Pensioner training.

We now live in a brief window of opportunity where it is quite possible for male workers to retire at sixty. This situation has come about largely as an unintended consequence of equal opportunities legislation and will soon be ended as part of the Governments drive to ensure that we all work until we drop in order to reduce the pensions burden on that section of the population who are those most inclined to vote. The problem for many men reaching the end of their working lives at sixty is that they have no clear idea of how a 'young' pensioner should behave.

When I was young the image of a male pensioner in the village was quite clear. They hung about the bus shelter in the afternoons before the teenagers took over in the evening watching people getting on and off the bus and idly flicking up the skirts of the young girls returning from School with their walking sticks, behaviour which now would get them an entry on the sex offenders register. They had flat caps and false teeth and usually had an allotment somewhere. In the evenings they trundled along to the pub for a game of crib or dominoes and a pint or two of cider. They always appeared about 75 even if they were ten years younger.

The generation now retiring are of course, a very different order of business. They are of the post war, baby boom generation who led the youth revolution of the 60s. Most would not be seen dead in flat caps and would have no interest in watching the world go by from the vantage point of the bus shelter even if it was clean enough to sit in. Some, I suspect see these early years of retirement as a transition period, a sort of teenage years in reverse, a period of last rebellion in the period between the end of work and the entry to the care home. Perhaps for some its the time when they ditch their partner for a younger model, thus ditching the one that they aquired when they had their mid life crisis in their 40s. Perhaps they go on the hippy trail to India that they failed to do when they were young, avoiding Afghanistan for obvious reasons, and end their days smoking dope in Goa. Perhaps they join a rock band and recycle the music they loved when young, or write that ten volume novel that they have been working onn in their heads since 1975 and which they know damn fine will never get published, have a revived interest in radical politics or perhaps they just work on their allotments.

Perhaps there needs to be a much expanded programme of education on how to be a sucessful male retiree, and perhaps the Television production companies could assist by making more positive series about this age group rather then endless series about the mid life crises of the 40+ bunch and if they do, and best of all, we can see the image of the male over 60s portrayed in 'Last Of The Summer Wine' finally consigned to the history books.