Friday 27 December 2013

Post

There's a bloke I know who calls himself a Druid, is five years older than me, and also calls himself a 'retired pensioner' to anyone who asks him what he does with himself during the weekdays. I don't remember him being in gainful employment since the late 1970s, but what do I know? He has just had a big shock.

He got home on Christmas night to find his flatmate dead - or 'horribly dead' as he was supposed to have put it. I don't know what happened or how it happened, other than the flatmate was found dead in a chair.

It was all pretty jolly in the pub last night, save for the man who now lives on his own, looking as though he had just been woken up from a 100 year-old sleep and was trying to do a quick catch-up about what had occurred in his absence.

He was there tonight, and seems to have caught up already.

As well as him, there were about fifteen other dazed or desperate looking men in the pub tonight, and no women other than two mothers with children who looked as though they were trying to escape Christmas using sales-shopping as an excuse.

After the third attempt to respond to a question put to me by the man sitting to my right, and after the third time the attempt was thwarted either by him, or someone else crashing the conversation as if the universe had them set in its centre like a precious jewel, I decided that this was not the night for me, so I went home to cook.

Well I don't think that I will ever be able to call myself 'retired' no matter how weakly I work into my dotage, or how much money should fall into my lap as a result of some other sudden and horrible death.

It seems that if I spend more than about two days at home, I just get in the way and irritate the fuck out of everyone.

I'm looking forward to work on Monday, not that it could be called 'normality'.

17 comments:

  1. we have partly planned the first few years of retirement, a bit more travelling.

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  2. A chock full post. A man who knew how to be busily retired, a man who will never quit working and a bunch of fellows who don't know how to transition from the work week to the week end. Did the fellow who lost his flat mate come into some money by it, or did he just transition from one job (flatmate) to another (flatmateless). Not making light of him; he did have a big shock.

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    1. I decided to leave the pub when the man to my right asked, "Have you ever had a venereal disease?', then didn't bother to wait for an answer.

      As far as ill-wind inheritance goes, I don't know and it's also too early to say anyway. I doubt it, though.

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  3. Nasty. Suicide is never painless.

    At college I returned to my rooms to find my crazy room mate (Pete Smith) trying to burn the place down. There was so much smoke everywhere that he was having to paint with his eyes almost touching the canvas; he hadn't associated the smoke with fire. I managed to quell the flames, but couldn't save the curtains.

    Cheers!

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    1. I cannot remember the time that I was THAT absorbed in my work.

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    2. Oh, and it turns out it wasn't suicide - natural causes, what ever they are.

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  4. I usually have the Christmas tree down before New Year....the sooner it's all over the better.

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    1. The Twelfth Night was traditionally always the most celebrated in Elizabethan England, but those pesky Victorians (with the help of Oliver Cromwell) put an end to all that. We never put a tree up (another Victorian invention) so we never have to take it down.

      Come to think of it, the Victorians invented modern Christmas, and Coca Cola invented the red Santa.

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  5. We had a marvellous time until the gastro ripped through the family's stomach linings. Now everyone is sitting around a bit pasty and quiet, wondering how they are going to drive the 500km home.
    I keep making jokes about the grim reaper and salmon mousse but they all frown at me and exit to the toilet.
    (It was a lurgy: the salmon was all good.)

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    1. Ha ha! Fish-Woman strikes again. You should have eaten the balloons.

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  6. If the farmer had to stay inside for a whole day without going out to look round the sheep, feed up the cattle housed for winter, take the dogs for a walk and chop a few logs for the wood burner he would go stark raving mad within a week.

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    1. Is that to do with not enough outside, or too much inside? Tricky.

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  7. I don't think Himself will ever retire. He likes the daily routine he has working. If we actually do get to retire, i'm sure he'll volunteer or do something so he's out of the house every day.

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