Author: Jackie Jillings

From time to time, and particularly over Christmas, I receive mail addressed to the same numbered house as ours in the next street. We know that Spiderman lives in that house – yes, he really does. So of course it’s a bit of a laugh to say you’re off to re-deliver Spiderman’s letters. Even more so to joke that he delivered some of our Christmas cards on a reciprocal errand – of course he wouldn’t have done, it would have been his mum. Although maybe that one that turned up on our loft balcony…

I was reminded of this celebrity connection this week when I mentioned to someone which Local Collect pick up point I was using for an Amazon parcel delivery. “Ooh, that’s near where Stormzy lives now!” Really? Now, I do know who Stormzy is, but have no idea what he looks like. Although I felt my friend’s confident description of “black and very tall” (and I already knew “male”) wasn’t terribly helpful, even in our middle-class suburb, I was completely over-excited when I spotted a shiny Range Rover with blacked out windows outside the post office as I approached. Perhaps I would now also be able to say that not only do I get my letters delivered by a comic book character but I collect my parcels with a Grimey rapper. It was not to be. And anyway, what appalling stereotyping on my part – I’m sure the RangeRover belongs to the next-door pharmacist and the rap artist just marches down the road from his house like I did (to get in his Fitbit steps?).

How many days has it been predominantly grey outside since I stopped working? Most days I think. Wouldn’t it be better to be in the office out of the damp? With a business plan and people around me asking for my advice and help?

Er – no.

Simple as that.

January IS as good a time as any to retire.

Officially retired now. Have updated my LinkedIn profile today, so it must be true.

This is the first week when pretty much everyone else is back at work after the extended Festive season, and so this retirement lark feels real now. So far, so good. I am neither bored nor panicked (yet).

My time has been spent on the things I like the most – walking and booking travel! The walking has involved consistently exceeding my 12000 daily steps, and also included some time each day in Richmond Park which is luckily close by. I want to avoid becoming a slave to excessive routine, but some structure to the day will emerge no doubt. One small thing has been to watch French television news ( France 24 https://www.france24.com/fr/direct ) for 10-15 minutes on weekdays in an attempt to re-establish my previous level of proficiency with the language. Two birds with one stone really, as it also alerts me to global headlines rather than reading the links to The Sun which seem to pop up on my phone. French newscasters and reporters seem to flirt a great deal more with each other than the BBC (the very thought of Huw Edwards and Laura Kuenssberg having a flirtatious exchange makes me queasy).

Booking travel is mostly in anticipation of my BIG TRIP, but also a couple of overnights this month. I have never been a home-body and I love to spend time away. This always mystified my mother – who used to spend half of our holidays wishing for them to end so she could go back home.

I have fixed up to meet with several friends over the next few weeks and have already found and attended a singing group which will occupy me on Monday mornings.

One aspect I had not particularly thought about was the improvement to weekends that retirement brings. When I was working full-time, the weekends were really the only times I had in which to do anything that was non-work-related. So they were not always very relaxing and I usually felt some time-pressure, even when enjoying whatever I was doing. Now, I can actually sit with a book – something I suspect I will struggle with for a while during the week.

Good start!

Now is the time when colleagues are returning to their seasonally-rested PCs, and perhaps even the office itself, and it hits me that this retirement malarkey is actually real.

Aside from the marvel that is sleeping past 6am for more than a couple of days in a row, it is actually quite a confusing time with so much to plan and choose. As a result, I seem to expect to achieve loads every day. But of course I don’t do that much because I have to relax! Plus do my steps (yes I’m a Fitbit slave) which today involved setting off to pick up some rail tickets from the station which is about 200 yards from my house, deciding to make a detour to clock up a few hundred steps before lunch, but then pressing on … and on…until I had “achieved” 15000 steps and was so hungry I couldn’t be bothered to stop at the station after all, so keen was I to get home for some food. Lucky to have a royal park close enough to be part of my regular detour route I suppose.

My late father always referred to this period as the “fag-end of the year” – endlessly repeating this term at regular intervals over the 5 days after Boxing Day because he knew it annoyed everyone. We’re in that gap between the full-on family celebrations – enforced or otherwise (happy for me, luckily) – and the New Year’s Eve alternatives of mad partaying or reflective hunkering down, before January hits us either with the excitement of new beginnings or the remorseful dryness of calorie-related resolutions.

This year, we had a good old-fashioned family Christmas. It is the time when I am at my most traditional and can somehow produce the necessary festive fayre despite having no appreciable cooking practice throughout the year. Mind you, standards are not high here, as long as everything is familiar, not actually disgusting (apart from the mandatory sprouts, of course) and there is lots of it. It helps that I have done Christmas for these people for years now, and they have no real benchmark apart from previous efforts of mine, which includes the year when I accidentally grilled the potatoes instead of roasting them.

Now we have reduced a) the human occupants of the house from 7 back to 2, and b) the leftover mountain to a small spoil heap, I can focus again on retirement plans which are very exciting.

Excitement tempered slightly and quite rightly yesterday. Exactly 33 years ago I was bridesmaid to my best friend on her brilliantly sunny but freezing cold wedding day. My friend died this summer. I still can’t quite comprehend that she is no longer here, nor the fact that she and I will not be sharing retirement walking together as we had planned.

Up and down we go – but onward to 2019 in anticipation of new experiences, and something interesting and upbeat to say!

What a lovely idea! Work girlfriends took me for afternoon tea (with a glass of champagne – oh alright also a glass of red) to mark my retirement.  ? Cheers my dears. This is certainly a bunch I would miss – except I do think we will stay in touch. 

So much crap in here. Note-taker extraordinaire – with a real skill for the partially completed sentence.  “Send email to …”  “Finish strategy on …” Even better, but less visually appealing as a pile, is the collection of client proposals with my name in various glorious roles – and the SAME picture of me for 12 years. No wonder people seem surprised I’m retiring.  It’s the same pic I use on Skype haha.

One week before my last day at work. Most of the handovers and several of the goodbyes are done – still some stressing over bits and pieces, meaning I worked late yesterday, which is ridiculous.

Big worry now though – what will happen to the toy dinosaur (someone’s unwanted Secret Santa present from 2 years ago apparently) which has been in residence in the plant pot next to my desk for the past 18 months?  I think perhaps the people who look after the office plants will make sure he’s appropriately homed into the future. Took me a while to persuade them he could stay there in the first place, but I think they like him now.  He has one of the best views in the building.

…is apparently important to do at least once in one’s career. So, whilst I would not actually classify it as dancing, I have officially ticked this box now. Sadly it was post-Santa costume and I already had my coat on to go home, but it would have been churlish not to clamber up there. Imagine my shock when I was joined table-top by my boss who insisted on photography. Clearly my blameless work record suggests a table-top-dancing-free life. Little do they know!

Hmm. Just re-read that. No further comment.

Just over 2 weeks before I leave work. I think I’m properly looking forward to it now.  People seem not to understand why I’m even bothering to show up each day. How rude!  Although turning up for an 8am call today, when I suspect my main contribution was to prevent the two other participants from conversing in their own language, was a bit of an ask when outside there was a beautiful dawn.

Now putting together a few facts and figures in case I’m called upon to make a leaving speech tomorrow at the Christmas buffet. Apparently I’m the only one prepared to be Father Christmas! I’m going to pretend I have at least half an hour of speechifying. Hopefully that’s not what they’re expecting. Good stand up practice ?

After a busy and satisfying weekend seeing friends and family, work this week is just depressing.  I’ve almost stopped being of any use to anyone because of my imminent departure – just over three weeks to go – but still seem to find plenty of boring emails to write. The weather and the trains don’t help – nor the persistent headache.

Wondering how I’ll adjust to not working in the high pressure environment- hoping all will become clear soon when the fog in my brain lifts. 

Combination of a very cold and dull day, and a remastered raw version of Hey Jude on the radio on my walk to work, ensured that both eyes were crying today. Too much nostalgia on the radio today.  Made me think too much that a life has passed when I should be looking forward.  Grr  get a grip! (Unusual posting from before 9 – not yet rational)

 

Why is it nearly always low tide? Mornings are so much more positive when it’s high tide.

Not so shocking actually – we were in bunk beds and my husband was there too.  Oops, is that worse?

No – really, it was part of a big family weekend. We rent a whole youth hostel once a year to accommodate the seemingly vast numbers of relatives on one side of his family. To me, with very limited resources in the sibling and cousin department, it never ceases to impress me that there can be such a range of people with wildly mixed generations all happily chatting, playing games, eating, drinking, arguing and laughing together – and regularly asking each other whether they are second cousins or first cousins once removed. Why do we never remember this from one year to the next?

We’ve decided we need a bigger hostel next year. The more the merrier- and I’ll be retired so I can actually cook something to take with us instead of raiding Waitrose on the way.

Yup – made me laugh even on a grey morning.  Turns out several cabinet ministers think the same way 

Have had a few days being too grumpy to write anything. This is largely to do with waking with a migraine every sodding morning this week and the complete crapness of Southwestern Railingways – plus a creeping fear that retiring is “the wrong thing”. (It isn’t. Probably…)

Migraines – I am so tired of these and will explain more another day.

SWR – they put up clever videos about how they’re dealing with autumn leaves on the line but then something completely different goes wrong instead and the trains go even slower. Or don’t turn up at all. However, there’s good  sport in hoping one of our many unscheduled pauses will be right next to the “Bollocks to Brexit” poster just before arriving at Waterloo. That cheers me up a bit. Just the fact that it says Bollocks in big letters at 7am.

Today’s early morning trip to work was surreally completed by staggering through the revolving doors, obviously with the usual chilly tears streaming down my right cheek, but this time with the accompaniment on my radio earbuds of the National Anthem. It’s apparently Prince Charles’ birthday. Cue even more surprised welling up. Our security guys must wonder about me.  Still they let me in whatever state I seem to be in.

That quite cheered me up too. Ludicrous.

Today on the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day it matters not that one of my eyes is crying, indeed probably no problem with both of them leaking a bit. I joined a decent-sized crowd of people in the town centre and croaked through a couple of hymns and the National Anthem (a whole octave down from where I used to be able to sing – I guess that’s better than part of an octave, which would have sounded appalling).

I feel drawn to this event each year although have missed many. I do not have any distant relatives lost in the war – at least, not those to whom I have  any real connections.  But there is something compelling about the collection of people with their thoughts, standing side by side with others I do not know, remembering images from newspapers, television, imagination. Respectful and sombre. Recalling my father in law who was a prisoner of war in WWII.

The remembrance parade and outdoor service are always haphazard – many people seem to have no idea it is on, there is plenty of ambient noise around town and we are in the way of people trying to go about their shopping – but today we managed a tolerably quiet 2-minute silence and at least one of the bugles was excellent. Only one cadet had to be escorted away with his face whiter than his hat.

I love the mix of people who attend. Some elderly, many much younger and with small children. Quite a few very smart coats, jackets, ties – some medals of course, and plenty of uniforms in the parade – but also people in running gear or walking boots who are just taking the time out between other activities. I don’t see this as any less respectful.  An abundance of different types of poppy this year gave an extra element of interest to the casual spectator in the longer parts of the prayers.  Actually, talking about attention span, it was amazing how many people really couldn’t hang around after the silence.  We are so busy these days that we can’t wait a few more minutes for the procession to wind its way back to the church.

I was pleased to see on Facebook later in the day a full set of photographs of the ceremony around the war memorial in the village where I grew up. I don’t believe I ever attended as a child but somehow it was still nostalgic. Do we just make up what’s important from our past?  Probably.  But if it is uplifting somehow, then why not?

 

 

On holiday on my own. Bit weird now I think about it – have previously just spent days alone tagged onto work trips, not actually set off on my own. But this balcony would not have worked for two. Who would have thought I could sit outside and read without a jacket in Sofia, Bulgaria in November?

downloaded an app so I can edit in my phone. Only took me a couple of hours to do the last one.

Someone recently told me I should make sure to say yes to things.  You regret those things you didn’t do much more than those you did.

I was invited to an outdoor film showing of Cinema Paradiso in a neighbour’s back garden last night. Coldest evening so far this year – didn’t really fancy going in the end but remembered the advice.  Arrived to find a change of plan – turned out it was too windy to set the screen up in the garden.

I don’t think I’ve ever previously been to a party where random neighbours wearing multiple layers of underwear and furry boots sat on a sofa and cried gently together – but it worked a treat.  Particularly when someone went and fetched a rather wonderful homemade sloe gin.

Glad of the extra hour in bed this morning…