Retirement Continued
On 19th January 2010 I wrote a piece called The Reality of Retirement the intrepid reader should hunt it out and read it, it is awfully good and amazingly short for me at 850 words but each word and idea is a gem. I was reminded of this posting only the other day, thinking I must have written it a few months back and in fact it was two years since I started to realise the beauties of being unwaged. If time flies that quickly in this nirvanic state I find myself in, they will soon be carrying me out the door feet first.
Yes I was reminded of this literary gem the other evening, when a chap called by at 7.00pm on his way home, frazzled from a long hard day at work. He related the events of his stressful day and then asked what I had got up to. It made me think, “do you know Jack” I said “I don’t think I’ve done anything and I have not been bored but enjoyed every minute of my day”. On uttering those words I knew I had already reached the liberating state that the world’s population strives for.
In saying I had done nothing, I was obviously telling little porkies, because I had showered and dressed myself, had a leisurely breakfast, sauntered through my e-mails and written 1100 words on the ridiculous Irish Government custom of buying communion dresses for little girls. I followed this up with an equally leisurely and fashionably late lunch and then spent the rest of the afternoon reading a very interesting novel cum biography of Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway’s first wife. The book called The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, I can recommend to anybody, it tells of their life in Paris and the gifted people who filled this place after the Great War and during the liberated 1920s. People like James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, all megastars of the 20th century. I did all all this at my own pace and enjoyed myself so much it felt as though I had done nothing.
The beauty of this senile exisatence is that since last February, the Queen of England, her glorious majesty, has given me a few hundred drinking vouchers every week, I get free medical care courtesy of my medical card, costs of which in Ireland, which does not have a National Health Service, can be worth an arm and a leg, perhaps that is why the government here can give out free communion dresses. On top of all this from next week I am entitled to a free travel card which allows me to travel anywhere in the British Isles for nix on public transport which includes trains, boats and buses. I am, as they say, on the pigs back.
In my previous posting on this subject I stressed the need for peace of mind being the epitomy of the retired state and how on retirement you should relax in the beginning and slowly find your way to this peacefulness. Well I reached it by throwing off the man made psychological shackles that the Catholic Church had bound me in all my working and married life and in my freethinking state exposed the bunkum and downright lies that the Church had told in their bid to keep a lid on the clerical abuse scandal that has shattered most of the western world’s religious ideologies and which is only now coming home to roost in England and Wales. I really enjoyed jousting with the nincompoops of Safeguarding Commissions that the Church in their fat, mindless state had left in charge of this most important of roles. As these obsequious and obfuscating hurdles, put in place by the Church, were blown away, the younger and more energetic I became. I was like a youth again, scared of nothing, roaming the internet, like Spartacus in revolt.
When you are mindful of nobody, peace of mind comes easy and your relaxed state takes care of the boundaries you could easily tip yourself over. So to come down from this buzz, a well written book, a few hours watching test match cricket and a glass of Malbec act as balm on a totally fulfilled life. I recommend it to everybody who has been round long enough.
Tags: Retirement, The catholic Church, The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, The Pig's Back, The Safeguarding Commission of the Salford Diocese