The Good Life - or is it?

In a recent Times interview, Richard Briers, the actor famed for his role as Tom in The Good Life, confessed that maybe retiring from work is not all it's cracked up to be.

Many people do look forward to the day when they can retire from work to spend time on more pleasurable pursuits. It seems the earlier one can retire the better. People boast about being able to retire at 40 or earlier. These tend to be the ones who've made mega-bucks as e-millionaires or off-shore investment bankers or some such job mysterious to the rest of us mortals. They have enough dosh to go cruising or jet-setting round the world to interesting places and events and have the sort of luxurious holiday homes that everyone else wants to go to.

For the rest of us retirement comes as a bit of an anti-climax. We have all the time in the world to do all the things we dreamt of doing while we were beavering away in the office but no longer the wherewithal to do it all. Of course there are many inexpensive and/or free activities that we can busy ourselves with - gardening, pottery, matinees at the theatre, free bus-pass tourism and concessions at many other venues. In my neck of the woods they even have something called the University of the Third Age (U3A) that hosts talks and art or writing classes and opera evenings. But it takes a certain self-dicipline to organise oneself to get up and go out and be socially interactive when there is no compulsion to do so and many of the retired end up stuck at home, slumped in an armchair in front of the box or staring into space waiting for the end or perhaps these days dreaming of a one-way ticket to Geneva.

In his interview, Richard Briers talks about when he first decided to give up the day job.

“You need your own bloody bed. When Gerald du Maurier faced his next production after 50 years of acting, he famously said, ‘I’d rather go round the shops.’ I got that feeling about five years ago; I thought if I’m not careful, I’ll forget to live.” That rueful smile again: “But then when I’m not working I don’t feel I’m living.” We contemplate this irony for a moment: “Life is duller but more pleasant, I suppose.” He brightens: “The thing is to have a few little jobs, just to keep one interested: the rest is chores and charity. I do a bit of gardening, but it’s terribly boring.”

He admits he's become another 'grumpy old man'.

'One gets so angry — all those poor people in West London suffering under 22,000 flights a year already — why on earth would we want more of them? Bloody planes: the Wright brothers should have been locked up.” He gives me one of his rueful little smiles: “Sorry if I sound crotchety, but I don’t like progress.”

Funny that! I thought he was acting when he played Tom, the sustainable guru in The Good Life. In fact he was being himself.

PS I added my own highlights

Tipping the Balance

The recent suicide of of a top woman City lawyer, Catherine Bailey, has once again brought forth a flurry of articles and comments about the problem with our work life balance.

The discussions around work life balance tend to present work as a problem from which we should escape. This is a new and worrying trend in modern society.

Growing up as a young woman in the seventies and eighties, I was actively involved in debates where the right for equal access to the workplace was seen as essential to the liberation of women. Escaping from the isolation of the private sphere in the home and the unfulfilling tasks of endless housework and childcare to participate in the public sphere of work and interact socially with other adults as equals was something we aspired to and for many still remains a goal.

Today, the private sphere is upheld as a haven of self-fulfilment which is being denied us by the demands of work. See Jon Burke on the Fourth Plinth at Trafalgar Square.

What's going on? There is a limit to engaging in a fulfilling way with babies and young children. A stint as an au-pair during a gap year abroad as well as meeting up on the rare occasion with parents, made me realise this.

One reason may be our changed perception of work and the workplace. Has our attitude to work changed because what we do seems to lack any connection to a positive and improving vision of society? As a public sector worker myself, I know that today my work seems to be just an endless achievement of targets. Unlike in the past there seems to be no ethos that what we do is for the good of society and so it feels less fulfilling.

Another reason may be the constantly increasing regulation of relationships in the workplace. Over a period of time, issues such as stress, bullying, and harassment have led to what some describe as 'toxic' relations between people at work presided over by the HR police. Is this what we are escaping from?

Whatever the reasons are it is worth exploring because without work society cannot go forward and we will be the poorer without it.