part of my work, what am I losing by going on.

I could be a more regular grandfather but I think the major bond should always be between child and parent with a grandparent thrown in, on occasions, for light relief or a change. Within six months of my return to the UK in 2010, two of my granddaughters, well the only two then, had nicknamed me “crazy grandad”, explained I was weird (in the nicest way) and generally accepted that this grandparent would not conform to what they had been used to in both grandparents and old people. Of course with the modern world and Skype they would not lose touch with me should I set off on another adventure.

So, I really can’t think of any reason to move into retirement, give up what I do and take up, as a hobby, what I do now. Of course it would be the easy option.

Recently, for various reasons, I was on a course to help people manage long-term illness. I was, in 2011, diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic and have had a degenerative back disease, which I didn’t really understand, for about 28 years. A doctor mentioned it once but I coped with the occasionally locking spasms and eventually they happened less and less so I ignored things. Six months ago I had an X-ray and the result is, so they say, I have cervical spondylosis. I was mildly surprised to know I had a cervix to spondylote but I now know the cervical vertebrae are the top seven vertebrae, directly below the skull. They are numbered C1 to C7 for those medical students who are using this blog as a learning tool. If you are I would politely suggest you give up now.

The damage is brought on by general wear and tear and I wouldn’t argue with that as I have most definitely wore and torn mine on the rugby field, the cricket pitch, in a rally car and anywhere else that involved having a bit of fun. Well maybe not there but……….sometimes positions change.

Anyhow the reason I am saying all this is that on this course we were being told how to improve our life. One of the things we were told was to set small targets, things we could achieve and at this point, being an awkward bugger anyway, I took issue. The tutor told us not to say we would do something for 7 days but to say 2 and then if we did 3 or 4 we would feel so elated while if we had set 7 and done 5 we would be depressed. I felt the need to tell them I was built differently.

If I set a target too easy and achieve it I feel no pleasure at all and no sense of achievement. If I set a target I don’t achieve then, providing I have tried but failed, I am happy. I also pointed out that if I set a target of 2 and got there I wouldn’t go onto 3 or 4; I would find something else to do having done what I targeted. A lady asked me as to whether I felt a failure if I did not reach my target and I had to tell her no. I acknowledge a failure to reach the target but not that I was a failure. My whole life, I think, has been built on a quote I heard from Donald Campbell (look him up) way back in the 1960’s when he said that the worst thing in life was to achieve your ambition because what would you do next. Obviously, set a new ambition is the answer but the basic principle still holds for me. I want to be striving for way above where I should be because only then will I push myself, indeed make myself happy, in what I do.

I can honestly find no way that being in retirement could achieve this.

I think I’ve reached the conclusion I knew I would but it was nice thinking it through. If you’ve been with me on this, thanks. If you have any comments, please feel free but please also be constructive. Unless someone comes up with a splendid, and unarguable, piece of reasoning, retirement is out. We are, therefore, down to just one options already in a painless and reasoned way.

Next week I will share with you what form I have decided that option should take.

February 11 2017

SO IF NOT RETIREMENT, WHAT?

Last week I came to the conclusion that retirement was not in my plans for a good few years. Therefore I need to plan, and maybe explain, what I would like to do as the autumn of my life heads into winter. I mentioned I was planning for future work to someone last week and they said how nice it was that, at my age, I was actually planning for the future. I haven't yet decided how to take that comment but never mind. I suppose, in reality, a place I seldom go, that I just have a smaller future to plan for, but a future nevertheless.

For those who don't know, and that means you haven't read the “Tashy who?” part of this site, I have, over the last 30 years, spent much of my time travelling. However, it has seldom been travelling just for the sake of it but usually coupled with some desire to learn, to find out more, and to share this with others.

Very briefly, in case someone has read the other pages, between June 1985 and April 1986 I, together with my first wife and our two children travelled around the British coastline, staying in a different area each week. It was a wonderful family adventure and those children, now heading well into middle age still can remember many parts of our journey. After the trip the children returned to school life and I to work.

Between September 1994 and July 1995, I repeated the journey but this time with my second wife, our 3 year old son and my son from my first marriage who had been on that family adventure. This time it was more structured because, via a weekly 12 page newsletter written on the go, I was being followed by children at 50 primary schools all around the UK. After this trip I returned to work again although on a freelance basis.

Then between June 23 2001 and July 19 2001 I made another whistle stop tour of the English coastline, this time at the request of a US travel magazine who wanted a way to reassure their readers that, at the time of our foot and mouth crisis, the UK was not a collection of burning carcasses of cattle.

In March 2003 I spent 3 months in Australia and in March 2004 set off on a mammoth journey that would take me back to Australia, on to New Zealand, to Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, back to New Zealand and then back to England some five and a half years later. By the way I did this all with just one suitcase of clothes, although I may have changed clothes a bit on the way.

I have now been stationary for over 7 years and my feet, and that suitcase, are ready to travel somewhere again. I haven't been idle during this time and, indeed, had a couple of plans to travel again but circumstances, and my choice of fellow travellers, thwarted my efforts. What I have done, first as a prototype with a group of schools and then, starting last September as a finished product, is produce a history of England for primary school aged kids and give them an insight, and a bit of knowledge, about all European countries.

My plan for the next few years revolves around this and my previous journeys. Next week I will try to explain what it is that Tashy wishes to do and analyse my previous travels and where they went wrong (and right).