TLDR: Follow the links down the rabbit holes and ache laughing!
I keep getting asked the same question, delivered with the same head-tilt you’d use for a Labrador who’s learned to drive: “So… what are you going to do with yourself now you’re retired?” The subtext is clear. They want me to say I’m bored. They want ennui, beige cardigans, and me staring at a wall until it blinks first.
I don’t give them the satisfaction. I smile, nod, and let the silence do its little waltz. Because here’s the truth they don’t want: I’m having a roaringly good time. I am finally using the free time I should have had over the last fifty years, and it turns out my schedule is fuller than a Tube carriage when the driver announces, “We’ll be held here for a short while.”
People assume retirement is a sort of beige waiting room for curtain enthusiasts. Nonsense. Retirement is Top Gear without the producers. It’s being handed the keys to an empty motorway and told, “Try not to lick the lampposts.” It’s the incomparable joy of saying no to things you never wanted to do—and yes to everything else.
Let’s address the question properly. What am I doing? Everything I postponed while pretending a calendar invite was an act of God. Mornings that begin when the sun does and not when an app chirps like a deranged budgie. Long walks where I amble with purpose (which is to say, none). Books stacked like Jenga towers. A half-written play about a man who invents a machine to put the jam in the doughnut after he’s eaten it. Latin verbs for no reason at all. Plus the luxurious business of tinkering—wood, words, and gadgets—until the room smells faintly of sawdust and victory.
“But aren’t you bored?” they say, leaning in, hungry for despair. I could tell them the boredom lobby is a powerful special interest group that only thrives if we nod along. I could tell them boredom is just curiosity that’s been put on hold by a second-hand narrative about age. Instead I say, “No,” and watch their faces fold like paper swans.
It helps that I was raised on the high-octane philosophy of 1980s British comedy, which is still a better life-coach than whatever self-help guff currently has a foreword by a discredited colonel. The wisdom of the eighties is robust and road-tested.
Take Yes, Minister. In it, Sir Humphrey teaches us that the world is not moved by haste but by paperwork and euphemism. Today’s inbox is the new civil service—endless memos disguised as kindness. Retirement, therefore, is not an exit; it’s a departmental reshuffle. I’ve simply transferred from the Ministry of Meetings to the Department of What I Actually Care About, where minutes are not taken because the hours are the point.
Or Blackadder. As any student of Edmund knows, one must have a cunning plan. Retirement isn’t drifting about like a plastic bag outside a Tesco Express. It’s a cunning plan with the brakes politely removed. Mine involves a rotating menu of absurdly specific projects: digitising the family photo shoebox (and deleting the ones where everyone looks like a potato), learning enough Italian to insult pasta shapes, and building a desk drawer that purrs when it opens. If Baldrick can muster a plan from turnips, I can muster one from Tuesdays.
Only Fools and Horses remains the hymn sheet for side quests. “This time next year we’ll be millionaires,” said Del Boy, and while my plan doesn’t involve knock-off watches, it does involve the kind of cheerful enterprise that makes shopkeepers raise an eyebrow. I buy a vintage radio, fix it with a spoon and three expletives, then give it to a neighbour who’s suddenly crying because it plays the tune that got them through 1983. Millionaire? No. Rich? Obviously.
The Young Ones taught us that chaos has charm. University life back then looked like a mash-up of punk posters, exploding kitchens, and dubious poetry—so basically modern social media. Only now, I can enjoy the raucous anarchy without having to share a bathroom with someone fermenting potatoes. When an algorithm throws me a video of a man comparing staplers, I think, “Ah yes, contemporary satire,” and carry on with my day.
Red Dwarf? That’s your lesson in enjoying spacious loneliness. You don’t need a starship to discover that pottering about with an imaginary crew is bliss. I’ve got Cat’s wardrobe standards (sharp), Kryten’s efficiency (obsessive), and Lister’s culinary daring (ill-advised). Solitude isn’t empty; it’s roomy.
And then Spitting Image, the grandfather of saying the quiet part loudly with a felt glove on. It prepared us for the modern world in which everyone’s outrage is sponsored by something. Retirement gives you both hands free for puppetry and pointing. One hand to applaud the glorious nonsense of things, and the other to change the channel.
These shows are my toolkit. They whisper that the point of time isn’t to anaesthetise it with meetings, but to marinade it with curiosity. They also remind me that being “useful” is not the same as “busy,” and that the loudest people in the room are usually selling their echoes.
When interrogated by the boredom enthusiasts, I am tempted to reply like a Monty Python sketch. “What am I going to do? I shall join the Ministry of Silly Questions, of course. We meet every Tuesday to ask: ‘Where does the day go?’ and then follow it, stealthily, to the end of the garden where it hides behind the shed.” Or I might give them the full Stephen Fry: “I propose to dilly-dally, faddle and pootle, all in the noblest sense, until my diurnal allotment is pleasingly dishevelled.” But mostly I just nod and go back to something ineffably moreish, like organising my books by the colour of the moral rather than the spine.
There’s a persistent myth that retirement is the closing credits. But credits roll after the story is done; I’ve only just found the remote. This phase is not a diminuendo. It’s the director’s cut—with the deleted scenes restored and a commentary track that occasionally sighs, “Good lord, why didn’t I do this sooner?”
I won’t pretend every moment is a cinematic montage scored by an orchestra of satisfied cellos. Some days are gloriously ordinary. Tea. Biscuit. A small victory over a stubborn drawer. A long letter to a friend. A walk that goes left at the tree because I felt like it. Yet even the quiet days have an integrity that the harum-scarum years lacked. Jeremy Clarkson would call it torque. Fry would call it aplomb. Python would call it silly and then drop a 16-ton weight on it for emphasis.
If you are one of life’s interrogators—“But what will you do?”—here is my answer, polished for your collection: I will do precisely what I want, to the best of my abilities, for as long as my curiosity keeps me at the workbench. I will build things, read things, mend things, learn things, and, crucially, waste time well—for in the wastage lies the making.
And if you’re newly retired and secretly terrified you’re about to dissolve into a beige smear on a beige sofa—pinch the 80s for parts. Write yourself a Yes, Minister memo that politely authorises joy. Draw up a Blackadder-ish plan with at least one ridiculous objective. Broker an Only Fools trade with your past self: I’ll give you your old dreams if you’ll give me the nerve to try them. Embrace The Young Ones’ chaos to banish perfectionism. Spend an afternoon in Red Dwarf’s comfy space between solitude and imagination. And let Spitting Image remind you to mock anything that tries to sell you a smaller life.
So, what am I going to do with myself? Everything I was too busy to notice. And when you ask me again—because you will—I shall simply beam, raise a mug, and say, “I’m going that way,” pointing to wherever the day looks most mischievous.