Today is International Workers' Day. The streets will fill with banners, the internet will bristle with solidarity posts, and someone will play The Red Flag in a town square somewhere while a local councillor tries to look moved. I have worked for forty-six years. I am not invited. Not officially uninvited, you understand. Nobody sends you a letter. There's no formal ceremony where someone takes your lanyard and says thank you for your service, off you go. It just becomes apparent, gradually and then all at once, that once you retire you cease to be a Worker — capital W — and become something else. A Former Worker. A Used-To-Be. A person who did their time and now, quite reasonably, should step aside so the real workers can get on with it. I captained ships for thirty years. I was responsible for crew, cargo, passengers, and the occasional mechanical catastrophe three hundred miles from the nearest port. I worked nights, weekends, Christmases, Bank Holidays. I worked May Days ...
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