Retiring

Methuselah
Canterbury Cathedral
photo: Robert Scarth 

I am sixty-five years old today so, apparently, I'm now retired. Today's date also marks the last day I worked a regular job, but that was thirty years ago. I suppose that the only real change is that some of my income now comes from various "old age" pensions, at least it will whenever the government gets around to finishing all the paperwork and processing the forms that I started about a year ago. They say they lost one and it takes about 120 days to process another one, and then there is some piece of paper that was lost about fifty years ago that has to be replaced and that is also taking months which delays yet more forms. I hate forms but my daughter has kindly volunteered to deal with the bureaucracy for me (I can get nasty with such people). I suppose it is all so slow because the government bureaucrats have to keep sharpening their quill pens. Perhaps one day they will actually buy a computer and everything will be completed close to light speed. No matter, I have my expenses covered until they get around to feigning efficiency by actually getting things done and sending me my back-log of payments. Perhaps this sort of thing is actually deliberate: I have heard of three recent cases of "lost retirement forms". Not only do they get to play with my money for a while, but I am sure that many retirees get very stressed by their inefficiency and as "stress kills" they must save a lot of money that way. As I was expecting delays, I have everything covered with both a "plan B" and a "plan C". If "plan B" gets delayed, then I'll start working on "plan D", just in case.

As birthday plans exist for most of the day, this is a short post and I will be retiring from blog writing in a few minutes. My retirement will end tonight, though, so I'll be back tomorrow with another post!