In the moment

“Life isn’t a matter of milestones but of moments”

Rose F Kennedy

Here is one such moment – though one that does, as it happens, feel like something of a milestone…

Regular readers of these random jottings will be aware that – over the past 16 months or so – a number of targets, deadlines or turning points – what the navigators amongst you might call waypoints – have materialised only subsequently to evanesce. Amongst these were the movable feast that was to be my retirement, the uncertain date of my emigration to Canada and the point at which we might finally sell our apartment in Buckinghamshire.

All of these uncertainties give the whole process something of an air of unreality. It is all well and good laying plans and scheming schemes – deciding that such and such will be so – but until something concrete actually happens there is always a slight nagging feeling that one might just be pissing in the wind!

Well – an event has now occurred regarding which there can be no doubts.

At my previous school my pension age was sixty. Had I remained there I would now have been contemplating retirement in just over seven months time – regardless of any other plans that might have been made, or even of my own whims and fancies. Even so, the side-effect is that my pension from that school’s rather splendid scheme kicks in regardless shortly after the turn of the year – on the occasion of my sixtieth birthday.

I thus duly received – earlier this week – the forms necessary to set the process in motion. I have completed, signed and returned them. Though not in itself a particularly dramatic or life-changing event, it is the first real indicator that I am indeed approaching retirement – which occurrence itself truly will be momentous.

Now – that is a moment to celebrate!