"When did you retire?"

is a question which may not be asked quite so often in the future.  The idea of continuing to work beyond the "usual" retirement age - now sixty-seven - was apparently being explored on a television program last night. 

I did not watch the program. I was working. I have not "retired". 

That said, I do not do the excessively long hours I once did. I am more willing than I once was to hand on work to younger people. 

"But you have time to do it!" I am told. Perhaps I do, although I have less time than many people realise. Time is not the issue. The issue is making sure that people younger than I am are ready and able to take over. 

I worked hard all through the Covid pandemic. There were not nearly so many people going out into the crisis and disaster zones for the sort of purpose which might need a communication device. There was an opportunity to train up other people, encourage them to take over where I was leaving off. In a way Covid did me a service.

But I saw the advertisements for the program aired last night. There was someone in their nineties "still working". Someone else said they could not afford to retire or they would be homeless. Someone else said liked working so much he saw no need to retire. 

I was taught Leaving (approximately old style "O" level) mathematics by a man who was seventy-seven at the time. This was in a church boarding school. He was not the only older member of staff and, like at least one other, he should not have been there. He was not a good teacher. If it had not been for a mathematically brilliant student the rest of us would have been lost. I am forever grateful to that boy. He was aware of how poor the teaching was and he would give anyone who wanted it another quick but much better explanation in five or ten minutes at lunch time.  I knitted him a football beanie in return because he gave the rest of us so much help.

The Senior Cat "retired" in name only. He went on teaching until two days before his death. He did it differently though. Instead of restoring order to problem schools he taught individual pupils. One of them stopped me only yesterday and said, "I wish your father was still around. I'd so like to him I've been promoted." It would have delighted the Senior Cat. His idea of retirement was to take it a little more slowly and enjoy the challenge of helping someone who found learning difficult.

I wonder about other people though. A real estate agent Middle Cat and I both know has just retired at eighty. Her house selling record was extraordinary but the firm she worked for was taken over by another company. They do things differently and she was not comfortable with the idea of a "hot desk". When we met in the supermarket she told me, "I suppose I am old fashioned but I liked the idea of knowing I had my own space organised the way I like it." 

Perhaps then this is one of those things which will cause people to retire. The nature of work will change. It will change to a degree where older people no longer feel comfortable with the way things are done. I have long since adapted to computer based work - but can I adapt to AI?

Like the Senior Cat though I have other things I want to do. I want to write other things. I want to make things. I want to go on helping some of the much younger students with their essays - and give the occasional able but unmotivated student some encouragement. There is a huge gap in my life left by the Whirlwind but there is another young one who needs support...and the Senior Cat would encourage it. 

I hear people say they will do "this" or "that" in retirement. Sometimes I wonder whether they will do anything at all. Is it why they sit for hours over a "coffee" in the local shopping centre? Is it why they "go for a walk" but it is really just a bored stroll around the block? Do they have hobbies or are they really spending hours watching sport and scrolling on their screens?

Today I have a friend coming. She will turn ninety at the end of the month - and looks ten years younger. She takes a lively interest in the world. If I suggested she was "retired" she would smile and say something like, "Not really. I just don't get paid the way I once did."