It’s no use pretending – retirement takes some getting used
to. Here am I, sitting in the back
garden under a gunmetal sky, listening to the mad cackling of the magpies in
the trees. They sound like Macbeth’s
witches. In the corner, amongst all the
dead leaves, wanders Mr Scruffy. He’s a wood
pigeon who has been abandoned by his tribe.
He looks like Arthur Haynes’ tramp, all feathers awry, skinny and
ill-looking. He can hardly get off the
ground, so spends most of his time wandering, lonely as a cloud, in abject misery, along the back border
looking for food, for he can gather no solace from any of the other wood
pigeons who have sent him to Coventry on account of his shabbiness. I
keep him alive by feeding him bits of suet and wild bird seed.
I’ve been out for
my usual morning walk with the little black spaniel. We wandered along the High Street on the way
back home. At the bus stop, a
middle-aged couple hailed me. The woman
cried out: “Why, hello, there, Mr Hardwick. Haven’t seen you in a long time. You’re looking well, much better than when we
last clapped eyes on you. Presume you’re
retired now – must be, at your age. It
must be doing you good.” That much is
true - I’m about two stone lighter and down to three chins. I looked on in terror. I had no idea who these people were. He was
tall, sandy-haired, balding and bespectacled, she pipe-cleaner thin with
snow-white hair. As usual, in these
circumstances, one tries desperately to play for time, probing wildly to
receive a clue about who these people actually were. I enquired as to whether they were working
(they laughed), how their family was, the state of their health and whether
they were still living in the same place – where was it now – Station
Road? The answer to that was Trefoil Drive and
that gave me the information I needed.
They were work acquaintances from twenty years ago. I remembered, bizarrely, that he once drove a
Lancia Dedra. I asked if it was still
going. ‘Alas, no,’ he said. ‘I had to scrap
it in 2000. I went from that to a Subaru
Impreza. I drive a Suzuki Alto now.’
I tried hard not to laugh. The
passage of time had brought him back from wild dreaming to a strong dose of the
castor oil of pragmatism. They were
going to Berwick for the day on the bus. ‘It’s an adventure,’ she said. To them, it probably was.
The dog and I continued our walk. At the end of our street,
someone with a plum tree had left out a basket of plums and a note – ‘please
help yourself.’ I did. I got home and read through my Marguerite
Patten cookbook of 1,000 recipes, a valuable tool for me in these days of my
nascent culinary development. I settled
for plum charlotte, which appears to be an admixture of plums, breadcrumbs and
sugar, which even I cannot really make a hash of, although the recipe doesn’t
say whether the bread should be brown or white.
I’ll do half-and-half, so at worst, I’ll be 50% right.
This afternoon, I am to go to the library, then to the
chemist’s to pick up a prescription for my wife and, finally I need to fill up
the motor car with fuel. Rather than use
the garage up the road, I will drive seven miles to North
Berwick , just to use up a little more time. I have no idea as yet what I will cook for dinner,
but I do know that two hours of badminton tonight will leave me utterly
exhausted.
Then, tomorrow, just as for
Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, I will get up and go through it all again.
