Sequestered Spot

Today

There's a joke about retired people wondering how they ever found time to work. I've been retired for four years and I find myself driven to feel that I must achieve something significant every day. I stitch, take photographs, make books, picture frames. I sing in at least three choirs and officiate in one. I have two rental properties to manage. And that's before mundane things such as housework and the garden. And before any travelling is taken into account. Somehow, if I spend a day simply reading, dozing or pottering I feel I have to apologise for my lack of productiveness.

And I'm not alone. All around me are over 60's caring for grandchildren, sitting on magistrates' benches, doing crafts, evening classes, engaging in charitable activities.

We notice admiringly that women of seventy today look twenty years younger than their mothers did at the same age. And that's the ones without Botox. We are expected to be as supple as thirty year-olds, going off to aerobics, pilates and the gym.

I heard somewhere that the retirement age of sixty-five came about because Bismarck wanted to avoid spending too much on war veterans' pensions and discovered that they were mostly dead by sixty-five anyway. And we are now likely to spend 40% or our lives retired.

Of course, it may be just a baby-boomer thing. We are never going to die, of course, and we want to cram every last scrap of flavour into our lives.

In My Day

I don't think that it was like this for previous generations. I remember a business contact who was about twenty years older than me describing the joys of retirement - getting up late, breakfasting in his dressing gown and not moving from his chair until he'd finished the crossword. I was horrified.

Daddy, of course, was terrified of retirement, refusing to give up full-time employment until a stroke at the age of seventy four forced him to retire. In about 1967 Mamma and he moved to their retirement home in Dorking out of which he then hardly ever set foot, except to conduct genteel travelling excursions. He seemed perfectly happy to read, watch television and take short local walks to ensure that he didn't completely seize up. Mamma devoted her time to tending her garden (a traditional retirement pursuit if ever there was one), playing bridge locally and keeping the bungalow in good order.

Paul's father had already retired when I met Paul and he too, cared for the garden, did most of the cooking and made wines. Tricia retired from her job at Elsie Battle Ladies' Fashions in about 1972. This was already part-time. She was looking after her grandson, by now aged about ten, and her mother - but these weren't new activities taken on to offset the tedium of retirement.

The point of this is that nobody seemed to  mind if you did nothing in particular once you were retired. People seemed to be less afraid of seeming to be old or of their brains disintegrating from lack of use. Older people dressed significantly differently and there was often a good deal of snobbery about the use of hair dye. 

I looked up synonyms of "retirement" on a Thesaurus today and discovered "Sequester". I wonder when I'll truly be ready for my sequestered spot.