How NOT to retire

Delve into your memory, and you will find embedded an image of retirement.

In my case, it dates back to a wet Wednesday in Worthing, circa 1978. It was a year of strikes and unemployment and economic gloom, but I had just bought my first house in Brighton and been drawn to Worthing, along the coast, by its furniture auctions.

I bought a big inlaid wardrobe for £29 and a very pretty Chinese painting, mis-catalogued as a print, for £9. In the lunch break, for want of other options, I found myself in a fish and chip shop on the high street, sharing a table with a group of elderly women who had apparently also sat down one at a time and didn’t know each other. The condensation dripped down the windows and the conversation went something like this:

- “Have you ever seen so much rain?”

- “It’s the wind that gets me.”

- “When we moved here, we thought the sun would always shine.”

(Sigh)

- “It’s hard being on your own.”

- “When did you lose yours?”

- “He only retired last March and by September he was gone…”

- “It was the same for us. I had to sell our house.”

It turned out that all of them had a similar story to tell. The husbands had been craftsmen or factory foremen, relatively well paid in highly unionised manufacturing industries. After a lifetime working for the same employer, retirement at 65 meant a move to the south coast, following the pattern of family holidays over the decades.

The wives, none of whom had had professional careers, managed the move, bringing with them the furniture from substantial family houses in the Midlands and north of England. Then the husbands died – smokers almost to a man – of lung cancer, heart attacks and strokes. The widows’ financial circumstances took a plunge, even though they mostly had some benefit under their husbands’ pensions. Their children seldom visited.

Trapped on the south coast and practically penniless, they were forced to downsize, sell that substantial furniture (hence the cheap furniture auctions) and find succour over fish and chips.

I knew enough, even then, to be sure there was something better out there in later life than soggy fish and chips. A few years into a fulfilling and relatively comfortable retirement, I know that to be true. So I thought I would share what I've learned via this blog and hopefully, further down the line, a book.