Night Music: Walk On By

Thirteen Years Of Freedom

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Thirteen years ago today, I was called into my boss’s office and told that I was being laid off.

The locally-owned company where I had worked for a good many years had been taken over by a larger American group earlier that year, and they wanted to put their own people into senior management positions.  I wasn’t the first or even fourth senior manager to be sent packing, and I had expected this meeting all through the summer. I was almost sixty years old and bored with working for someone else. When the hammer fell, I was greatly relieved and happily accepted the generous severance pay they offered.

Luckily, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the first part of my enforced retirement. I was keen to write a history of Commercial Drive and over the next fifteen months, that’s what I did.  Along with this I helped establish the Grandview Heritage Group which kept me busy and interested.  At the same time, I wanted to become a lot more involved in local politics, knowing that a Community Plan was about to be thrust upon us.  Any regular reader of this blog will know that I was and remain deeply involved in those matters to this day.

The Community Plan experience led to my third book Battleground: Grandview which was published last November, and the Heritage Group has allowed me to continue my focus on writing about the history of Commercial Drive.

So, I have been busy these last thirteen years.  But the genuine sense of freedom has been the really exhilarating feeling. I wake up when I want, dress in whatever I want, spend time with the Everloving, cook, take long luxurious naps, read, write, and relax.  We certainly don’t have the money we had when I was working, but we get by OK, and I’ll swap the money for such freedom any day.

It has been a grand thirteen years, and I quietly thank my old firm for laying me off when they did.