Life is made up of different stages
Time’s a funny old thing. What is often the most predictable of events is often the most surprising. What’s known to arrive on a certain date, sometimes years ahead, arrives like a burglar in the night seemingly stealing your life.
Last Friday I retired after half a century of work. It seems that only a few short years ago it was June 17, 1967 when Sgt Pepper ruled the airwaves and I first reported for work at Cutteslowe Park in Oxford as an apprentice gardener. A fresh-faced, callow youth seeking some sort of a career in amenity horticulture – parks. Only a week before, I was thrilled to get my motor bike license so I bought a Beezer, ready to take on the world.
What happened between then and now was a roller coaster of a ride that happens to most of us. It’s called ‘life’ and I have to say for the most part it’s been great. At about the half way mark the undeniable law of physics that makes the ground go further away and more difficult to reach, saw me move inside and sadly my seed catalogues made way for computer manuals. But I found out quickly that rather than ‘do’ I could ‘teach’ and rather than bend my back I simply picked up a phone and somehow the job still got done.
Now, in retirement, my computer manuals have made way for seed catalogues once again. I recently got my motor bike license and bought a Beezer. I tear around town on, scaring people – mainly myself. I started bending my back in the garden, watching the rich brown Taranaki soil fall easily off ‘old faithful’ my 40-year-old spade. It’s had three new handles and two new blades but it’s still a dammed good spade.
But it doesn’t pay to get maudlin, that’s easy and the easy way is rarely the right way, is it?
A wise poet once said ‘the me that was made me that’s now’ so it’s not an end but a new chapter. I can pick up my seed catalogues and the computer manuals and get the seeds on-line. I can get on a bus for free and go around our sparkling city by the sea hopping on and off when the fancy takes me. Most of all I can enjoy life. Isn’t that what it’s all about?
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