the view from outside

and so it came to pass and I did retire and almost immediately found that, exactly as Gisela predicted, I had so many things to do that I was having to regretfully decline / choose between them. What a nice predicament to have. I found new ways to generate income and started doing them at once and surprise surprise, I'm enjoying it a lot and have bookings all through summer.    I won't talk about them here because this is my countdown blog and the countdown is now OVER.  Already, though, those dark days of January and February seem a bit like a bad dream that goes all fuzzy when you wake up from it.

Goodbye and thanks for all the great support. 

< rides off into the sunset, or possibly it's the sunrise, I'm not quite sure yet > .....

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

My eldest daughter has taken the courageous decision to work 3 days a week starting from June.  This will give her time that she wants to seize right now to spend days with her daughter, already 8, before those precious childhood moments elude them both. 

As for me, I'm trembling and racked with anxiety on the very verge of retirement, with my last day in the office now only 5 days away.

Looking back over all the years when I was a working mother, I remember how my children and I used to luxuriate in the concept of a Ferris Bueller Day Off - a day of bunking off from work for no other reason than to spend quality time together.  And how horrific it is to me that I can only count THREE such days in all the years between my 30th birthday and the day my youngest went to university.  I wish it may be far otherwise for my daughters and their children, and that although I was Cameron, they may decide to be Ferris instead. 

Be careful what you wish for

Everything is different now.

Some days it seems that spring has truly arrived.  The days are now longer than the nights.  The hard part - screwing my courage up to make the decision - is behind me, and I've had to get a new green notebook to write down all the things I'm planning to do as soon as my time is my own again.  I've started to plan the food budget and have discovered that Barclays is charging me 6 times as much for my home and buildings insurance as Saga would.  I've already signed up to be a 'host family' for 4-night stays by visiting language students to make a little money.  I'm dipping toes in the water of free time and it feels most inviting.

On the other hand there are the grey days when it's rainy and freezing again.  On those days, and at 3 am on some of the nights, I'm doing the numbers in my head and wondering how on earth I am going to survive.  I currently spend £400 a month on food and that is way too much for the budget.  The first part-time job application I sent off (for work in the local tourist industry) was rejected politely but firmly. The years of no-job stretch ahead threateningly, and I am very, very scared.  

My last day in the office will be 8th April.  That's only 16 days away.  Oh boy.

SENT

I've just hit the SEND button on my retirement email.

worse things happen at sea

These are very strange days for me.  

First of all, I'm now certain to miss my 31st March deadline because of a mysterious three -week delay between the paying of the bxxxs and the transferring of the actual money.  Since I know people who've had theirs pulled back, rubberband-like, when they gave their notice too soon, I can't afford to inform my employer yet of my plan to retire.  So I'm stuck in a sort of limbo.  Everyone is discussing things with me as urgently as ever and assuming that I care about Bank Stuff.  I am giving a very passable impression by my words and actions of being someone who cares about Bank Stuff.  In reality, though, I've already started deleting my Favourites, clearing my desk, and generally facing up to the fact that there is no longer really any reason why I should care about Bank Stuff.  Bank Stuff already feels unreal to me, like CGI rather than real life.  I seem to be galloping down the final stretch but emotionally I'm already in the knacker's yard.  

This is coinciding with what feels like the endless arse-end of winter.  

What's more, there have been some dreadful catastrophes impacting my loved ones recently.  A personal friend from the Tokyo office has died from cancer before his 40th birthday, leaving a young family.  An adorable two-year-old boy has also died from meningitis only 3 hours after the appearance of the rash.  And most notably, the Chilean branch of our extended family, who live just outside Concepcion, have been very severely impacted by the 8.8 magnitude quake last Saturday.  In fact, at the time of writing, nobody here has actually managed to speak to any of them yet, but the Internet has been a blessing, allowing friends of relatives to pass out the news that they are all alive and together (but without power, water, food, telephones,  and in the midst of civil panic and violence).  It's very lucky they have a nearby natural spring, and keep chickens.  I suspect that the chickens are not going to make it out alive.

My grandmother had a phrase she used that would probably nowadays translate into 'Snap out of it'.  The phrase, whose origin I haven't been able to nail down, was this:

'Worse things happen at sea'.

Recently I have thought about that a lot, and am trying hard not to indulge in too much whinging when other people around me are having it so hard.  A couple of weeks of work limbo are nothing compared with all this other stuff.

Strange times indeed.

Carrot, donkey, creme egg

Today is envelope day, aka 'elephant in the room' day.  (see last year's post here: http://fightswithivy.posterous.com/tag/bonusmalus for more details).  You can tell because there is a lot of chuckling going on and people are generously buying one another Creme Eggs.

This is the last time I'll be taking part in this grotesque little ceremony (the envelope, not the Creme Eggs).  As usual, discussion of the contents is absolutely forbidden subject to legal action, but I'm left asking myself whether, if someone had offered me this precise sum of money on January 5th in exchange for, next morning,  being rushed into hospital and putting my children through the ordeal of watching my abject terror over the angiogram process, I would have said 'Yes please'.  I would have declined the offer - a no-brainer.  Putting it another way, as the price of three months of my life, it amounts to very little.  But I've managed to justify it to myself as something I'll be grateful for 20 years down the line when decrepitude has really set in and I won't be thinking to myself 'If only I had stuck around for the 2010 bonus' !

There - I've said it, the b-word.  The dirty little bargain, the carrot that keeps the stupid donkey going.  Last week, a recruiter phoned me about a job vacancy that requires a certain special skill that I share with probably only about 25 other people in London.  He called me when I got on the train to Hove, and by the time the train reached Burgess Hill, several calls and emails later, he had raised his opening offer of £500 a day to £600 a day, if I would only take the interview.  I was mightily tempted.  'It's a SHED load of money', I pointed out to my daughter, 'and it would only be for 6 months'.  'Yes', she replied, 'and then it would be another 6  months, and then it would be permanent, and then there would be another bonus to wait for, and then you would be dead from stress'.  

She had an excellent point.  

Heart Sutra

I'm back at work.

The first week of my recovery, it snowed heavily and I did almost nothing.  Which is to say that I did a lot of things purely for my own enjoyment such as watching the whole of David Tennant's Hamlet (some of it, particularly the Osric scene and the graveyard scene, over and over again for sheer enjoyment - who knew that the play scene, and all of the great soliloquies including Claudius at prayer , were actually written for the camera ?  I think more and more that Shakespeare was actually a time traveller.  Material for a book there).  There was a lot more in that vein, each small event a distinct pleasure in its own right.  Also, I received, and was mindful of, a great deal of advice and good counsel from those who have my best interests at heart, and the essence of this advice could be summarized as :  'Stop fighting / accept / let go / hand over / lean on us".

I tried my hardest to do this and to some extent succeeded, but bafflingly, it is incredibly difficult.  Only since the heart incident have I begun to realize HOW difficult.  It may well take me years to learn how to do it.  

Meanwhile, I am working again, trying not to lose the flavour of those peaceful days and moments.  I'm pretending to myself that sometime in the not too distant future I will be able to undertake the Shikoku 88 Temple pilgrimage on my own, and sing the Heart Sutra at every one.  In the meantime, learning how not to do what doesn't have to be done will be my primary focus for a while. 

Culprit Vessel

It's early to be blogging about it but I'm spending entire days tucked up on a sofa looking out at the snowbound front hedge of my daughter's home in Hove, so I definitely have time.
In a nutshell, after a lovely snowy Christmas, after saying goodbye to my partner until the spring, after moving out of the London flat and kicking off the planned last three months at the bank, on only the second morning back at the office, which featured me in a starring role as the only member of our team to make it in through the snow !!!!!  << clash of cymbals, trumpet fanfare etc >> I climbed the stairs up to Limehouse DLR station in the bitter cold, started to apply Rose Petal Lip Salve to my chapped lips, and suddenly an invisible sumo wrestler landed on my chest and I could hardly breathe.
Needless to say I did everything possible to convince myself this wasn't happening and actually made it all the way to my desk before my co-workers noticed what was going on, and not long afterwards I found myself in the A and E at the Royal London Hospital,  And not long after that I was hearing myself introduced to the staff at the London Chest Hospital in Bethnal Green as 'a Stemi' , and not long after that a doctor was explaining to me that having an angiogram and possible angioplasty RIGHT NOW would have a 1 in 1,000 risk of complications whereas not having one would have a 1 in 5 risk of  a major heart attack or death within 30 days.  And would I sign this consent form now.
The following 24 hours were among the most frightening of my life and it was my beautiful children, with their loving care and supported by the whole of our fantastic extended family, who got me through it in one piece.  It all comes down to a combination of factors including - would you believe it ?  - stress, exposure to cold, high blood pressure, and stopping taking medications when I shouldn't have.  I've got a lot to think about now, including whether it's even worth hanging on until 31st March when the signs are I should have stuck with the original plan and retired after Christmas.
So I'm sitting here, tucked under a sunny yellow duvet with my daughter and granddaughter munching crisps, watching 'Great British Railway Journeys', and mulling it all over.
The Chest Hospital staff were impressive beyond my power to describe.  Especially the team in the catheterisation lab who did the angiogram.  Clad from head to foot in samurai-style lead armour  (the women's in butterly colours, the men's in sober sea blue) to protect them from the radiation, hailing from Nigeria, Philippines, Japan, and Russia as well as London, (the Nigerian technician's last name translates as 'Thanks be to God', the Japanese lady technician used to work for the Bank of Japan !!!) they looked exactly like something out of Star Trek as the huge robot arm circled me and they ran dye and a hot flush into the chamber of my heart.  As you can tell, they had given me a little something intravenously to relax me or my memories of the event would probably be less technicolour.  While waiting to go in, I was on a trolley next to a series of protocol posters describing procedures for different types of heart investigations.  So now I know what a Stemi is, why it is a good thing I did not have an Ami, and why they were looking for a 'Culprit Vessel'.  And the good news is that I haven't got one.  The sumo wrestler wasn't created by a blockage and there was no need to inflate a balloon or insert scaffolding.   The culprit isn't a vessel, it is a condition called Coronary Artery Spasm, and the way to avoid is to take a lot of new and different medicine, avoid stress, and keep warm.

My countdown has stopped being an intellectual exercise.  I need to give up the idea, as Patti has pointed out, that these are things I can control and project-manage.  I need to listen to my heart now, if it will let me. 

Love to all my darlings and so sorry that I frightened you.  And thanks to everyone else who helped, including Derek for his hospitality, Jez for his careful driving, Angus for his baby-sitting,  the lady in the medical suite who called the ambulance, and the paramedic on his  bicycle who arrived when the ambulance was still on its way through the snow.  Just when we think we're most alone, we learn what it means to be loved, and to be part of a civil society.  Lucky, lucky me. 

=

God bless us everyone

So here it is, Merry Christmas.  And what have we done ?  We've passed our exam (93 %) and attended our odious office party,  and packed up ready to move out of the London flat, and wondered what to do if the bank - eager not to upset the fatcats getting huge bonusses - decides to put off paying them all until after the 5th April, when Alistair Darling's tax punishment ends.  And finally we've decided to wrap things up for 2009 - blogwise and otherwise - with a bit of Christmas cheer.  Goodbye and Christmassy peace to everyone until 2010. Oh look !  It's starting to snow.

are we nearly there yet ?

So, time for a stocktake.

3rd December has come and gone.  The Impossible Project has been delivered.  Christmas is shaping up nicely.  I've sent off all the documents to shut down (finally) the limited company I've been keeping alive in case I suddenly needed to work a contract.  In three more weeks, the flat share, telephone, woefully slow broadband connection and movie rental contract in London will all be history and I'll be spending 4 nights a week at home in Warwickshire instead of on the doorstep of Canary Wharf.  I still have the exam to take - that'll be on Wednesday - and the various health-related tweaks to the soon-to-be 61-year-old body I walk around in,  that I need to get out of the way between Christmas and March, are all booked in (teeth, mammogram, etc).  It makes me laugh that I can't avoid approaching my own retirement as if it was a project to be managed.  Habit of a lifetime, etc. Anyway, the countdown is coming along nicely.

So nicely, in fact, that a spanner in the works is almost inevitable.  As Douglas Adams once famously wrote - he died so YOUNG ! - “So"Solutions nearly always come from the direction you least expect, which means there’s no point trying to look in that direction because it won’t be coming from there".  I have found that spanners in the works nearly always come from that direction as well.  So I'm not going to look out for spanners.

It's always hard for me to think straight at this time of year anyway because it is so dark all the time and every day feels like being stuck in a tunnel on the Tube.  Everything will make more sense when the train comes out of the tunnel - some time towards the end of February, that usually means.

For now, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.  Hurrah !