Back on the road again

The tale of the postman

20161214_124152 — Leather album with wrap around strap

I get such a thrill when a stranger does you a big favour so here is the story of our postman who made my day this week. With so much happening at work, so many long-standing colleagues being made redundant and so many leaving presents for everyone to buy I thought I could slip quietly away in to retirement without anyone noticing. But my lovely and generous colleagues had other ideas and sent me a retirement present I will always remember, a beautiful Italian leather album with beautiful cream textured pages interwoven with tissue. This is such a lovely thing to own and perfect for creating a memento of sketches, postcards, tickets and other memorabilia from our next big trip. But how this perfect retirement present reached me is a tale of a postman who went above and beyond the call of duty.

You may recall I have been working from home since the summer and I have clearly continued to provide such efficient administrative support from my home-base that some of my colleagues never even noticed the change. I work for a national organisation and my colleagues are dotted around the North-west and the Midlands so communicating by email and telephone has always been the norm. This week I received an email from a colleague in the West Midlands that mentioned I should expect a parcel that day; however when I checked where it had been posted to found it was on its way to the ‘old’ office that is now closed up and empty. After an initial panic, he emailed me the receipt and I could track the parcel and so could see it was on its way to this abandoned office. Armed with the receipt I walked to our local Royal Mail collection depot to see what would happen with the parcel. After a long back and forth negotiation with supervisors they were happy [or at least satisfied] that I could collect the parcel from them, even without the failed delivery card, if I provided ID and headed paper from the old office [thank goodness I have been using this as scrap paper].

Back at home there was a knock on the door at lunch time. The ‘old office’ is near to my home and we share a postman. I often pass the time of day with this postman both at home and at work and he had noticed that I was one and the same person [I have an unusual second name]. He had arrived at the shuttered and deserted office with my parcel, noticed who it was addressed to and put the parcel back in his bag to bring round to our flat later on his round. He presented the parcel hesitantly, clearly worried about whether he had done the right thing, but I was over the moon. I am so grateful for his thoughtfulness and quick thinking and amazed that even in a big city like Salford it is impossible to be completely anonymous.

#Lightwaves16 #surprisingsalford #2

Lightwaves Salford quays 2016 (5).JPG — Lightwaves 2016 at Salford Quays

For the past few years Quays Culture have organised a Lightwaves event at Salford Quays and Media City during the Christmas festive period. Last year we had large white illuminated rabbits and before that we had curtains of light whose colours changed as you walked through them. This year Quays Culture have surpassed their previous offerings of light in these dark days and we have a series of light sculptures around the quays for everyone’s enjoyment. The star of the show is shown above, this collection of 198 small boats float in Eire Basin, changing colour [you can decide the colours on your mobile phone] and transforming the end of the quay into a rainbow of colours reflecting against the black water with the stunning Detroit Bridge as a backdrop. Called Voyage and designed by Aether and Hemera this is a triumph that entertains young and old and is so entrancing it is almost impossible to walk away from.

Once you have torn yourself away from the small boats, there is a further interactive light art installation is in front of the Lowry Theatre. Here Heartbeat only lights up when two people hold hands and connect with the sculpture, completing the circuit and revealing the heart symbol. Created by GNI Projects this is a sculpture for the romantics and scientists in us.

Over at Media City there are trees in a multitude of colours, a sound sculpture that resounds with cosmic rhythms when the rows of strings are struck or strummed and a large neon sign proclaiming Today I Love You. For those of us who have fond memories of visiting Blackpool Illuminations, there is also a small selection of figures that have travelled down the M61 to spend a few days in Salford.

Quays Culture’s mission is to contribute to Salford Quays being a place to visit and provide international examples of interactive art and they have certainly achieved that this year. The exhibits are only here until 18 December so get on down.

Lightwaves Salford quays 2016 (11).JPG — Voyager boats and the Dakota Bridge

Being in the rock music moment

Placebo playing at the Arena in Manchester

Browsing Twitter and Facebook you might think that in 2016 everyone is seizing the day, living in the moment and treating every day as if it is their last. Reading posts and tweets it is easy to see a community where everyone is practicing mindfulness, has grasped minimalism and is enjoying experiences not possessions. And then I go to a rock concert and see people around me who are not present and who think they can concentrate on more than one thing at once. It doesn’t seem to matter how much they have paid to see a favourite band, there are always plenty in the audience who will spend most of the gig going back and forth to the bar and then [as a consequence] to the toilets. I have seen people checking their emails on their phone during a set and others take the opportunity of a quiet and emotional moment in a song to have a loud conversation about which bus they will catch to get home! I don’t find it difficult to be in the moment at a rock concert; my ears are full of the music, I can feel the bass shaking my bones, I am moving to the beat and my brain is listening to the words or singing along. I really enjoy being immersed in good loud music with lots of other people and I always smile my way through a rock concert.

I certainly don’t let irritation with the fans whose minds seem to struggle to just let go and soak in the music and atmosphere spoil my own experience. I accept that people will take photographs [and I clearly take one or two myself] and, although I don’t understand it, I tolerate the many who will even film an entire track. But, I do find my brain occasionally wandering in to spheres of wonder; how can you dance with a drink in your hand; why, when you have paid for a ticket, you can bear to risk missing your favourite track because you are using the bathroom and what possesses anyone to think a rock concert is a suitable place for an intimate conversation.

Maybe I am too old school. I bought my first ticket for a concert in 1972 when I went to see Slade, backed by Thin Lizzy and Suzi Quatro … and I was hooked to the thrill of live music. Over the years I have seen many hundreds of bands from the mega-stars such as The Rolling Stones in 1976 to Karine Polwart, a beautiful Scottish folk singer. I have seen Black Sabbath five times, paying just £2 in 1977 and £55 in 2013 and Muse eight times, including a memorable gig in Grosse Freiheit, a lovely cosy venue in Hamburg [and where the Beatles played]. Back in the 70s the bar would close while the band was on and as a teenager I had usually queued for hours to get to the stage and so I guess just being there for the music became normal.

We saw Placebo this week and it was a great concert and the crowd was no worse than usual; the woman who insisted on shouting conversations with her partner didn’t spoil it for us. I will continue to support bands by seeing them live and I will continue to be truly present for the couple of hours they are entertaining me.

In retirement we will have time to slowly linger

p1020146 — One of the red squirrels at Formby

I am now winding down from paid regular work and looking forward to the days when I can spend my time watching the red squirrels scampering around the trees, stopping to gaze at every beautiful sunset and chatting to every cat I meet and not feel I should be using my time more effectively. I am looking forward to being able to sleep until we wake up and spend the day reading a good book if we want or heading off for a walk just because it is a sunny day. All these things got a bit closer as this week Mr BOTRA (Mr Back On The Road Again) told his boss at work that he will be leaving in March 2017 and now there is no stopping us! His boss, who clearly knows him better than mine, wasn’t surprised that we were planning an early retirement and more travelling and was only disappointed because she had him in mind for a promotion when a colleague retires. While a promotion might have been nice it is nothing compared to have the time and space for walking up craggy mountains, sitting on warm sand on a deserted beach or kicking dry leaves along a woodland path and these [and more] are all things we will soon be enjoying.

Of course, we have lots of plans to do all sorts of wonderful and helpful things during our retirement but one that I am really looking forward to is doing very little. I am looking forward to knowing there is no reason why I can’t spend half-an-hour watching the wren from our dining room window as it potters around the bushes or sit and feel the warmth of the sun on my skin or even [if I want to] just while away the day reading tweets on Twitter!

As one of the workers, my working day has a structure and I am expected to produce things and be available. This means that evenings and weekends are precious periods of relaxation when I try to cram in all the other good stuff. I know that our retirement will be more than just evenings and weekends 24-hours a day and it will certainly give us time to improve ourselves in lots of way, by giving our time and learning and exercising and … so on. But I hope it also gives us the space to have time to slowly linger.

Lowry: #surprisingsalford #1

20160723_170623 — A depiction of modern Salford in the style of LS Lowry

I thought it would be nice to publish an occasional series of blog posts showcasing the best of Salford; a city that is my home and is one of the ten boroughs that make up Greater Manchester. The city has a long history but has generally been over-shadowed by its Manchester neighbour. Even in the past, although Manchester and Salford both grew during the industrial revolution as textile mills and terraces of houses were thrown up, it was Manchester that developed a commercial centre that drew in the shoppers. I am starting with LS Lowry, a Salford hero whose distinctive paintings may have played a part in the prevalence of the view of Salford as a grim city [although Ewan MacColl’s Dirty Old Town probably played a part too]. And yet in the last ten years or so Salford has pulled itself out of the gutter. The arts centre, The Lowry, was the beginning of the transformation of Salford Quays from industrial wasteland to lively and smart destination that is now popular with tourists. The geometric building of The Lowry holds over 400 of LS Lowry’s works and an archive of other material relating to the artist.

LS Lowry found his own distinctive way of painting and drawing. He is best known for his pictures of the industrial scenes of Salford. Using a basic colour palette in his oil paintings that mirrored the colours of the mills of Salford; the red brick buildings and the black smoke; ‘Going to Work’ and ‘Coming from the Mill’ are in his familiar style. Jeanette Winterson brilliantly described Lowry’s Salford paintings as ‘painting the trauma … of industrialisation’.

Visit the Lowry gallery on Salford Quays and you will soon see that there was more to Lowry than mills and the working people of Salford. In his later years Lowry’s subjects moved on to empty landscapes and seascapes, many painted on visits to friends in the north-east and Cumbria. Berwick-upon-Tweed has a walking trail with interpretation boards celebrating Lowry’s paintings of the town during his many holidays there.

If you are in the area get along to the Lowry and take a look at the range of LS Lowry’s work.

Do we have enough to afford retirement?

Which suggests around £25,000 – £30,000 a year is enough to retire on and be content and who are we to argue. Other unspecified experts suggest 2/3rd of your working income is required for a happy retirement. I have decided to share the details of our retirement income and savings on the blog to help others on a similar journey. I know our circumstances are peculiar to us and what works for us won’t necessarily apply to you, whatever these online calculators and column writers suggest we are all individuals and what we feel we can live on and have managed to save will be different from anything you can and want to do. But the information might inspire you or make you re-think your own ideas for financial independence and early retirement.

There are four reasons why early retirement for us has become possible.

Reason number one – downsizing
By 2008 our son was settled with his partner and we were able to sell our family home and down-size to a small flat that was cheap enough to buy mortgage-free [hurrah!] with enough left over to pay for the campervan [double-hurrah!]. The flat is also cheap to heat and run and so contributes to reason number two.

Reason number two – frugal living
Although I am grateful that a company is willing to pay me to give my time and do stuff I have the skills to do, my own income as a travel writer and administrator is below the average in the UK [currently £26,260/year gross]. Jointly we currently receive around £36,000 a year net from our different occupations. I [honestly] cannot say that we are ‘ultra-frugal’; we have lots of holidays, eat out occasionally, go to gigs and plays, don’t always shop at the cheapest supermarkets and generally enjoy ourselves. But the main thing is that we spend less than we earn. Over the past six years [since returning from our ‘gap’ year] our average annual spending has been £24,125 a year [about 2/3rd of our income] and we have saved the rest.

Before we can retire our savings need to be sufficient to cover a period of nine years [see below]. After many modifications and adjustments we have come up with what we hope is a generous budget for retirement of £27,000 a year. This is more than 2/3rds of our current working income but is near the half-way point of the Which figure above. Because we have lived fairly frugally over the past six years and we are naturally cautious we wanted to have a bit of expansion room in our early retirement ‘income’. We have estimated that this amount will be enough for monthly meals out, cultural stuff and [most importantly] travel in the campervan [we are not planning lots of long-haul flights]. It should also be enough to cope with most small household crises [for example buying a new washing machine] and for any larger problems we have a contingency fund of £15,000.

Reason number three – we have pensions
We have saved sufficient to cover our ‘income’ for the years from 2017 to early in 2026. In this momentous year all of our various pensions [none of them very large] will provide us with an income of a similar amount.

A quick bit about our pensions. We both have public sector pension that are final salary pensions and often described as ‘gold-plated’ in the media. I have worked in the NHS for around thirteen years of my working life and for this will receive just over £2,000 a year [not even copper-plated really]. Mr BOTRA will have 30-years service in higher education and so will receive a more useful pension of around £12,000 a year. In addition I have a couple of small private sector pensions from about eight years in the charity sector that might bring in a few hundred pounds a year but will be dependent on the annuity rates at the time. I am ashamed to say that for many years I didn’t even save towards a pension but you live and learn. According to the current forecasts our state pensions will make up the rest of our income.

Reason number four – the inheritance
Inheritance doesn’t sit comfortably with us but there is no doubt that when a close relative died we inherited enough money to bring our retirement forward by about five years. Some of this inheritance came from selling a house but we also maximised the money by working hard to sell his 170+ paintings, 250+ ornaments and many other collectables. There was a four-month period in 2014 when we spent our evenings and weekends learning about fine china and collectables, placing detailed adverts on Ebay, packing delicate ornaments and posting them to far-flung destinations. We dealt with dealers and enthusiasts to make the most of what we had been given. We are truly grateful for the opportunity this money has given us and as the money came from a relative who enjoyed a long retirement from his mid-50s and spent his money on lots of holidays I like to think he would approve of our choice of how to spend the money.

The best of the Lancashire coast

A sunny autumn day on the wide expanse of the beach at Formby

We took a chance on a November trip in the campervan and were rewarded for our optimism with a sunny day. We have such a lot of stunning coastline on this island that the Lancashire coast perhaps isn’t what springs to mind when you think of beautiful parts of our coast. This part of the seaside certainly has more than its fair share of resorts and built up areas. But Formby Point [not strictly speaking in Lancashire but we still recognise the pre-1974 county boundaries at BOTRA towers] is a jewel in the crown that makes up for everything the planners have done on some stretches of the Lancashire shore and we are lucky that it is less than an hour from our home.

After spending Saturday afternoon walking in the gloom through wild hail and sleet in Southport, the sun on Sunday was very welcome. In Southport we walked along the wooden planks of the pier until it closed and joined the crowds watching the carnival that is the Christmas lights switch-on in the town.

The sand dunes, pine forests and wide sweep of a beach at Formby are owned and managed by the National Trust. This area is managed for the wildlife, not just the lovely red squirrels that entertain the visitors here, there are also newts, lizards and the rare Natterjack Toad. It wasn’t the time of year for reptiles but the red squirrels were plentiful in the pine woods. We walked around the asparagus fields and wound our way through the dunes. We returned along the expansive beach, with views north to Blackpool and south to the Welsh mountains. The beach is so immense that even on a sunny day there is space enough for everyone.

Looking towards the north Wales coast from Formby

The good & bad of leaving presents

2016-oct-berlin-with-stephen-and-jenny-39 — Do people still receive clocks as a leaving present?

How little your work colleagues really know you and the resulting unsuitable leaving present is a long-standing joke within a group of our friends. One friend once received the most inappropriate leaving gift that left her forever puzzling about how her colleagues had perceived her. She is a hard-working, intelligent and stylish woman and yet leaving a project her colleagues presented her with a large soft toy rabbit, holding a large stuffed carrot. I can’t be sure if I am, after so many years, embellishing this story more than it needs but the rabbit might have played a tune if you squeezed its tummy. Of course, her friends [who perhaps know her a little better] found this gift very amusing but she moved on wondering what she had done to even suggest that this rabbit might be something she would enjoy receiving.

With over 25 different jobs you can imagine I have received numerous leaving presents over the years and looking down the list these gifts come to mind and make me smile, although none have been as unsuitable as the rabbit.

High on my list of leaving presents that stand out are the surprise gifts from a role I put up with for just three months before moving on. I was very unhappy with the job and never felt I settled in but when I left they showered me with so many different gifts including a plant, writing paper, chocolates and wine, as I staggered home with all these generous presents I wondered if I was making a mistake by leaving.

At another job, despite my colleagues watching me hang up my cycling gear every morning, they decided to buy me a large and extravagant bouquet of flowers. I puzzled for a while about how to fit the flowers in my pannier but failing and unable to bear just sneaking them in the bin [or walking home] I displayed them on reception and left them behind.

Other teams have got it right. I still have beautiful jewellery and other tasteful and cherished items from teams and individuals I have worked with. I still treasure a soft and cosy throw I received from one workplace, an Italian shawl from another and a beautiful scarf from yet another. These gifts will always remind me of the wonderful people who clubbed together and went shopping to find something they thought I would like and thinking about these lovely people taking such trouble over a gift for me always brings me close to tears.

All these leaving gifts mark the moment of moving on. Particularly in community work my relationships with colleagues have often been intense, we will have worked closely as a team, I will have relied on these colleagues in tough situations, laughed with them and toiled with them. I am pleased that these moments get marked in even a small way.

The things that really start the tears flowing when I leave are the cards with all the lovely comments from my co-workers; as I read them I will start to wonder if I am doing the right thing leaving these fantastic people and stepping into the unknown. One manager who knew me better than many wrote a leaving speech that was a real tear-jerker, describing me as, ‘a true mother-earth hippy with a hint of rock-chick’, giving me something to live up to!

As an administrator I now work in a support role within a team and as a home-worker the relationships have been less profound. Tomorrow is my last team meeting with my colleagues and so as I draft this post the comforting smell of homemade ginger cake is seeping around the flat. My gift to my colleagues is cake and I hope this will in a small way say thank you to them for their support and inspiration.

I am lucky to be able to choose when I finish work

2016-oct-berlin-with-stephen-and-jenny-42

MRS ONL did a thought provoking post recently that highlighted how many people don’t get to retire when they would choose to. The post was very timely as the small charity I work in has been going through difficult financial times. I have told you about these problems before but things have become considerably worse since I gave notice of my impending retirement [these things are not related]! Every week communications are sent out about someone else who is being made redundant; people who are skilled and dedicated workers who have given so much to the charity and each one of them brings me pain; to say that I feel I am leaving a sinking ship is to understate how fragile this organisation feels at the moment.

Mr BOTRA commented that if I could have hung on a month or more I might have been made redundant too and he is right, I am sure they will move on to the lower grade post when they have finished getting rid of the management tier. And yet I feel pleased that I got in first, not only to save the charity I work for having to find the few weeks salary they would be obliged to pay me as redundancy pay but also for my own dignity; everyone knows that I am leaving to retire and it is my choice; I haven’t had the stress of ‘consultation’ interviews and competing for the one remaining post. Other colleagues have not been so fortunate, are not leaving out of their own volition and will be going straight in to job seeking, a particularly tough activity during the festive period.

I don’t want to criticise the work of the charity, the services it delivers are extremely high quality but unfortunately the higher management took the somewhat reckless decision to grow and spend beyond the secured income a few years ago and individuals are now paying the price for that over-stretching. The new management is taking control of the situation but many good people are being thrown out in the process.

This all really brings home how important having some back-up savings are for those times when employment let’s you down. I feel privileged to be choosing when I can retire and I am very sad that I have colleagues with an insecure future. I don’t intend to sound self-pitying, as I realise how fortunate I am, but leaving a despondent and bruised organisation means that certainly none of them will have any interest in joining my retirement party and there will be no one left to care enough about buying me a retirement present. I will be able to slip away quietly and I think that is most appropriate in the circumstances.

I can’t wait to start spending those savings

2016-oct-berlin-with-stephen-and-jenny-66

You might expect that as someone who has been saving for some years, firstly for a gap year and more recently for early retirement I am approaching the period when I have to start spending all that money with some trepidation and reluctance. Instead I find that I am eager to start spending those savings. I think this is for two reasons; firstly I think that money is only there to spend and I am somewhat uncomfortable earning more money than I need and so having spare money to save; I will be happy when we have just enough. Secondly, of course, the spending period of this early retirement project is the whole point; for me saving isn’t what defines me and money is only saved to be spent in the future.

Looking back I have only ever successfully saved for something when I have a clear goal in mind. Since the early years of our marriage when the washing machine broke and we didn’t have enough money to buy a new one, we have always aimed to have at least £300 [for that washing machine] in a savings account. We have prioritised saving for holidays [even when we had very little] for many years, we saved to buy our first campervan and we saved energetically to have our gap year in 2009. Since returning from this gap year we have worked hard to put money aside to retire. But apart from these periods of active saving I have generally been a spender and I am looking forward to returning to being that person.

This isn’t to say I want to throw money away or spend money on unnecessary stuff, I have never really been one of the world’s best consumers. Although I certainly can’t reach the minimalist goal of owning just 33 items of clothing I don’t like owning surplus stuff and I am happier finding second-hand bargains than buying new.

I don’t feel that saving [or spending] money should define me. I am keen for us to become a none-paid-work couple who have just enough money for our needs and no more [with a little in a contingency fund for that washing machine] and we can work our way through the savings, watching them dwindling as each year passes. To me, this situation has a harmony; we will be financially secure but not rolling in it and we will be time-rich. I think it is possible I might get a bit of a thrill if we are super-frugal and finish a year a few hundred pounds below our annual budget … but then if we do manage to do that I will want to celebrate by spending it on throwing a party!