It’s important, they say, to plan for retirement. Mine’s happening in five days (not from this column but from the radio), so I’ve been working on a plan to enact on that first free Monday.
Step one is to sleep in as long as I damn well like. Perhaps until 10am; maybe 11.
Step two is to discover I can’t sleep until mid-morning, on account that I’m not a teenager any more.
ABC veteran Richard Glover is stepping down from his Drive show after 26 years.Credit: ABC
So, wake up at 6.45am, as usual. Make Jocasta tea, as usual. Read newspaper, as usual.
Get out of bed at 8am and watch Jocasta as she goes into her office to work. Note the way she closes the door.
Wander around the house for a bit. Clean the crumbs from the cutlery drawer while wondering, “how come there are toast crumbs when we never eat toast?”
Knock softly on her door and, speaking through the closed door, ask: “What are you doing?” She says: “Working.” She uses a tone of voice which, I believe, is unnecessarily brusque.
Richard Glover in 2002, early in his broadcast career.Credit: 2002
Decide to get cracking with my plan of reading the great classics of literature. I start off with my old university copy of Homer’s Odyssey but discover it’s suddenly become more difficult to understand in the years since I first read it. Shift to James Joyce’s Ulysses, before becoming defeated in the low hills of the first chapter. Third choice: Dickens. Ah, that’s better. Terrific characters! What a story!
It’s long, though, isn’t it, Dickens?
Knock softly on Jocasta’s door and, speaking through the closed door, ask: “What are you doing?” She says: “Working.” She uses a tone that can only be described as exasperated.
I decide to get cracking with the second grand task of my retirement: getting fit.
Suddenly I realise the whole point of regular employment was to supply a plausible excuse for abandoning your exercises.
I put a mat down on the lounge-room floor and start heaving my body around. This goes on for two, perhaps three hours, after which I look at a clock and find I’ve been at it for 10 minutes.
How long can this agony go on? Suddenly I realise the whole point of regular employment was to supply a plausible excuse for abandoning your exercises after 10 minutes.
“I’d love to do some more but – what a bummer – I’m due at work. Oh well. Needs must.”
Since that excuse is no longer available, my mind searches around for another reason to cease the huffy-puffy. It’s nearly 11, which is virtually lunchtime.
I gently knock on Jocasta’s door and, speaking through the closed door, ask: “What are you planning for lunch?”
Through the closed door she says: “I married you for richer or poorer. Not for lunch.”
I say: “That’s an old line.”
She says: “You’ve not given me any time to come up with a new one. Will you please go away.”
I go away and tackle the third grand task of retirement: cleaning up my room. I go through my desk drawers, ready to throw out anything no longer needed. For instance: my phone book from my 20s.
First, for nostalgia purposes, I need to go through its pages. I discover I can’t remember any of the people I once knew. I find this rather depressing.
At 12.30 Jocasta finally emerges from her office. I make her a sandwich. Afterwards I bring out the Good Weekend quiz, a stack of which I have saved for just this moment.
“Question one,” I say, my voice booming. Jocasta frowns, then interrupts.
“Why are you using that ridiculously deep voice?” she asks, before suddenly realising: “Oh, I get it, it’s your radio voice. And this is now your only chance to use it. Oh, God help me.”
We do pretty well in the quiz, probably because the questions are so beautifully read, each word given a sonorous edge, with random pauses mid-sentence.
Or perhaps we do well because Jocasta gets all the answers right.
Then it’s “bye, see you tonight”. She disappears behind the closed door.
I take the dog for a walk and – since we have extra time – I throw a ball for him.
We’ve never played ball before and he looks at me as if to say: “You threw it away. You go get it.”
We arrive home. It’s still only 3pm. Maybe I should take up golf. I’ve never played golf but this could be my chance to start.
Googling the term “golf” brings me to a slew of articles about Donald Trump and how he is now short of caddies. Apparently he’s appointed all his old caddies to positions of power at the Pentagon.
An opportunity beckons.
I gently knock on Jocasta’s door and, speaking through the closed door, say: “I’m thinking of learning golf and then applying to be Donald Trump’s caddy at Mar-a-Lago.”
Finally, she opens the door.
“Trump is an odious toad who is seeking to destroy the world,” she says.
I consider her point of view. “I’d be away six months a year.”
“Maybe he’s not so bad,” Jocasta replies. “Why don’t you start training right away?”
And that’s the story of how, on my first day of retirement, I plan to take up golf.
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