There is nothing quite like it; waking up in the morning and turning off the alarm clock secure in the knowledge that there is no need to get up.
The luxury of turning off the strident tone and staying in bed is one of the most profound pleasures known to man.
It is the result, the payback, of years of toil – of rising, Pavlov’s dog-like, and stumbling through a morning routine meeting the needs of others (willingly, of course, but always with a little ‘won’t it be nice when I don’t have to do this?’ thought in the back of your mind).
Well, it’s here; that wonderful feeling has arrived!
Having been semi-retired for two years, it has finally dawned on me that I can now spend the majority of my days pleasing myself.
I can clearly remember going around to my mother’s house, when she had retired, to find her still in her nightie.
She had put a sort of house-coat on and would be pottering around in her slippers.
I can recall feeling that it must be wonderful to be able to spend the whole day with nothing that absolutely must be done on the agenda.
Why then do I continue to impose some sort of timetable on myself?
I arise most days at the same sort of time and, together with she who must be obeyed, enter the morning routine.
The animals are fed, the cat and dog flaps are opened and they potter about outside ensuring that their little world is as it was when they left it the previous evening.
We also potter around, lighting the fire and the range (at this time of year anyhow), turning off the outside lights, getting morning tea and coffee organised, taking the required morning medications, performing ablutions and generally getting ready for the day.
I have a few jobs that I really should get to: doing battle at the centro do saude (health centre) to become registered with a medico familiar (family doctor); getting the ladder out and cleaning the outside of the velux windows; removing all of the fallen oak leaves from
the courtyard; putting up a new washing line…
I think you probably get the idea.
These are all tasks which will be done, but they are not time-critical.
I have the luxury of being able to put them off, to defer them until I feel more inclined.
I think that is the key in retirement.
There are just as many jobs to do, but they are generally done at a pace and time of my choosing, not someone else’s.
There is a certain pleasure to be found in deciding to do a job just because you feel like doing it, rather than because it must be done.
Having said that, however, she who must be obeyed seems to have a timetable which occasionally beats to a different rhythm than mine.
The easy tempo of task accomplishment can be disturbed by an unseen request or an injection of unexpected urgency.
Even now, as I write, there is a suggestion that I might consider collecting a wheelbarrow load of wood from under the tree house before the fire actually goes out.
Coming, dear!
Mike Gaunt is a former headmaster at St Christopher’s School, Bahrain – mikegaunt@gmail.com