CHAPTER ONE
I've not been so well of late. Am a little annoyed with getting older. I lost my job at Christmas and its been quite a struggle. I have been given life changing news and the job was not forgiving.
I have been working, pretty much constantly for my sixty odd years of life, in areas of business that have strong “compliance” requirements. For most of my life, I have discovered that so many people work to bring in a decent wage and hopefully find happiness not only in their work, but also in their everyday routines.
Like most people, I didn’t think, one day, the routines would come to an end and new routines would be forced upon me. I found that I was unsure, intimidated, and ill-prepared as my work life seems to be coming to its closure.
Maybe reading things like this can help those, like me, to prepare for their final years of when work has passed in existence.
Of late, I have had to carry out a life audit. Assess where I have been, what skill sets I have learned over my lifetime and what I have left in the bank of life as I search for new employment.
Even though we claim to know ourselves, we all look for the things that made us happy at certain periods in our lives. We assess our body and trust our fitness. One has to be fit as we rely on our bodies and brains, in order to work; whether the work is wholly sedentary or manually exhausting and at times, for me, it has been brain challenging.
In September 2022, I was no longer pre diabetic, weighing sixteen stone and six pounds, I was given the chance of putting it all into remission by diet and exercise and today being the 26th February 2023, I am proud to say, that I weigh, fourteen stone six pounds.
I am just one of the ordinary people who has a will to live a life less ordinary. Unfortunately, most of us will just be who we were born to be and the rest is up to ambition and aspirations, which have to be seized, if the life you will later move into is to be as exciting as the patches of events that may have moved you to work.
As I reflect on my episodic life, I recall falling in love, having many friends and being what I think, was successful. In my jobs I have chosen, the partners I have lived with, the children I have raised and some of the people who have made my life, sometimes miserable.
Now, as I reach the age to finish up my career, I have very few, real friends left. I have suffered disappointment, especially trusting people. I have though experienced some happiness and companionship. I have been angry and sad, tearful and have lost some things I have loved.
In a life to come these things are buried in the past and I must let them go and endeavour to find beauty in the simple things in life. Will this be the garden, the flowers that I struggle to name. Will I move to a sunnier climate which will help my growing arthritis. Maybe, I will be sitting in the sunshine in that garden or maybe on a beach or taking a holiday twice a year perhaps on a cruise ship. This, I call the quandary of retirement.
Imagine, regularly, watching the sun go down with a favourite cocktail or a cold beer or satisfying glass of Chardonnay!
Whilst others who approach retirement look to find solace in spending time with their grandchildren gifted to them by the sons and daughters. Raised by the efforts of their endeavouring work life. I now am endeavouring to continue working and possibly, one day, I may grasp the joy of babies and children all over again, If the world is kind to me.
Eventually, those same sons and daughters that you raised and worked those hardships for will be forced to put you out to pasture, others may just disappear claiming not to know you at all.
Retirement unfortunately is a given. It will hit you when you least expect it because sooner or later working 9-5 will finish and then what will you do?
I have tried to play golf, or tennis or swim perhaps for pleasure with an aim of perhaps maintaining a social outlet. But of course, participating in these pursuits means joining clubs or subscribing to use the pool or facilities – everything still has an expense attached to it which can make any joyful pursuit difficult to achieve, one needs a decent pension prospect to do these things.
With my hindsight, I would advise that any thoughts about retirement won’t be applied when you are through your teens and in regular work. But they should be.
The key point at those years of youth and excitement should focus on the pension pot being offered within the job offer by your employer.
But enough of this depressing scenario. How has my life been, I will let you decide?
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When you are growing up, you don’t really think about money too much.
Mum and Dad might give you some pocket money and you would be happy for it. Saving was not on your mind, and if it was, then you would save for something you really wanted like the new Slade album or a 'Harrington Jacket', which the wide boys wore at school. But mum and dad were your buyers of things and bought you the toys and things that they thought you wanted for birthdays or Christmas.
They would take me and my sister on holiday trips to visit grandparents combined with a trip to Blackpool or Morecambe.
Dad would always have a car and he would think nothing of driving from the suburbs of London to the North East where granny lived in County Durham. There you would get to play on the beach at Whitely Bay or see the horses run a Redcar races, maybe also go to South Shields. We would stay, no more than a week in gran and grandad's house in Spennymoor. Then, off we would go to Pontins or Butlins or just stay in a B&B for the week, visiting Blackpool, the Lake District or just play on the beach, me and my mum and my dad my little sister, Sally. One thing I will say about these holidays, mum and dad always seemed to pick two weeks when the sun shone.
These were, I now know, my happiest days. I probably did not think so at the time but they were. There were no life crises to deal with - but along the way of life's journey you may be unfortunate to experience divorce, abuse or bullying at school or other tearful episodes which are there to test your resolve and resilience.
I was in fact bullied at primary school, aged eleven and dealt with that. Rising up against my bully in the end. I smacked him 'slam-bang' on the nose, which bled out profusely. But that ended the bullying and with me further harmed and shamed when losing the final fight, which he and his so called 'gang' arranged, that same afternoon, after school. I didn't run away.
The bully actually eventually became a temporary friend whilst I was at secondary school. Until we found out that it was he that robbed the electric meters down our street and was of course locked up.
However, in the 1970s, the secondary modern school format was to be converted into a comprehensive model, whatever that was?
We kids didn’t know. Failing the eleven plus, put me in the retards class for six months. I guess, one cant say that now, what would be the PC version ?
"Struggling educationally", perhaps. This was my first emotional event apart from being bullied previously. The school was called Evelyns and the institution labelled their classes under the letters of that name. I was placed in 1C. Although we in the class were told it stood for our teacher's name, (Mr Cable), we, all of us in the class, were compared with the kids in that sitcom - you know the Fenn Street gang, in 'Please Sir', which starred John Alderton. I spent six months in there, with girls who wet themselves and boys who couldn't read or write and whose anger often tipped over the edge.
Eventually the system worked out that, I could in fact read and do sums and I was moved to the second to top group class for the rest of my school life. However , leaving at sixteen in 1975, without a single GCSE above a C brought little prospects for the future.
Achievements at school then were disappointing. I never had a girlfriend and my English teacher Mr Babuta, pronounced my name WINCHENT, which everyone seemed to enjoy repeating to me throughout my time there.
POEM
To Sir and Miss (or Mrs) with Love
Does anyone still refer to this?
When we called our teachers Sir, Mrs or Miss
In one, I remember Mr Crook,
We joked to 'look in his Geography Book'.
Mrs Malcolm now then she was a force;
My tutor throughout my “big school” course.
For English, Babuta never a better genius was there?
Made me read saying “Winchent stand up on de Chair”
Mr Pearman, double science, a frightening thing
Would SHOUT, so loud - if we spilt anything
I remember a poor lanky fella we used to call “straw”
Spilt Copper Sulphate all over the floor.
He was my partner in Chemistry, when the scream came around
He made the hairs on my neck, stand up to that sound!
Mr Amin he taught Maths, and Ian would sing,
Naughty songs based on “Jeepster, (now - you can’t do that thing!)
All this of course, I had in letter 'V',
For the in the first months of EVELYNS I spent it in 'C'.
Loved Mr Cable though, to those he would better,
Like Gregory Hawes and the lovely Kim Retter.
So in later 1V, Down to PE - when changed and in queue
'Goody', picked me up, as if nothing, in the gym - he then threw!
Of Canes and Slippers -weren't these things we survived...….
...."Secondary Education", huh, the best of our lives!