Ten Years Retired

Wittering Sunday 

  This Christmas eve I will have been retired for exactly ten years. I retired early due to my crappy knees and a handful of other problems that I'm sure I've mentioned elsewhere in these pages. I worked at the local Royal Mail Delivery office that was home to roughly fifty workers. I haven't missed the job itself, but there are certain aspects of it that I do miss. There was always a little bit of banter going on between the postmen/women, all in good humour I of course. I miss that. And I miss the interaction with the customers. 

  When I started working for Royal Mail I was a shy, almost timid young lad. But working in the community and  interacting with the public soon brought me out of myself. I loved the job and in many ways it was the making of me. For the first twenty years and more I thought it was the best job in the world. Even the manic Christmas turmoil that always sorted itself out in time for the big day was good. Only one day off for Christmas but that didn't bother me much. I had many great Christmases as a boy and they are alive and well in my memories. But, over the years, I came to dislike it immensely. All the hype and constant press to spend, spend, spend just wore me down.  In truth I think I enjoyed the extra long hours and the chaos at work because it took me away from all the present buying and commercial nonsense that went with Christmas.

  By the time of my retirement though, I'd had enough. Thirty eight years I'd worked those Christmases, two weeks of up to twelve hour days. I'd start work in the dark and come home in the dark. The last few years were spent working in the delivery office. I took the inside job to spare my knees and it helped for a while but, eventually even that job was too much. I was still on my feet all day even though I wasn't carrying the weight of mailbags. That final year was pretty awful. I'd upped my pain killers to the max and was still suffering and when Christmas came back round I just knew I couldn't face another fortnight of twelve hour shifts. I went on sick leave and at the same time I put in a request for ill health retirement. 

  Well, while I was on sick leave I received a phone call from Royal Mail regarding my request. They asked a few questions about my health and what medication I was on. And, I think it was the long list of pills I gave them that prompted them to ask 'Have you considered ill health retirement?' Well, DUH! 

  Just two weeks later I spent my last employed day with Royal Mail although I was still on sick leave! Christmas Eve 2016.

  Looking back at that time now, I realise I was in a much worse place than I first thought. As well as my ongoing knee problems  and the fact that the job was no longer appealing, Reet had just been diagnosed with cancer and given eight to ten years of life!, I was drinking too much too which wasn't a good thing at the best of times, but, on top of all the pills I was taking it was particularly stupid. In short, life was a struggle and I think, now, I was under a lot of stress but didn't realise it. 

  When I heard that I'd got my early retirement I was so relieved I almost cried. That's when I realised just how much pressure I'd been under.

  With work out of the way Reet and I could concentrate on more important  matters like not strangling each other as we tried to spend more time together than we'd ever had to before! In the end though, we did okay and in many ways we became closer than we'd ever been. We of course had to deal with the cancer too of course, but that's for another entry. 

Since retiring then, here's a quick rundown of what's happened, not necessarily in that order.

Reet's cancer took hold and treatments began in earnest

I stopped drinking

 I took up playing ukulele

My good friend, Craig, died suddenly

Our dog died
Reet died
I  had my second knee replacement
After the best part of forty years, I stopped taking pain pills for good. 
I got another dog

Those are a few bullet points but in general, life has just carried on and I've managed to stay with it. I guess that's about all we can do ennit?

Tarra.

B. x

Old Memories

  I’ve been reading some more of my old journal entries. I didn’t realise there were so many but then it was going for a good six years and I wrote in it at least three time a week back then. I’ve discovered a couple of things since re-reading them. The first thing is that I seemed to write more fluidly back then. I could go to it at any time of  day or night (and the times did vary quite wildly) and I’d always have something to say. Oh, it wasn’t anything earth shattering and, to be honest it lived up to its name with the amount of waffling involved.  But it was open and honest and quite often daft.

  Sometimes  when I read through my earlier writings I find them embarrassingly naïve and even boring on some occasions. (I know, who’da thunk it?) But I’m actually enjoying looking back through those files and I’m happy to say most of them are not cringeworthy at all. I believe the reason I enjoyed it so much was because of the interaction between my fellow bloggers. We would all read each others journals and leave comments to each other. It was a huge community and there was something for everybody. Any subject you could think of. Someone would be writing about it. And it really was a friendly place.

   Back in those JLand days you could just browse through journals and find something you liked. Often you could visit one of your regular writers and they’d have a link to another journal on their blog. So from there you’d click on yet another journal and maybe make another friend. As I say it was very community orientated and very enjoyable. That’s why I’ve decided to keep these pages open to the public. You never know, something similar may come from it.

  Not that I have any readers. Well, there’s my sister, as of today, (Hi Pen) so that’s a start.  With Blogger, there is no way to simply browse other journals, you can’t just flick around willy nilly and discover a great blog. You can search for a particular subject and you may get lucky but I’m finding it quite difficult to find just your every day blogger who writes a diary type of blog. That said though, I’ve only just recently found my way back to blogging so it may be that I’m missing something and it could be there’s a whole community out there in the ether waiting for me to find it.

  Right I'm off, but just before I go, I have a whinge for Blogger. I'm trying to justify my text in this post and it doesn't all justify. What's that all about?

Cheerie bye.

B. x