Andrew Cunningham has just retired after 30 heavenly years as a teacher – and he hates it
The cost of living is rising, heating bills soaring, and more and more older people are going back to work.
It’s been called Britain’s ‘great unretirement’. From April to June 2022, 173,000 over-65s returned to work, as inflation took a toll on their pensions.
No wonder, I’m thinking, as someone who’s just retired after 30 happy years in teaching. Yet financial pressures are
just the start of it. What no one ever tells you about are all the other awful things about retirement.
Here are just six of them:
1. Once you’re retired, every time you meet someone you used to work with, even a month or two later, you know deep down they’ll be thinking, ‘Isn’t s/he looking older!’ They’ll be too polite to say it aloud, but that unmistakable look of pity at first sight speaks volumes.
2. Your social life disintegrates overnight. All those work-related drinks and lunches that were such a chore at the time now look positively inviting.
Anyone working in a standard office or school is guaranteed at least one social event a fortnight, and their social circle will include several dozen work-related acquaintances. Suddenly the guest list for parties shrinks to single figures.
Your former colleagues may have been just that: colleagues, not lifelong friends. All the same, they helped create at least the illusion of an active social life, full of potentially exciting possibilities.
3. You’re now surrounded the whole time by old people. This is all the more depressing if you used to be a teacher. Teenage backchat may be irritating late on a Friday afternoon, but teenagers help keep you mentally sharp.
Mixing with (mostly) cheerful and positive young minds is one of the biggest perks of the job.
I lost count of the number of times I went into an early-morning class in a bad mood – the result of a glass or two too many the night before – only to be cheered up by my youthful charges: ‘Sir, you’re not looking so happy today – are you OK?’ Faced with comments like these at 8.30am, I found it hard not to smile.
Now all I’m left with is the hangover and the only people I meet are septuagenarians. Those few working-age people I do encounter will inevitably and irritatingly exclaim, ‘Retirement? Congratulations! You’re so lucky! Any big trips planned? What are you going to do with all that free time?’
The truth is, very little. No big trips are planned (costs must be kept down) and I’ll be lucky to have an off-peak week in Wales.
4. As for all the free time, that evaporates too, as I’m learning. Once everyone knows you’re retired, people start burdening you with the kind of chores you could so easily sidestep before because of ‘work pressures’.
Partners demand that rooms be redecorated; elderly relatives require regular visits; children assume you’re free for a 24/7 taxi service.
5. It’s not all doom and gloom. Some ex-teachers I know have settled comfortably into retirement via voluntary work. One particularly loquacious ex-colleague is now proving an excellent National Trust tour guide. Another is hard at work helping to clear up the Wey and Arun Canal.
But voluntary work is all very well if you can afford not to be paid – I can’t. I’m already glancing enviously at the more obviously ancient characters stacking shelves in Sainsbury’s.
Luckiest of all are retired colleagues who taught shortage subjects such as maths and physics. They’re always in demand and are swiftly recalled into comfortable part-time teaching posts.
But no one wants old geezers with English degrees. English, my subject, is never a shortage subject; I’ve been rebuffed from the part-time teaching posts I’ve applied for.
As Roedean School’s HR Department informed me recently, there were ‘simply so many other applicants’.
6. Another retirement shock is no longer having a helpful school IT department on hand when I accidentally delete a document.
I’ve spent days trying to change my DVLA, pension and tax details online – a full-time job in itself.
Only six terrible things about retirement? The list seems never-ending. You’re better off working – mentally, physically and financially.
Pretty soon, like all the other over-65s, I too will be desperate for a job. On the rare occasions I go to a pub nowadays, the first thing I’m checking out is not the beer or the wine, but whether it has any bar-staff vacancies.
There’s one particularly pleasant designer pub nearby I’m keeping a very close eye on.
Who knows – I may even get my social life back.
Dr Andrew Cunningham taught English at Radley, Charterhouse, North London Collegiate and Cranleigh. He edited the magazine for HMC schools
