Happy retire...oh, er...our sincere condolences

Welcome to my world…

…actually, really, you’re welcome to it.

1. The do you like your job test: you win the lottery. You now have sufficient funds for the rest of your natural. Do you:

1. Do a Mrs Mop the school cleaner from Cleethorpes (aged 68) and carry on working.

2. Work out your notice period, clear up all loose ends, ride off into the sunset with your leaving card and clock for the mantelpiece (to tick away your remaining hours).

3. Send a text effecting your immediate resignation, from somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit.

2. Are you a potterer:

1. Do you get in at starting time and go home at going home time, watching the clock in between for tea times and lunch time.

2. Is your preferred working pattern do a bit, stop, chat, tea, do a bit more, fill the day.

3. Is your preferred working pattern job and knock. Coffee and sandwiches bolted down at the desk, petrol station sandwiches, or, more likely, nothing at all to eat or drink, just a relentless start, work, work, work, stop working schedule.

If you even looked at the (c)’s, then, probably, your idea of retirement isn’t slowing down a bit, doing three days a week, or taking on less responsibility, but actual, proper retirement: stopping work and doing the things you want to do with your time. The c-camp go to work for one (and only one) reason: the money.

Not so long ago the politicians and the financial world told us in the c-camp to invest in property and retirement funds, to fund our retirements. They were walking around in pairs of shoes that cost more than our cars, so we heeded their advice and tried to sort out comfortable futures, making sacrifices in the present.

Well, what are those investments worth now: approximately nothing. The advice? It was worth about the same. The politicians and the finanacials handing it out? Yep. Worthless scum unable to see past looking after number one. Their shoes? Now each one of the pair is worth more than my car. They’re immune. We are not.

Here’s the typical retirement for the generation left no time for things to be put right before life expectancies start being cashed in: after life-shortening, horrible, stressful years working in a spite-filled, aggressive, demanding ever more for less environment, we’ll have two weeks respite, in a hospital bed (if they can find one) or on a trolley in a corridor somewhere, ignored by nurses with degrees, before the machine that goes ‘ping’ flatlines.

Thanks to Gordon, Tony, Alistair, David, George and all their mates, the light at the end of our tunnel is the torch the medics are shining in our eyes to make sure we’ve actually come to the end of our serviceable lifespans.