This retirement lark

I think I've finally got something. Bit of an epiphany, really. It's this retirement caper - so it's been over eight years in dawning. But today, as the last light lingered just late enough on a still afternoon to tell us that the long dark nights were shrinking and the squawking herons settled into the heronry over our heads, today I realised with a great sense of release what had eluded me until now.

Think of starting a new job. It takes a while, does it not, to settle in? To feel at home in your surroundings, to work out the best route to work, to assess how much preparation or extra work each day could bring, to size up your new colleagues and make friends if you're lucky or simply decide whom to avoid and how. Retirement, on the other hand, always seemed simpler. You have that life ready and waiting for you, if you don't up sticks and move abroad or wherever; your friends are there to enjoy meeting, the books you never got round to reading lie waiting, enticingly ...

And yet. It's actually not like that. I don't think I ever had the status angst that I have seen in newly-retired men - that can clearly be a hard thing, but I never felt that my job was me. Perhaps the eight years out of the classroom while I produced and brought up babies gave me a different slant - for work never felt quite the same after that, and I never got used to being trapped indoors on a sunny day; something I never fretted over as a young teacher. But what I did do was fill up my days with Other Things - often loosely connected to my old job, or a kind of offshoot (like speaking in public, because you've done it for years). I tutored, I wrote exam papers, I went on committees, I did some facilitation, I wrote for fun and for commissions. I did a bit of learning - theology, mostly, not the Greek I'd promised myself - and realised how much my brain had changed since university. I became quite ... busy.

Too busy. That was at the heart of today's epiphany. Too busy, and too stressed by some of it. I realise that there are things that successful secondary teaching does not equip you for. I think I'm too impatient for several of the retirement jobs I've tried, and I've realised that I need - yes, need - to spend some time every day out in the open, walking. That takes time, and it's incompatible with travelling for two hours there and back to some meeting or other. The physical fitness that is the result of this need is exhilarating, and the satisfaction of knowing you've just hiked for two hours (like today) us comparable to anything else I do or have done. I've seen the herons and heard their raucous treetop shouts; I've heard the oyster-catchers in the quiet loch below; I've smelled the amazing incense-smell of eucalyptus and pine trees in the still air; I've had a therapeutic conversation as we walked (at about 4mph, if you're interested).

Next week I'm going on holiday. More walking, only in warmer weather. 19ºC today, I believe. We've just booked another one later in the year, and a much grander one waits in 2015. We've made arrangements to see family; we plan to see paintings with friends; we have a concert to go to in the spring, and we have two concerts of our own to sing in. I feel cheerful about all these things, and not stressed. And that's the secret.

When your displacement activities have the irritant effect of a job you don't enjoy, when you find yourself reading nonsense because you're distracted by some task you have to deal with, or someone else's expectations - that's when you have to stop. You retire because, physically, you're not up to it any more - you react to stress differently for a start. You don't need to feel guilty because someone asks you to do something and your first reaction is to quail. (Do you know anyone who tutors in English...?) If you've stayed up till 1am blogging or reading or watching a film and the next morning dawns dull and wet there's no shame in having an extra hour in bed if you've left the day clear of huvtaes. You've earned this time.

And you never know when it will end.

I still enjoy the writing, though ...

A ridgewalk with the Third Age

A suitably splendid scene for a brief retrospect on last week's Argyll and The Isles Diocesan Synod, the above photo shows the moment when Bishop Kevin installed the new Dean, Andrew Swift, in the Cathedral in Oban. I was right at the back of the Cathedral, having arrived at the very last minute from Taynuilt, where we were staying and where we had gone to change into gladder rags for the Synod dinner, but a phone waved speculatively in the air seemed to do not badly, thank you.

Anyway, enough of the formalities. Argyll is unlike the more urban dioceses in that it holds its synodical gatherings over three days. After all, people take to planes and boats to get there - it seems only fair to give them a decent time to socialise, no? And anyone who cares to can attend, especially the pre-Synod day. This year's speaker, Ann Morisey, was the best yet. She talked about the Ages of our lives - not seven, as Shakespeare described them, nor the three of past generations, but the four ages we now see living: children (dependant); adults (generative, working); the active retired (new!); the old (dependant, letting-go). And of course, more than half of her listeners were the active retired on whom the church depends, and of whom, dear reader, I am one.

I'm not going for a blow-by-blow here. But I started thinking about the business of loss of status - the loss of status that is part of letting go. We all, I suppose, acquire varied status during our lives, and some people have the dickens of a job letting it go. Retirement can spell doom and depression for some, rather than joyous freedom. Men seem more bothered than women. I also thought about the things that apparently keep us going for longer - singing seems to be one, dancing another, and church membership and activity seems to be jolly good for one.

But this status thingy. People acquire status in church circles - and suffer a new bereavement when it is taken from them. We all know the criticism voiced of people who hang onto jobs in church - but do we think of why these jobs are so dear to these people? Should we all be practising letting go of things, sitting lightly on our little importances so that the wrench will be less?

Maybe it depends on why we do these things in the first place. And an echo of the instruction to pray secretly in your own room comes to me when I think of this. We do love to dress up in our church, and there is much to be said for the depersonalisation of the individual that is one result of this. But I wonder if every one of us, for our own future good, needs to think about why we cling to our assumed responsibilities.

In a voluntary organisation there will always be a need for someone to step forward. There was much talk this year of ridgewalking, with all the excitement and danger that the term implies. Suddenly it feels as if the diocese has set off on its precarious ridge walk with a song in its heart - and the Third Age to the fore.

Approaching the throne

T'other day I asked a friend and former colleague, an experienced, well-respected teacher in her late fifties, how the new headie was doing. As you do, when a school has its first new head teacher in a quarter of a century. "Oh, he's good," she said. And added, quite seriously, "He's very approachable."

I couldn't help wondering at this reply. What, in the name of heaven, would you expect a new headie to be if not "approachable"? What is there about the job of running a secondary school that would make for unapproachability? Does the fact of promotion to this exalted post take a teacher out of the realms of mere mortals and put them beyond approachability?

I suppose in a way you might say that. It's a lonely place, the top of the pile - any pile only has limited standing room. You can't just drop into the staffroom for a cuppa and a gossip - because someone will moan about favouritism and knowing your place. But surely the days are long gone of the remote figure who smiled seldom and could be seen only by appointment? Who kept his tawse over his shoulder under his academic gown?

I hope so. And I hope there is not a new headteacher in the land who imagines that their promotion makes them anything more than the head facilitator, whose job is to listen as much as to act. To be approachable, in fact.