65 and Still Going Strong

The government shifted the age at which I could claim State Pension by eight months. The official retirement age at my employer is 60 - but the law says they can’t push me out and have to show cause, or I can retire myself. My chequered employment history has left me without a nice final-salary (or defined benefits) pension, or indeed a consistent record of payments into a laughably-titled defined contribution scheme. I’m still working.

I remember reading a man saying that he did manual, but not back-breaking, work, and at 60 was still in there humping. To the point where he thought he would go on way past 65. He got to 65, he said, and he was wrecked. The body’s strength recedes no matter how much we eat well and exercise.

That story stuck with me, and may have set up some expectations I don’t need. I’m not doing manual work, but I do have to get up at crazy hours, commute and keep up with the 20/30-soemthings I work with. I do not want to work with people my age - I don’t look, think or feel my age.

For most of our lives, my generation believed we would be able to stop work at 65 and live reasonably well, if quietly. They came for the blue-collar workers in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but we were students and then white-collar, then they came for the white-collar workers in the 1990’s and got me, and then they came for the final salary pension schemes. Very few people now are going to retire on a decent fraction of their salary, and I’m not one of them. Retired people have to pay Council Tax unless we get an exemption, and we don’t get discounts on water, gas and electricity. This is a chunk of overhead.

As 65 looms up like a lamp-post I’m going to hit, I’ve felt a change of mood that I can’t quite describe.

One small part of it is the £15 movie ticket, the £20 mid-quality evening meal, the £50 stalls seat in the West End, £10 or so for a ticket to the current show at the Tate or the RA, £40 for a decent seat at the Wigmore, £35 for a chamber concert at the QEH, and £150 for a stalls or dress circle seat at the ENO for The Marriage of Figaro. WTF?! This is bonkers, because there just isn’t the quality of work coming out now. There isn’t one artist in any media now creating anything new worth those prices.

Some of it is slower recovery from physical exercise. I do at least three sessions a week at the gym and walk five-six miles on a working day. I’m not bouncing out to get to the gym Saturday morning.

All that training and walking gets my pulse to around 65-75 and my blood pressure to 125 / 75 when resting. (This is astonishingly low for a man in his sixties.) It’s even lower if I’m on a warm Piccadilly Line train at the end of the working day. It takes me five minutes of treadmill to get pulse and blood pressure up to operating level. So when I’m resting, suddenly bursting into action can be quite scary.

Some is the consequence of having to go to bed so darn early, so I can wake up early, work 8-4 and avoid the worst of the crowds on the commute and in the gym. I stopped going out on Saturday, except very early, because I cannot stand the crowds of parents pretending to be civil to each other and having fun taking their children to whatever it is.

I need my five sleep-cycles. This stops me going out in the evening. I have to be getting ready for bed when you’re thinking about having the next pint, or Nandos, or whatever you’re doing at 21:00 on a weekday evening.

I have to watch what I eat, so I can’t have enjoyable chocolate binges.

Everything I do is about what I’m going to do after that, and it’s been that way for a very long time.

If only I was having a bit more fun.

I don’t mean dodgems at the travelling-fair fun, or fancy-fress party fun. As an ACoA, I have a doctor’s certificate exempting me from that stuff. I don’t even mean watching-The-Marx-Brothers fun. I mean what I think of as fun. Which is more about the way I react to things than what I’m doing.

I feel I have to drag myself everywhere. It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything with a light heart and a sense of will-it-won’t-it anticipation.

Fun for me would be to do things that aren't about something else.

Self-improvement makes everything about something else. Will what I am about to do contribute towards better health / fitness / knowledge / skills / whatever? It’s easy to slip into the idea that self-improvement has to be earnest, protestant work-ethic-y.

That’s where most of what this mood comes from.

Curing it is mostly about attitude. And of course, there’s the whole bit where I stop beating myself up because I’m not a Frisky Fifty anymore.

But get this straight: I would far, far rather be this 65 than my father’s 65. Or a lot of other men’s 65. Or the 65 I would be, if I was even alive, if I had not found AA and gotten sober. I really, really am glad I’m not that 65.

So, yeah, 65 and still going strong.