Goodbye Tension, Hello Pension!

As regular readers will know, I am inclined to spend far too much time and money trying to hold back the ravages of time, which are marching merrily across my face.

It’s a full time job.  If I don’t stop adding anti-ageing lotions and wrinkle removing potions to my nightly routine, I’ll soon have to start going to bed earlier just to get it all done.

My eyebrows need more attention than ever, since I plucked the snow white hair from one of them recently.  An unhappy day, by any standards.

And where my meanderings around the beauty halls of Dublin used to be about highlighting the green in my eyes and perfecting my pout, these days it’s all about skin renewal and youth radiance.

I’m a marketer’s dream.  And, of course, a gobshite.

I know it’s all a load of nonsense really.  I know we’re born with genes and cells in place that will age as they see fit, unless we opt for the surgeon’s knife or the adding of botulism.  And I’m not even sure that works. 

Having said that,  I have to say that this latest over priced serum seems to be holding its own.

I suppose it doesn’t matter if you have the visage of a teenager, once you start to creak and limp and risk breaking a hip getting into the shower of a morning. 

But for me the big news is this.  That maybe getting older is actually not so bad.  Could it be possible that I’ve been completely over reacting to life moving on, all these years?

I met a friend of mine lately, a gentleman around the age of sixty.  He took early retirement from our office a couple of years ago, and went off to pursue the next chapter of his life.

I’ll call him Jim, though that is not his name. To protect him, more than me.

If he’d simply resigned from the job, it might have been different.  But for some reason, when I hear the word “retirement” I think “relaxation.”  A time, after you’ve done a lifetime’s toil, to kick back and slide into old age, your days punctuated by lovely lunches, pleasant walks, and drinking at inappropriate times of the day.  To be honest, I think it sounds great.

But what if it's actually about not being able to afford heating in the winter and re heated food, and all your friends being dead?

Jim is an interesting person by any standards.  He always has a story.

For instance, two days a week, he takes care of his two year old grandson.  The other day, he brought the little boy to the park, to feed the ducks.

The swans came running up to them.  I’m not fond of swans.  We all know that they can break a man’s arm, of course.  But I’m not fond of them anyway.  Attention seeking feckers.  It’s like dolphins.  When I go to buy tins of tuna, there’s a happy little badge on each tin stating that it’s “Dolphin Friendly”.  I hate that.  Just because dolphins are cuter and make weird little noises. Is it ok to eat a tuna, just because they’re ugly,  as long as no dolphin is harmed?

I’ve been told that life is easier if you’re good looking, and it must be true.
Swans too.  With their snow white feathers, and making heart shapes with their two heads, and mating for life.  They’d make you sick.

 

Anyway, these swans, thinking they’re good looking and charming no doubt, came rushing up to push the ducks out of the way.  And the little boy, being a little boy, fell a bit in love with one of the swans, and wanted to give it a kiss.

I’m fairly sure a lot of adults would have explained that swans don’t like kissing boys, and maybe moved away.  Jim thought the best way to get a quick peck from a swan was to put a decent sized piece of bread in the child’s mouth and let the swan take it from there.
He cheerfully told me that he wouldn't have dreamt of doing this years ago, but that life gets less scary when you hit retirement.

Jim told me that he was fairly casually dating a number of women.  He was widowed a few years ago, in very sad circumstances.  After a long and happy marriage, Jim has decided that he has no interest in getting into anything serious again.

He says there’s great freedom in all the dating.  Nobody takes anything too seriously, and everyone gets to enjoy themselves.

I, being a rather cynical person, asked him whether all the women knew about each other. 

He confirmed that yes, they do.

I asked him if any of them minded.

“Oh yeah” he told me.  “They’re always giving out.”

That sounds like less fun.  I didn’t really know what to say, so I stood there slightly awkwardly.

“I don’t care” he told me. 

"I don't care" is a fairly overused phrase, in my opinion.  For example, I shout it repeatedly at His Nibs when he's trying to make some (usually perfectly reasonable) point that I don't agree with.  But in this case, I really, really believed Jim.  He doesn't care that all these woman are always giving out.

Now that’s the way to slide into old age.  He’s happy on his own, and has his children and grandchildren for company.  He sees a number of women, and if one gets too moany about his seeing the others, he stops dating her, on the basis that neither of them are enjoying themselves any more.

To be honest, Jim has charisma.  I doubt that I’ll have a bevy of gentlemen callers begging to take me out and feed me when I’m in my sixties. 

Obviously, I’m very hopeful that His Nibs won’t have legged it, and the mortgage having dragged to its miserable end, we’ll be in a position to go out whenever we want, as a pair.

But if Angelina Jolie or the likes of her has come and stolen him away, its nice to think that retirement isn’t all grey cardigans and beans on toast on my own.