October 2006

Monday 2 October

So, it's all over. After 41 years of employment I am, as from the end of September, officially retired. For the time being, that won't make any noticeable difference to me. I still haven't finished clearing out my office, and the Chairman has said that he doesn't have anyone else wanting to move into that room for the next few weeks, so I have until the end of October to sort through the remaining files and bring home anything that I want to keep. Seeing all the new students milling around the place, I can't pretend that I feel any regret that I no longer have to teach them. On the contrary, I'm enjoying the luxury of taking my time over breakfast each morning instead of battling with the rush hour. I no longer have a parking permit for the University precinct but that doesn't matter, because I now have a senior citizen's bus pass and can travel on the buses anywhere in West Yorkshire after 9.30am without having to pay anything.

The only drawback doesn't hit me until the end of the month, when I will not get a paycheck. I'm not sure how we'll get by with only our pensions and savings for support. Even with my salary we have been living beyond our means, what with all our foreign travel, and we don't want to cut back on that at all. In fact, we have already lined up trips to Gran Canaria and Japan in the next six months in an outburst of what they call SKIing (Spending the Kids' Inheritance).

I forgot to mention my retirement conference, which took place last week. It was a great success, with lots of old friends attending and a panel of very distinguished speakers. I had to make a speech at the conference dinner, but I had thought out carefully what I wanted to say and I think I made a good job of it, without even feeling nervous about it. Since the speeches came after the dinner, I had to be careful not to have too much to drink during the meal, but I think it was worth that sacrifice (a drunken speech is rarely successful). I took several photos at the dinner, and you can find them here.

So now I'm free to do what I want, when I want (until the money runs out). We're going to take advantage of this straight away by going for a week's trip to the West Country, staying with Liz in Bristol for a few days and then going on down to Cornwall to visit the Eden Project.

Sunday 29 October

When I lived in Philadelphia, one of the things I most enjoyed was following the Phillies baseball team. I occasionally went to see them play at Veterans Stadium, but mostly I watched the games on TV. I loved everything about it, from the commentaries by Harry Kalas and Ritchie Ashburn right down to the commercials ("This game is brought to you by Schaefer – 'Schaefer is the one beer to have when you're having more than one'; and by Winston – 'Winston tastes good like a cigaret should.'")

Back home in England I'm starved of baseball. It only comes to our TV once a year, for the World Series. The games start at 1 a.m. our time, so I have to record them and watch them the next day or whenever I have the time. So I have only just finished watching this year's series, and I much enjoyed seeing the St Louis Cardinals win in five games. (Okay, that's not as good as seeing the Phillies win, but at least the winning team came from the NFL and wore red.)

So now it's time to make the traditional MDP award for the Most Desirable Player. I was tempted to nominate David Eckstein, but he is no longer eligible since he won on a previous occasion. I therefore declare that the 2006 MDP award goes to Brandon Inge (with So Taguchi and Curtis Granderson as runners-up). In fact, there was more attractive eye-candy than usual in this year's teams. I have done my best to find a suitably revealing photo to illustrate the award, but this is the best that I could come up with. That's the main trouble with baseball: too much clothing.

I have spent much of this month vacating my office, which the Department needs for a new appointee. I am an inveterate hoarder of paper, and my files contained not only each set of research notes and lecture notes from a 41-year career of teaching, but also every bank statement, payslip and utility bill that I have ever received, as well as several bookcases full of books, and masses of other documents. There was no way that I could find room for all this stuff at home, and I reluctantly accepted the fact that most of it was totally useless junk. I shredded a whole lot of paper, left most of my books in a foyer and sent round an email inviting people to take whichever volumes they wanted. (I did this on a Sunday afternoon, and within a couple of minutes several research students had swooped and taken most of the books.) But there were a number of books and files that I really wanted to keep, and I had to make room for them by reorganising our bookshelves here at home. While I was doing that I came across an old volume of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons entitled The Days Are Just Packed.

That title struck me as a perfect description of what retirement is like. I no longer have any constraints on my time (or at any rate, very few), and the days stretch out all empty before me. But I'm never at a loss for something to do, and the time seems to fly past. For example, when I came across the Calvin and Hobbes book, there was nothing to stop me sitting down for a happy half hour browsing through it, without any guilty feeling that I ought to be doing something else. Yes, the days are just packed: it's like being a six-year-old home for the summer vacation. I suppose that's why I never seem to find time to write journal entries here any more.

I did finally find time to put together the few photos I took on our trip to the southwest earlier this month. They are posted here. It was the first time either of us had stayed in Cornwall, so naturally we had to sample a genuine Cornish pasty. They were so delicious that we immediately went back to the pasty stall and sampled another.

Authentic Cornish pasties, as served at the Eden Project.