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Leaving the office behind |
20 May 2009, Retirement Day
The prospect of time being on my side was tantalising. After 38 years of uninterrupted employment involving 10 posts in 7 organisations - 2 consultancy firms, 1 English local authority, the Scottish Office and 3 Scottish local authorities - I was ready for a break. It had been a long innings with mainly long days and many evening meetings. I had never missed a day's work apart from 2 weeks in hospital after contracting dysentery in the Sahara in 1972, a week in hospital after breaking a leg parachuting in 1977, and then in the next 32 years, just 2 days off with campylobacter resulting from a first minister's lunch at the Glasgow Hilton.
When I had given my notice to retire in early January, I had specified mid-June as my retirement date. A planned ski holiday in February had to be cancelled because the Council delayed setting its budget. I was able to carry forward these days plus some leave from the previous leave year, so my last working day was 20 May. It had been an exhausting year with a new administration, a difficult budget, the dismissal of a disruptive Councillor, a subsequent by-election and a lot of 70-hour weeks.
My health had taken a turn for the worse at the start of the year when I was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. It meant I had to reduce my running, managing only 66 miles in the 5 months to retiral instead of the normal 60 or so miles per month I would normally achieve. I had cardioversion on 9 April and returned to sinus rhythm but only for 48 hours. We went to London for Easter and I picked up flu-like symptoms that made things very difficult for a couple of weeks. I was working but going straight home to bed every day and had to be rushed to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary after collapsing on a plane during take-off on a flight to Ireland for a wedding. I was feeling better by early May which was just as well with a by-election, 2 weddings and 6 leaving dinners to attend.
On the last day of work, I started by sending a farewell to all my chief executive colleagues, thanking them for their support and offering some reflections about the job. I held a management team meeting and then hosted a meeting with the farmer's market to help them draw up plans for a permanent location in former MoD premises. There were lots of informal farewells to colleagues, councillors, the local Deli, receptionists, janitors, and tea ladies. I finished the day with cake and drinks with my immediate team in the late afternoon. After folk had gone. I carried out my pictures and a few boxes of books, papers and other paraphernalia. I took a last look around the offices where I had spent over 35,000 hours in the last 18 years. I decided that it would be my last visit to the premises, I wanted a clean break. Once you've gone, you've gone.
As I left, well after 6pm, I bumped into two people who epitomised all that was best in the Council. First the leader of both the Regional and Unitary Council whom I had worked with for 17 years, although he was now the leader of the opposition. It was the end of an era, we had achieved a lot together but we had probably both reached a point when it was difficult to crank up the enthusiasm for another set of initiatives when the cosh was coming down and the cash was disappearing from Councils from an increasingly centralised Scottish Government. We had both shared a commitment to localism, community engagement, social justice and sustainability and had a justified scepticism about the Scottish Government's focus on centralising services and policies. We bade farewell and then I noticed that Joyce was still working. She was a senior administrator who ran the elections with an efficiency that could not be faulted, she earned the respect of everyone by her unstinting attention to detail and at times brutally honest opinion, she characterised all that is best about public service.
I left with positive memories but no real regrets and 28 minutes later I had completed my last commute - a 20-mile drive west into the highlands. Ben Lomond was my lodestone and there was little traffic to frustrate the journey or clutter the mind. I was reminded of the Beatles song- Tomorrow Never Knows. Turn off your mind, Relax and float downstream, It is not dying.
For my first day of retirement, a Thursday, Aileen was working so I had arranged with Gregor to spend a couple of days walking in the Lake District. He was working at an outdoor shop in Glasgow after completing a post-grad course and had arranged to take two days off. I drove to Glasgow to collect him and we drove to the Lake District where I had some of the smaller fells to climb to finish the 223 Wainwright hills. It was just past noon as we parked in Mungrisdale on a clear, warm but cloudy day. We climbed the steep slopes of Bowscale Fell and then took in Blencathra, it is too good a hill to miss. I was walking better than I could have expected and I raced Gregor to the top of the next hill, Mungrisdale Common, although his shoe came off in the peat bog and he had to stop to retrieve it. We returned to the car via Bannerdale Crags and Souther Fell.
We had some refreshments in the Mill Inn before driving to Keswick to buy some food and then on to Bassenthwaite. Gregor was keen to climb Barf and Lord's Seat so I dropped him there whilst I booked in at the Braithwaite campsite, set up the tent and cooked some food. I could get used to this retirement malarkey.
After a night in the tent, we set out the next morning to climb the five hills to the south of Braithwaite from Causey Pike to Sail to Barrow. Hills that had been my first excursions into the fells as an 11-year-old on a primary school trip to Newlands. We were walking easily and there was time for some lunch at the excellent Lakeland Pedlar vegetarian cafe in Keswick before venturing north to climb two hills - Ling Fell and Sale Fell near Bassenthwaite. They did not take long either and there was time to finish the afternoon with a run-up Binsey, the most northerly Wainwright hill. We stopped at Caldbeck for some food before I dropped Gregor at Penrith station so he could catch a train to Glasgow, he was working on Saturday. I drove down to Preston to see my brother and sister, something I had not done since my father died in April 2008. It was amazing how much can be done in retirement.
The following week on 26 May, less than a week after retirement, I was due to have another cardioversion at the hospital to see if my heart could be returned to sinus rhythm. There was no need, less than a week after retiring, it had already happened. I began to run regularly again and by August I was achieving some personal bests and running better than at any time in the past six years. Perhaps turning off my mind and relaxing was the answer.
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| Heading along to Blencathra |
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| The first walk of retirement - Mungrisdale. |
