Sally's Planning for Retirement Blog

I’m getting used to being old enough for a bus pass – if it were still possible to get one – and intend to approach this new decade with grace and fortitude.  I even contemplated ditching the red and embracing the grey until a friend showed me a magazine photograph of Carol Vorderman who will also turn 60 this year.  She looked absolutely stunning.  I know she’s had a little ‘help’ but I’ve barely bothered to bend down and paint my toenails.  Thank goodness hairdressers reopen in July and I can be more fox and less badger.

My first article for The County Times was called ‘Rightmove is a Dating App’ about our search for a new home and sleepless nights questioning, “Could this be the one?” before we took a leap of faith and tied the knot with the cottage.  Rightmove reminded me of the dating apps my daughter was using, with tales of disasters and disappointments and downright scariness a mother shouldn’t really know about.  Lockdown has meant dating challenges as well as family lockdown challenges for her.  There is a new dating etiquette for lockdown love seekers.  Dating biographies are Covid appropriate such as ‘six feet tall and promise to stay 6 feet away!’  Really?  Parks and beaches are the new bar and club meeting places of choice, everyone’s home before dark because there’s nothing open but there is the tantalising prospect of being invited to join another’s bubble before the bubble bursts.

This is the new normal and will be nothing like Normal People, the television series of our lockdown spring (am I the only person in the universe who didn’t get past episode two?)

Our latest family lockdown challenge led us to try our hand at pottery.  Why not?  Wendy of ClaynGlaze near Pulborough, like many small business owners, has diversified her classes and offers on-line tutorials and a pick up pack of clay, tools and glazes.  We decided to take up her Green Man Challenge.  I am a huge green man fan; there was a fabulous green man festival in the village of Pilton in Devon where we lived for many years and I still have papier mache green men made by the children for the parade.  As a symbol of regrowth and new beginnings it seemed appropriate and we were all pleased with our efforts.

I’ve been writing for The County Times for six months now; local papers like all local businesses need our support now more than ever.  I will continue to stay loyal and stay local now all the shops have reopened this week.

Much has been written in recent days about seaside living, mostly by those living by the sea resenting ‘incomers’ swarming over ‘our’ beaches and leaving ‘their’ rubbish. Perhaps the possessive should be used to include rather than exclude. Beaches and national parks are the museums and galleries of the seaside and countryside. They are our heritage and belong and should be accessible to all. City dwellers can be the first to see the latest exhibition; living by the sea you can be the first to see a gorgeous sunrise. Many of our beautiful south coast beaches have not been swamped but visitors have treated them with care and respect and taken their sandwich wrappers and empty coke cans home with them or purchased what they need from local cafes providing a lifeline for local businesses. All while observing a courteous social distance.

As well as enjoying the seaside and the unexpected sunshine of half term (I say this after 38 years in education when invariably I’ve been wearing wellies rather than jellies at the end of May) I have been attacking the weeds and ivy in our new/old cottage garden. There have been many surprises and delights like this beautiful rose. I think it’s a David Austin ‘A Shropshire Lad’ but would be happy for anyone to put me right.

On the other side of the wall we uncovered something a little less delightful – an old car port clumsily constructed from corrugated iron and planks of wood and held together with thick ropes of ivy. A friend said she thought it looked charming but was probably a more fitting home for Cat Weazle than our beloved Morris Minor Doris!

And then ‘just like that’ I turned sixty. I suppose you have to be sixty to get the Tommy Cooper and Cat Weazle references and yet be completely clueless about Jay Z (question in family quiz and yes I did think it was a cleaning fluid). I’m still processing the age thing.

We have achieved what we thought in March was the impossible and successfully, if a little wobbly at times, negotiated our way through eight weeks of lockdown. There has been much to commend. If we are lucky enough to share our homes with others, there have been opportunities to enjoy one another’s physical company and pay attention to the little things that in the flurry of everyday exits and entrances and competing priorities we tend to miss. It’s been good. Distant from friends we find other ways to be close. We have fun. Work life has been efficient, busy and demanding, planning to close down and now planning to open up and staff and students are being creative, patient and kind. We are productive.

We’ve resisted the temptation to hoard loo roll – the bitcoin of the spring. We’ve resisted the temptation to purchase everything we see on Amazon and now only order spare bags for the hoover. We recognise that a few minutes with Jo Wicks won’t make us toned, taught and trim if we keep baking bread and drinking wine.

We’ve grown up.

During lockdown I’ve enjoyed following artist and illustrator Melanie Hunt’s ‘Featherbrains’ series on Instagram and Melanie has allowed me to share this one with you. Like Wren, children are encouraged to make fantastical plans for ‘when I grow up’ and even as adults we are prone to set over ambitious goals for personal change and growth. We can’t all be Flamingo Featherbrain but we can try and be more Wren. And for many of us, lockdown life has helped us both grow up and contemplate growing down – grow down and make our ‘one wild and precious life’ simpler, less selfish and hopefully more self-fulfilling.

Artist and Illustrator, Melanie Hunt. Instagram melhunt58

I wanted to end this column with the final lines of Mary Oliver’s poem ‘The Summer Day’. Because we have been in lockdown for a reason, however good and fun and productive it may have been and whether we feel we have grown up or would like to grow down…

…we have experienced loss.

In memory of John Sawyer who passed away this week in Worthing hospital; John was full of life, good humour and good stories and didn’t waste a second of it.

Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?

In my last column I wrote about impossibly jolly family lockdown challenges like my husband’s creative writing competition.  Charlotte wrote a haiku. A poignant reminder of the position in which we all find ourselves but also gently uplifting, with a strong sense of a bright and better future ahead.

We stay still, silent

While the world pauses to heal

And we learn to grow 

Lockdown has enabled us to get to know our postcode area in minute detail.  On-line social media groups have sprung up reconnecting people to their home-towns and their memories of familiar safe spaces.  Last week, sticking to ‘within your postcode’ walks and getting to know my new community, I took this photo of Littlehampton river front and posted it on one such social media site. I received many ‘likes’ from people with fond memories of busy weekend walks along the blustery prom and the sea salt taste of fish and chips.

Lockdown life may mean like me you are missing the joy of the crowd.  This week I’ve literally felt ‘locked’ in many ways and in the words of the Scissor Sisters I’ve not felt like dancing – I couldn’t even muster up a soft shoed gentle sway.

Nights have been disturbed by some troubling dreams.  Not the dream of the Jelly Bean Bus story – caught up to the thighs in quicksand against the backdrop of a rising tide – but one in which a balletic Robert Helpman in full Child Snatcher gear swoops down with impunity and a ginormous net and scoops up an innocent Angela Lansbury look alike.

Perhaps the key to feeling ‘unlocked’ would be to get back to normal work and home life, whatever ‘new normal’ looks like. Gavin Williamson has been speaking about the possibility of schools and colleges reopening fully and Head Teachers across the country are supportive of this happening at some point in the summer term.  We are working with a number of agencies to ensure that if this happens it is as safe as possible for staff, students and their families to do so.

In my effort to feel more unlocked I wrote a haiku:

We listen to hear

The click that unlocks – release –

Thrum.  This too shall pass.

http://60waystoenjoyyour60s.home.blog

We are now all expertly zooming through one another’s previously personal space and although initially this felt oddly intrusive, the greater sense of exposure is currently reserved for actually meeting someone face to face.  It was delightful beyond measure therefore to recently welcome my daughter back to the UK after her truncated Gap Year II travels, a period in self-isolation and weeks of not real timing her face. To hug and kiss her was emotionally intense. Will public hugging and kissing remain socially acceptable in our new social distancing world?  We’ll have to wait and see.

At our cottage in our new/old garden I’ve been enjoying the sudden burst of blossom brought on by the glorious spring weather.  An April shower and whirligig of blossom confused our boxer into thinking it was a sudden snow storm.  I was puzzled by a gnarled and dessicated tree that I thought was dead until the magic of one spring morning brought leaves and then white blossom.  I searched Johnson and More’s Tree Guide and instagrammed images and an old friend Margaret, on an extended stay in New Zealand with her daughter and grandchildren, came up with the answer:

“Looks like it’s a wild pear, Pyris communis.”  And then she wrote, “But you could just wait and see!”

I may just be having a mid-lockdown curmudgeonly breakdown but is anyone else fed up with jolly challenges to keep us all cheerful? Several awkwardly choreographed family dances and competitive quizzes later, my husband set us all the challenge of a short story. Mine was a children’s story set at the seaside; a bunch of weirdly named vintage VW campervans known as the Jelly Bean Buses get in all kinds of scrapes.  An innocent scene perhaps but my Covid-19 nightmares have me regularly caught up to the thighs in quicksand against the backdrop of a rising tide.

“Pomegadget was feeling relaxed and happily watching the herring gulls perform their acrobatics when she heard the unmistakable sound of Berry-Blue’s horn.

To her horror when she turned and looked in the direction of the beach she saw the waves lapping Berry-Blue’s wheels and the children of the family scrambling on board as Berry-Blue revved her engine and tried to get going.  But it was no good, her wheels had stuck in the soft sand and were just spinning and the bus was going nowhere.  Pomegadget had to think fast…”

What happened next…you’ll have to wait and see!

Illustration by Craig Talman studying an Illustration BA at University of Creative Arts, Farnham

Our usual pleasures and pick-me-ups are denied to us. Libraries, cinemas, restaurants, children’s play parks are all closed, barred by criss-crosses of yellow tape and apologetic notices. New words – ‘social distancing’, ‘self-isolation’ and ‘shielding’- have entered our vocabulary and cruelly stolen our time with friends and loved ones, cutting us adrift.

Nights have been disturbed by some troubling dreams – one in which a balletic Robert Helpman in full Child Snatcher gear swoops down with a ginormous net and scoops up an innocent Angela Lansbury look alike granny. This is not a child snatching virus. I find myself waking with a faint sense of something wrong and then full consciousness and a blast of the Today Programme and I know what that something wrong is.

We are all looking for a break in the clouds.

There have been a few. The exhaust fumes and traffic roar of an early daily commute have been replaced by the smell of newly mown spring grass and the sound of birdsong. I have been bemused by hunter-gatherer men in supermarkets and impressed by a mother cycling with her young son and teaching him life saving road skills on a real road with hardly any cars. And then there’s the joy of WFH and virtual meetings – skyping and zooming through colleagues’ spare bedrooms (usual place for WFH set ups) we gain new insights into their character via their choice of curtain and carpet. I haven’t come across a Professor Robert Kelly incident yet – the authority on Korean politics whose children gatecrashed his live BBC broadcast and were literally dragged out by a flailing arm and leg. But watch out if I buy you a subscription to a home decorating magazine for your birthday!

Schools and colleges are now closed for the majority of our young people with no timeframe for their reopening. Education leaders are focusing on how best to continue teaching and learning remotely while supporting the children of our key workers and the more vulnerable in our communities. The Covid-19 virus has affected us all in ways no college Disaster Recovery modelling could have envisaged. Students are reeling from the shock that term has ended without the rite of passage of summer exams and with the knowledge that their final grades will be determined by the work they have completed so far in class and in mock exams and tests. Fair? For students who work steadily with a well organised pencil case yes but what about the boys?

If all else fails you in these difficult times reach out to someone – virtual or real it matters not – like Piglet in The House at Pooh Corner:

“Pooh” whispered Piglet. “Yes, Piglet” replied Pooh. “Nothing,” answered Piglet, “I just wanted to be sure of you.”

http://60waystoenjoyyour60s.home.blog

In like a lion and out like a lamb – that’s what folklore tells us about the month of March and Storm Jorge certainly meant March came in suitably leonine. Spring buds have blossomed but storm clouds of another complexion have continued to gather and the month certainly doesn’t seem to have any plans to go out like a lamb.

The news has been dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Supermarkets are being stripped by panic buyers, restaurants, leisure centres and small businesses are being stripped of their livelihoods. Schools and colleges have closed, there are no exams to sit and students are simultaneously feeling relieved and cheated of a rite of passage previous generations have both endured and enjoyed. And how do we keep the younger members of our communities positive, motivated and focused on their goals at a time when those they normally look to for certainty are also struggling to understand what is happening? Hard times yes but hopefully also a shared experience which in time will bring rewards as yet unknown.

At Collyer’s when the storm force of last Wednesday’s news of closures and curtailments hit us head on, our Upper Sixth students started thinking about some interesting ways to use their pre university months wisely. Summer travels scuppered and seasonal work suspended, Caterina, Ore, Destiny and Caitie are going to fill the blank spaces of their exam revision timetable with learning to play the flute, taking up yoga, cooking vegan recipes for family and writing a graphic novel for friends. A few weeks ago I wrote about how emotional connections created through shared experiences can help communities thrive and the young will help show us the way.

In my other life thank goodness for simple pleasures – Monty and the wet noses of Nigel and Nell are back in our gardening worlds. And it seems having a dog to take for walkies will be a huge bonus in the days ahead. Roxy, my boxer, is looking forward to us all taking it in turns to exercise with her. Take care, stay safe and keep well everybody.

‘Are you sure that we are awake? It seems to me that yet we sleep, we dream.’

February 2020 has been the wettest on record and even storms came in threes with Ciara, Dennis and Jorge blowing us into March. Collyer’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream allowed us to pause and breathe and dream of warmer days. This was a special production for Director Martin Nichols. His first Collyer’s production was in 1985 when he taught English at the college and nine of his original cast – now in their fifties and seen in the photograph here – came along to support.

In rehearsals Martin talked to the 2020 cast about what being ‘awake’ meant to them. What was their reality in the second decade of the 21^st century and how true for them is Demetrius’s line ‘Are you sure that we are awake? It seems to me that yet we sleep, we dream.’ Being ‘awake’ is now equated with being ‘woke’ as in African American Vernacular English “I was sleeping, but now I’m woke” a byword for social awareness. There is much in A Midsummer Night’s Dream about love and the sheer wonder of life’s possibilities as well as an alertness to the misuse of power and the importance of being woke. This is all very real to our students.

At home I continue with cottage renovations and find myself in the awkward position of wanting to install a wood burner at the time of Environment Secretary Michael Gove’s announcement that “strong, urgent action” is needed to reduce harmful emissions from stoves as part of the government’s Clean Air Strategy. More than one million British homes are heated by a woodburning stove and owners of stoves over 10 years old are being urged to replace them with new ‘greener’ models. I’m in favour of this of course – I’m awake to what I read and hear about the environment and won’t be tempted by over enthusiastic sales people trying to shift old stock. A stove with an ‘ecodesign 2022’ sticker and seasoned, dry wood is my reality.

What we’re told is real and what is a mere representation of the real has been a common topic over the centuries. From Shakespeare to Rene Magritte’s pipe, we all have to be alert to “the word is not the thing.”

Thank you to readers who have asked about the very real 18^th century pipe (it has a tiny bowl so hopefully not very smoky) I wrote about in a previous column, discovered under the floorboards when we were repairing the rotten joists. It’s still being dated and logged by the local museum.

And I found a joyous potter called Helen to mend Hare’s ears. It is March after all!

So what kind of mark do I want to leave when I retire? I think it was the writer Maya Angelou who said, “People will forget what you said and what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Put ‘First 100 Days of Leadership’ into your favourite search engine and you will be inundated with responses. Attributed to Roosevelt’s first 100 days of presidency, the phrase has become associated with tight timeframes in which new leaders establish credibility, communicate vision and values and secure some easy wins. You can be sure both Boris believers and bashers are counting his first 100 days.

But what does your smart speaker say if you ask about ‘Last 100 Days’? Something dark and apocalyptic most likely.

After 35 years of fulltime work with a few years out raising children I find myself approaching 60 and taking the decision to retire. I’ve calculated I have 100 working days of leadership left – so how to make them count? I decided to approach Steve Munby, retired CEO of the Education Development Trust and author of Imperfect Leadership: A book for leaders who know they don’t know it all. I posed the ‘Last 100 Days’ question to him and he responded with a number of sensible suggestions the last of which was “Enjoy yourself. You will have left your mark.”

Is it simple vanity that we all hope to leave our mark and what does this mean?

In my last blog I reflected on moving to Vine Cottage, the meaning of community and the importance of a sense of belonging and feeling welcome. I pledged to shop local – Ozz who owns Upper Crust in East Street does the most amazing duck wraps! – and mindful that in thriving communities a sense of both heritage and history are important, I decided to take a 21st century route to getting to know my new community and joined a Facebook group – Bygone Littlehampton. I couldn’t have received a warmer welcome as well as some fascinating oral history.

A few days ago, while fixing the rotten floorboards, our builder discovered a small, clay smoking pipe and in a flurry of excitement I posted a photograph on-line. Several members from Bygone Littlehampton suggested it was common for builders to leave artefacts in chimney breasts, under thresholds and floorboards as symbols of good luck and we should ask Littlehampton Museum for help in dating it. I like to think the pipe belonged to the original 18^th century builder; he had left his mark and he knew exactly what it meant.

We leave our mark in all kinds of concrete ways, both accidental and deliberate – sometimes literally in concrete like a random paw print trail on Riverside Walk – but more often leaving our mark can be cumulative, a palimpsest of centuries of families living their lives and leaving indelible scars on wood and stone.

So what kind of mark do I want to leave when I retire? I think it was the writer Maya Angelou who said, “People will forget what you said and what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I hope people will feel a stronger sense of a thriving community at Collyer’s which I have played a small part in building.

In a previous blog post I wrote about the similarities between on-line estate agencies and dating apps and how with one swipe right you can find yourself booking a viewing when you’re not even on the market. My romance with Vine Cottage started this way; since the beginning of the month we have been contractually bound and if I have my way it will be ‘till death do us part’.

So what do you do when you first move in once that all too important contract has been signed, and the removal men have left you nervously getting to know one another? Well you open the champagne and start to explore of course! In our first few hours together we discovered the floor boards in the dining room are more than a little ‘springy’ – an old sofa had covered them up during our viewings – the bath has no plug, the downstairs loo door doesn’t fit and there’s no way the wardrobes will be coaxed up the stairs. But despite the cracks, creaks and crookedness we are totally besotted with our new home’s nooks and general good looks – I love the soft curves of a little kitchen window.

Regretfully, when you move on there are some things you are forced to leave behind. Not only the familiarity and solidity of your old front door but cheery “Hellos” from much loved neighbours when you put out the bins, a favourite pub, the sounds associated with the rhythm and pace of the day. And some things, some very precious things, get damaged. You feel a little out of sorts for a few days, a little disorientated, dislocated, muffled as though you’ve been clumsily packed, transported and dumped and like poor Hare, you suffer the loss of the tips of your ears.

The soft curves of a little kitchen window

Poor Hare

This feeling of dislocation got me reflecting on what makes a community and how do you go about fitting in to a new one? Ska fans of my generation will be familiar with the Madness lyrics: ‘Our house, it has a crowd, there’s always something happening and it’s usually quite loud.’ When you move house or job or from school to college, how do you go about finding a new crowd or ‘tribe’ and ‘vibe’?

At Collyer’s our sense of community is not restricted to shared geography or space. I know that to help create and sustain community in its fullest sense our students, support staff and teachers need to make connections and feel connected. We need to feel membership – invested and integrated in our community – a right to belong and feel welcome. We can encourage this through shared beliefs and values and a shared sense of purpose and by helping to build positive relationships with one another. In thriving communities emotional connections created through shared experiences and a sense of both heritage and history are important – our Old Collyerian’s know this.  And we need to feel we have influence, an ability to express our views freely and that our perspectives are appreciated and respected.

Community is tricky. 

It’s not something that happens overnight or without supreme effort and it won’t be felt by everyone all of the time.

So I’ve taken these thoughts about college community and applied them to the new community where I live and pledged to do three things this week:

shop local and get to know some independent retailers;

meet some new people at the local Park Run;

employ a local carpenter to remodel the wardrobes and fix the floorboards and find a potter to mend Hare’s ears!