retirement
Retirement can be good
by Mick Isaacs
I started at Barnsbury in 1958 at Eden Grove; my parents did not want me to go there and took a very dim view of the school, its pupils and its teachers. I was always instructed to come straight home on the trolleybus and have as little as possible to do with my fellow scholars, which is probably why I was never very happy at Barnsbury. My father lost his job and also our tied accommodation (one weeks notice) and I can always remember my Mum crying and vowed it would never happen to me. After some travelling round my Dad got a job in Eastbourne where I have been ever since after leaving Barnsbury at the end of my second year. I was extremely happy at my new school and got a few O levels and an A level. I shone at Art and English. My Mum passed away just after I left school when I was 16...cancer; it took her six months to die. Because I suppose my Dad was trying to compensate I always had plenty of money, so had a new scooter every year, bespoke suits etc, and became a bit of an Ace Face, at least in Eastbourne !
After a few jobs that I hated, I went on the buses, much to the a annoyance of my father, who sadly then also passed away when I was 21. I stayed at the company for twenty-seven years and ended up as the stores manager; my budget being about 1 million pounds a year. Luckily it was council owned so I had a really good pension. Another good move was that I bought my own house when I was 27, the experience of my parents being chucked out having scarred me for life. What I did not know was that I had inherited a serious heart condition, the one where kids run on to a football field and drop dead and this came to the fore when I was in my late forties. Although I ran the stores department there was quite a bit of heavy lifting so I was pensioned off sick. In myself I felt quite OK, and started looking around for a new job and went to the railway where I started as a telephone enquiry clerk and ended up as a group station manager with about fifty people under me.
Eventually there was the inevitable reorganisation and I was offered a deal that I could not refuse. By now my mortgage was paid off and the railway also had a final salary pension scheme like the council. Then I went for a part time job on the London Underground where I was very happy and stayed until I was a few months past 65.
Like many, I was apprehensive about retirement. I had planned financially for it, but would my plans work out? You don’t really know until you get there. The other thing that worried me was would I become one of these miserable, moaning old fuckers, bored out of my skull and wandering round the local Arndale centre in a cheap anorak, then sitting in front of the TV for the rest of the day? Not for me. I timed my retirement for May so I would have the summer in front of me, and luckily last summer was good. I love swimming in the sea and I’m quite good at it so I spent lots of days on the beach. I also remembered my love of art, but like all teenage boys I had no patience then, but I had the skill. (I got an O level in it when I was 15) Now 50 years on I had the patience, but would I still have the skill ? It turns out I did. I take art lessons once a week and paint at home. My art mistress (very strict) but put some of my paintings into an exhibition and to my amazement I sold one!
A couple of years ago I went to Belgium, and found to my astonishment I could follow the conversations, despite the fact I was not any good at French in school, probably something to do with laziness and inattention. Anyway I enrolled for French lessons at our local college; you would have laughed, I queued up to enrol amongst the skinny bejeaned youths, feeling about 100 years old, but luckily in my class, which only has seven people in it, most are my age or a BIT OLDER!! I get old codgers subsidy as well so each lesson is only £9, but conjugating French verbs is extremely hard going, though I am pressing on.
So what, if any lessons have I learnt from my retirement? Firstly, you have got to have enough money to do what you want to do. Secondly, you have got to keep active both physically and mentally, and apart from anything else, if you go out and do these things you meet new people of different background and ages and it stops you from becoming fossilised.
Between visits to the gym, making beer and wine, art lessons, French lessons and a bit of charity work I do with the homeless, I really don’t know how I would find the time now to go to work; so if my health holds out I’m looking forward to some good times.
When I left London Underground the staff did me a farewell card and someone wrote, “Don’t look back.” Good advice.
by Mick Isaacs
I started at Barnsbury in 1958 at Eden Grove; my parents did not want me to go there and took a very dim view of the school, its pupils and its teachers. I was always instructed to come straight home on the trolleybus and have as little as possible to do with my fellow scholars, which is probably why I was never very happy at Barnsbury. My father lost his job and also our tied accommodation (one weeks notice) and I can always remember my Mum crying and vowed it would never happen to me. After some travelling round my Dad got a job in Eastbourne where I have been ever since after leaving Barnsbury at the end of my second year. I was extremely happy at my new school and got a few O levels and an A level. I shone at Art and English. My Mum passed away just after I left school when I was 16...cancer; it took her six months to die. Because I suppose my Dad was trying to compensate I always had plenty of money, so had a new scooter every year, bespoke suits etc, and became a bit of an Ace Face, at least in Eastbourne !
After a few jobs that I hated, I went on the buses, much to the a annoyance of my father, who sadly then also passed away when I was 21. I stayed at the company for twenty-seven years and ended up as the stores manager; my budget being about 1 million pounds a year. Luckily it was council owned so I had a really good pension. Another good move was that I bought my own house when I was 27, the experience of my parents being chucked out having scarred me for life. What I did not know was that I had inherited a serious heart condition, the one where kids run on to a football field and drop dead and this came to the fore when I was in my late forties. Although I ran the stores department there was quite a bit of heavy lifting so I was pensioned off sick. In myself I felt quite OK, and started looking around for a new job and went to the railway where I started as a telephone enquiry clerk and ended up as a group station manager with about fifty people under me.
Eventually there was the inevitable reorganisation and I was offered a deal that I could not refuse. By now my mortgage was paid off and the railway also had a final salary pension scheme like the council. Then I went for a part time job on the London Underground where I was very happy and stayed until I was a few months past 65.
Like many, I was apprehensive about retirement. I had planned financially for it, but would my plans work out? You don’t really know until you get there. The other thing that worried me was would I become one of these miserable, moaning old fuckers, bored out of my skull and wandering round the local Arndale centre in a cheap anorak, then sitting in front of the TV for the rest of the day? Not for me. I timed my retirement for May so I would have the summer in front of me, and luckily last summer was good. I love swimming in the sea and I’m quite good at it so I spent lots of days on the beach. I also remembered my love of art, but like all teenage boys I had no patience then, but I had the skill. (I got an O level in it when I was 15) Now 50 years on I had the patience, but would I still have the skill ? It turns out I did. I take art lessons once a week and paint at home. My art mistress (very strict) but put some of my paintings into an exhibition and to my amazement I sold one!
A couple of years ago I went to Belgium, and found to my astonishment I could follow the conversations, despite the fact I was not any good at French in school, probably something to do with laziness and inattention. Anyway I enrolled for French lessons at our local college; you would have laughed, I queued up to enrol amongst the skinny bejeaned youths, feeling about 100 years old, but luckily in my class, which only has seven people in it, most are my age or a BIT OLDER!! I get old codgers subsidy as well so each lesson is only £9, but conjugating French verbs is extremely hard going, though I am pressing on.
So what, if any lessons have I learnt from my retirement? Firstly, you have got to have enough money to do what you want to do. Secondly, you have got to keep active both physically and mentally, and apart from anything else, if you go out and do these things you meet new people of different background and ages and it stops you from becoming fossilised.
Between visits to the gym, making beer and wine, art lessons, French lessons and a bit of charity work I do with the homeless, I really don’t know how I would find the time now to go to work; so if my health holds out I’m looking forward to some good times.
When I left London Underground the staff did me a farewell card and someone wrote, “Don’t look back.” Good advice.
