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The Supermarket Misses Me. I’m Trying Not to Take It Personally

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Retirement has left some rather odd institutions offering recognition. The email said I had been missed. It arrived before breakfast, which is earlier than most expressions of affection these days. For a moment I felt wanted. Then I read the rest and discovered my loyalty points were about to expire. An organisation with substantial resources had noticed I hadn’t visited recently. It wished me to return before Sunday. There was even an exclamation mark, in case the emotional stakes were unclear. I have received less urgent communications about matters considerably more important than discounted crumpets. What embarrassed me wasn’t the email. It was the small lift I felt on reading it. Somebody had noticed. Granted, the somebody was a system examining my shopping history, but recognition had arrived and I had welcomed it before checking the sender. For years, organisations contacted me because they needed what I knew. A decision. An answer. A person who would deal with the awkwar...
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I Didn’t Know How Much of Retirement Would Be About Missing the Ordinary Chat

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Not the meetings. The small exchanges that quietly held the day together. I stopped to tie a shoelace and ended up discussing pork pies. The woman at the bus stop had one in a paper bag. I said something about the jelly. She replied with the firmness of a person who had considered the matter properly, and within minutes we were examining pastry standards across the region. I wasn’t waiting for a bus. It came and she left. I walked home feeling better than a conversation about cold meat had any right to make me feel. This has started happening more often. At work, conversation arrived without effort. Someone came up to the bridge. A voice appeared on the radio. The phone rang with a problem, followed by a few minutes of ordinary human exchange around the edges of the problem. I used to think I missed the quiet. Sometimes I did. Then retirement supplied quiet in generous quantities, and I discovered that the talking had been doing a job of its own. Not informing me. Not entertain...
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The Clocks Changed. My Body Declined the Invitation

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An extra hour feels different when most of your hours already belong to you. I woke at the old time, which the phone informed me was now the new time minus an hour. The country had changed the clocks. My body hadn’t attended the meeting. It proceeded with its previous arrangements and seemed surprised that the kitchen was not ready to receive it. So I made tea in the half-dark and considered what to do with an extra hour. Once, I would have known. Sleep. Finish something. A small margin in a life that rarely supplied one. The hour would have disappeared gratefully into the machinery of being busy. Now I have rather more hours. They arrive each morning without anyone else having booked them first. Giving me another is kind, but a little like delivering a spare chair to a man already wondering where to sit. Before enjoying the gift, of course, there is the administration. The oven needs changing. The heating timer expresses its preferences through buttons I cannot identify without...
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I Finally Have Time to Read the Small Print. That’s Not Entirely Good News

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Knowing what you’ve agreed to can be a peculiar sort of freedom. The insurance renewal looked familiar enough to file unread. Instead, I sat down with it. Tea. Glasses. The generous supply of morning that retirement provides. I intended to check a few details and found myself following the wording as though somebody had hidden a confession in it. I spent part of my working life as a detective. That doesn’t make every policy document a suspect, though I can see how it might develop the appropriate habits. The important bit isn’t always the sentence that introduces itself as important. Sometimes it is the definition further on, the exception in the paragraph below, the small qualification that quietly rearranges what you thought the larger statement meant. This isn’t a claim about a particular policy. They differ, and specific questions deserve proper answers from the provider or suitable advice. It is about the experience of discovering that agreeing to something and understanding...
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My Pension Balance Wasn’t the Only Thing the App Was Taking From Me

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Looking after the money and letting it set the mood are different jobs. The pension app opened before the tea was ready. A number appeared. I studied it, although I hadn’t yet put my glasses on properly, and allowed it to establish the emotional conditions for the morning. If it had risen, I felt faintly competent. If it had fallen, I felt personally inconvenienced by the global economy. Neither response had much connection with anything I had done overnight. Mostly I had been asleep. At sea, checking conditions was useful. The forecast could affect what happened next. You examined it because there might be a decision to make, not because watching the numbers was an accomplishment in itself. Here I was checking a balance before breakfast and then making exactly the same breakfast. The checking didn’t necessarily produce a decision. It produced a mood. I don’t want to dismiss financial worry. When wages have stopped, uncertainty feels different. Being responsible for money matt...
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My Library Card Opens More Than Any Work Pass Ever Did

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A small piece of plastic and the freedom to be interested in something useless. The message said my reservation was ready. It was a book about salt. Once, a message like that meant a hotel, a hire car or a flight I would spend the next few hours hoping remained on schedule. Now it meant I could walk to the library and collect something I wanted to read for no professional reason whatsoever. I put my coat on promptly. Salt, it turns out, can generate more enthusiasm than an airport lounge. My wallet contains a few cards that promise rewards and one that promises books. The rewards usually involve buying more of something first. The books do not require me to demonstrate brand loyalty to a tub of spread. This strikes me as an excellent arrangement. The library is modest. Patched, familiar, warm. There are people who seem to have established unofficial positions within it: the jigsaw person, the local-history person, the person with a laptop and an expression suggesting either lite...
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I Escaped Performance Reviews. Then I Put One on My Wrist

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Retirement removed the targets. I seem to have brought my own. My watch congratulated me for walking to the kettle. A small celebration appeared on its screen. Apparently I had achieved something. I looked at the kettle, which offered no supporting evidence beyond the usual steam. There were years when I would have paid good money to escape assessment. Logs, targets, reports. The annual conversation in which two grown adults pretended a form could accurately describe what one of them had done for twelve months. Now nobody requires any of it. Naturally, I bought a device to count me. The absurdity is not lost on me. It has simply failed to stop me caring whether the device is pleased. I have walked around the kitchen to improve a number. Not to get anywhere. Not because the kitchen offered a particularly rewarding view on the sixth circuit. To turn an incomplete ring into a complete one. I left performance management and joined the wrist department. At work, measurement had an ...
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