It seems whenever we get together with a group of friends, the conversation turns fairly swiftly towards the topic of retirement or at least retirement planning as we all gird our loins for the headlong journey to the Big 60.
The turn in the conversation usually elicits a smug smile from the housemate who took the plunge long enough ago to have lost all patience for my desire to sink into the sofa and vegetate over the weekend as she outlines her plans for a busy Saturday and Sunday.
As we do our best to ignore the housemate’s self satisfied grin and the inevitable talk of dwindling pension pots is cleared off the table the subject usually turns to all the things we’d like to do as long as we can stave off the dodgy hips, knees and backs which hover ever increasingly in our futures.
Talk of reviving long abandoned hobbies, plans to travel to far-flung destinations - as long as there’s indoor plumbing and passenger assistance at the airport - mingle with moans about how one late night can cause havoc for days as we battle to recover.
On the whole however, no matter how much we enjoy our jobs, we’re all looking forward to hopefully long and healthy retirements…except me!
My hopes of that ambition were dashed last week while watching BBC Breakfast over my usual dish of Weetabix when the duo of presenters breathlessly announced the discovery of a new meteor which was on a collision course with earth.
With videos and animations together with commentaries from enthusiastic astronomers they detailed the history of the bit of space dust from its first appearance to its anticipated final explosive meeting with the earth
And the date it is expected to hit our little blue planet the excited experts concurred, is December 22, 2032 - meaning that if the worst comes to the worst I can expect a glorious 11 days of happy retirement!
“Well ain’t that just typical,” I announced to the housemate. “Eleven days after my ‘official’ retirement date a city devastating meteor will plummet into the earth. I’ll barely have time to do any Christmas shopping!”
“If it hits Abergavenny you won’t have to do any Christmas shopping,” she replied rolling her eyes.
“Anyway, all the experts are saying it’s not going to hit anyway because if it does continue on its collision course they’re going to be able to nudge it off track,” she added taking more notice of the news report than I was.
“Let’s face it, the chances of it landing on Abergavenny are pretty slim as well so you can probably stop catastrophe planning for the moment.
“And even if by some chance everything goes wrong and it does hit it only going to cause damage - it’s not going to be anything like the disaster movies with everyone taking refuge in caves and it’s nothing like the Big One which killed off all the dinosaurs.”
“That’s a relief,” I replied. “I spend long enough feeling like a dinosaur when I’m in work, I don’t want to get obliterated like one in the first days of my retirement!”