Retirement

 A massive step in the Peelhill to Portknockie Project this week.  The working days are coming to an end.  In this my 50th year in the tax profession, the last 32 of which running my own tax consultancy, the end is nigh.  The letters to clients are out, and I enter my last week in the workplace.

Fifty years without a break, though it has been increasingly part time these last few years.  I guess I can trace my working life back further; back to those of the morning paper round, earning £1 per week, before shelf stacking in the supermarket at £1 per hour, and then, in October 1976, full time work.

As I begin to relax and to look ahead, those plans take a little more shape.  We've had the builders in all week, and they'll be back next week.  That all started with a slate falling from the roof in August last year.  Eventually we found someone prepared to come and have a look.  The critical, professional eye was quick to spot other works needing done.  Thus this past week it has been chimney stacks and skews getting attention and bit more than TLC.  Only the thickness of the walls has prevented water penetration over the years.

Next week it will be slates - the one that came down has been replaced and the ridge tiles reset, but there's another couple of dozen needing replaced; cracked, broken, or simply 'repaired' with sealant and glued down.  Then there's rough-casting to be repaired and sealed; new gutters and facias.

All the sort of thing that you might think would be hinted at in the Home Report, budgeted for.  But no.  Hey ho.

There is a parking space at the end of the yard, and some concreting and sealing has been done there, the possible source of water access under the building.  I'm of a mind to block out the parking access, which we rarely use, by moving the fence that separates that space from the yard, bring it all into what might loosely be termed a 'garden'.

One of the legacy issues in closing the office, is the retention of files and papers, client records, until such time as GDPR compliance dictates they have to be destroyed.  Where to put them?  Rent a lock-up, perhaps a container?  There are facilities nearby but I baulk at £150pm for five years.  So, that parking space...

One of our first additions at Portknockie was a bike shed, courtesy of Pads Sheds.  It is ideal, and a solid bit of bespoke timber construction.  We could do something similar, in the former parking space.  We have the space; and Pads Shed have the skills. With paper in storage for a lengthy period there would need to be insulation involved, perhaps a tin outer layer at least on the roof.

Once Kevin and James and the gang from McGregor Roofing have brought the house up to scratch, fit for whatever years we may have left, having got to the glories of the retirement stage; then I could be in touch with Lora and Pad to find a route to resolving the storage problems.  I reckon we might be crying out for the available space, once I can safely destroy all those old office files.

That retirement word seems to have infiltrated the old bones.  Knee surgery 25 or so years ago has always left a lingering weakness.  Just as I start to put work behind me, and cast an eye to extended time on the walking routes and cycle paths, so the knee flares up.  I suspect wear & tear, old age, perhaps arthritic, for I have had neither accident nor injury.  Isn't that the Law of Sod, more time imminent, and scarcely able to shuffle along, feart to turn a crank.

Oh well, there are other projects for this great retirement.  Ones that involve sitting down.  And patience.  And there's Peelhill to be addressed.  The Departure.  Scary.  Very scary.  30 years this May, memories.  And no shortage of accumulated clutter.  Plans for that anniversary have just been laid down.  Plans that may involve a puffin or two...

On The Road Again

 As I slowed in approach to the lights at the first junction, where I knew I had to turn right, a heron lowered her landing gear and glided to a rest in the tops of a swaying tree.  Welcome to Maryport.

I made my turn, and found I didn't need the signage, the route to the Senhouse Roman Museum having become familiar.  For 18 of the last 19 years the museum has hosted a small but very enthusiastic gathering.  Over the last three years the event has become a fixture on my own calendar.  We gather to discuss writings and reading, books and authors, poets and readers.  Maryport LitFest 2026 had a theme of Light over Water: A Voyage of Discovery.

A first for me this year was a commitment to two full days, an overnight stop.  It was a strategy that hugely enhanced my fleeting visits of the previous two years.  As the weekend evolved my thoughts turned to the years ahead, realising that a return trip of close on 650 miles and over 12 hours of driving time, may not be something looked forward too with the same glee as this year's event had enticed me.

And yet this event draws me deeper into its warm embrace.  I meet friends from other gatherings, from zoom calls; a rare chance to be together in person, to have those informal chats, the catch-ups, that just cannot be matched in email exchanges.  Angela Locke is pivotal to it all, writer, tutor, magnetic.  She draws us to her gatherings on Iona, at Rydal Hall, and in on-screen sessions.  As the Writer-in-Residence at Senhouse she organises (together with the museum's Jane Laskey) and co-hosts the annual gathering.  She has this ability to cajole and persuade; connections just happen.  One of this year's speakers came from a walk on beach; another just happened to have lived next door, back when she was breeding her Herdwicks.

This is a local event, West Cumbria, a corner that seems to have an endless supply of creativity, of words set down in the right order.  Wordsworth hailed from just along the road, in Cockermouth, and thence to Rydal.

I had been aware of Maryport from countless childhood visits; a farm on the edge of Allonby.  There is a black & white snapshot of a very young me astride a pony - the first and last time.  Of those captured I am the only one left alive, pup and pony being the first to go, before Linda far too young, and then my father.  Allonby draws memories, with recent gatherings having been final farewells, and those chats afterwards, with long lost friends and new generations, lingering.

And so I walked Allonby's green before our second day got underway.  It all looks a bit tired now, in need of a lick of paint.  But beneath it all the surf rolled over the shingle; the green was dotted with worm casts and rabbit diggings; and those old narrow wooden bridges still spanned the beck.  That humped back bridge at the bend in the road; cobbled pends and farms.  The donkeys were absent, winter quartered presumably.

Sunday morning walk

Little egret on the beck

Twentyman's ice cream

I drove along the road, to that familiar farmhouse.  Conversions and extensions, mobile homes and weekend pods in the paddock.  It must be over 50 years since last we stayed there.  And yet...

Yan tyan house

The bridges over the beck

as Old Kiln beckons

David Ashworth plucked tunes from a 12 string guitar, as images from paintings and photographs rolled across the screen behind him.  One of his favourites was a snap of himself as a young man.  Allonby Beach, 5 July 1965.  I could have been there, that day.  And realising that my baby sister would celebrate her 60th birthday on the final day of this month, reinforced that feeling of deja vu.  Perhaps...

One of the highlights of the weekend presentations, and there were many, was a talk by John Porter, he who had gardened whilst Angela bred her sheep.  No, me neither.  But what a man, what a life.  Flashing across the screen behind him a girl stood on a high wire, quite a way to return to Hoy having climbed the Old Man.  Her old man's genes must run strong.

For in addition to being a writer, poet, film director and whatever his day job may have been through a transatlantic life, he had climbed.  Big and high.  He told tales of being smuggled in trains across Uzbekistan to reach unheard of peaks in the High Pamirs.  In discussion later he mentioned being stuck, completely alone, for five days, storm bound, unable to go up or down, at 27,000 feet.  On Everest.  That was 1981, long before Base Camp tourism.

I will enjoy his volume of essays and poems from a life well lived.  A Path of Shadows.

We were treated to a floor show, Richard Valentine, a performance so very special.  Whoever thought Odysseus might have been dry and dusty old stuff?  Looking forward to the latest screen adaptation in a few months, filmed on the Moray Coast.  Richard's wife, Rosie de Mello, closed the event, her enthusiasm for the coastline, the preservation of this special place and teaching of youngsters bubbling over to those of us who remained.  Life in that household must be lived at quite some pace.  Dull moments are for others.

I had decided to take in that last session, mainly as there might have been something to impart to any budding environmental scientists soon to graduate.  We heard from Joe, a marine biologist with Cumbria Wildlife Trust, funded by lottery grant.  He lives in Allonby, his charge being a unique Honeycomb Worm Reef, which gives a stretch of the bay HPMA status.  It is one of only three HPMAs in England, and the only coastal one.  Honeycomb Worm Reefs, must tell the children.

Alicia had passed on that session, determined to make her journey home in daylight.  A good plan, such is the scourge of the LED headlight.  Through two hours of filthy weather on the M74, rear mirror dipped, yellow glasses on, I applauded her.  The children had better appreciate those worms.  Night time driving is now far too stressful.  I wonder if those who have LED headlights are exempt from being blinded by the lights of others.  They must know, surely?

Mark the calendar for next year, even if we are much further away.  Much to happen between now and then.