Martin Hesp on Saturday

Read Martin’s column every week in the Western Daily Press

A taste of retirement...now back to work

OUR lives sometimes shrink, sometimes expand – we’ve certainly seen a good deal of shrinkage during the Covid pandemic. Many of us who were accustomed to ranging the world found our lives narrowed to the confines of home and garden.

And it seems we all have different ways of adapting to the kind of changes which are outside our control. Some adjust with ease, others have a hard time.

I was thinking this earlier when putting together an article on the West Country’s seaside eateries.

When I was an editor-at-large I went to a great many such eateries because I had a unique job that took me from one end of the South West peninsula to the other, covering stories for the paper.

Over 20 years I must have written some sort of news, environmental or food-related story connected to just about every West Country parish. I completed nearly 1,000 newspaper walks dotted across the region. I knew people everywhere, from the Somerset Levels to the Scillies, and they knew me.

Now I hardly go anywhere. Partly because of a change in my work, but mainly because of the pandemic. My world – like a lot of other people’s has shrunk. Dramatically.

What interests me is how individuals cope with change.

I know people who have really been hit by the lockown, while others have bathed happily in the static peacefulness of it all.

Being a bit slow-witted, it took a time for me to fully realise anything had changed at all, maybe because I’d always worked from home – so being stuck in our Exmoor valley was no big deal.

But I know a lot of people who, for over a year now, have been tearing their hair out with cabin fever. They cannot wait to go away on holiday. Anywhere. Even if it’s just for a weekend.

Living in a beautiful place, I’ve been fairly immune to this until, that is, an hour ago when I was writing that round-up of seaside dining spots.

Then it got to me. I tried to think when I last spent a day exploring hidden coves in Cornwall or enjoying a morning’s shrimping on some shore in the Scillies.

Then, inevitably, I wondered when I’d next be able to visit those lovely islands. Since I was in my mid-40s I’ve been fortunate indeed to have had a job which took me to the Fortunate Isles at least half a dozen times a year.

Now the awful realisation has dawned on me these regular visits will never happen again.

There must be a lot of people around my age who suffer the same kind of punch in the mental abdomen. Over many years a person becomes accustomed to doing something active and meaningful and now, suddenly, it’s not required any more.

I suppose I’m really talking about the subject of retirement – not, I hasten to add, that I am anywhere near retiring from work. But it is a big, big subject, and it’s one that must have been blurred quite a bit by Covid.

Just how big, by the way, is amazing. There are already 11.7 million retired people in the UK. By 2025 it’s estimated the number will reach one in five of the adult population.

Here’s my thinking on the present situation. I know that a lot of people in their 50s and early 60s read this newspaper and for many of them (me included) the lockdowns could have seemed like a form of miniretirement. A kind of warm-up exercise or taster for the real thing.

Suddenly our old lifestyle vanished and there came a time when we began to think: “Blimey! One day soon it’s always going to be like this.”

No longer did our jobs take us out and about to meet people. Many of us saw big reductions in earnings. Our wings have been severely clipped in just about every way imaginable.

If we were younger, we’d cope by contemplating the long productive life stretching in front of us. But those of us in our 50s and 60s who do not have big pensions might be thinking we’re not quite ready for our lives to shrink in the way it has over the past 18 months.

I met a new neighbour this week who, having no option, has taken early retirement and moved to the countryside.

The guy had a top job in the City managing a team of 150 and no doubt he’s got a whacking great big pension. But when I asked what he planned to do now he’s moved to an area where peace and quiet rules and where nothing much happens, a kind of vague, worried, expression crossed his brow.

That look of concern made me glad we’ve been given a temporary taster of life-shrinkage.

It’s taught me a lesson. Now I’m double-jabbed, I am pressing hard to get back to normal. Like a lot of other people I want to be out and about, being useful and busy.

I want to end each day, not by thinking: “That was just the same as the previous 24 hours.”

But by saying: “Wow! That was enjoyable and interesting. What fun it is to be alive!”

‘When I asked a recently retired neighbour what he was going to do he took on a worried look’