Dear LPG, 

I live in the borough of Lewisham and, like so many pensioners worldwide, many day centres offer activities to occupy our so-called empty days.  

In my experience and from what I have seen from my friends who have retired, things are very different and unique for each person. Still, loosely, it appears to be that when we get to that junction in the road of life, we initially spend a lot of our time wallowing in all those things that we promised to do as soon as work stops being the thing that takes up nearly all of our time; the holidays, hobbies and ambitions that we have always promised ourselves kick in and we suddenly have a lot more time to focus on our extended families at a time when most of them are still fully invested in their jobs, children, house improvements and the other things that used to make us too busy to do more than fit them pretty near the bottom of our list of priorities.

It is a sort of retirement honeymoon period and lasts for about as long as the one after your wedding; the real life of a retired person kicks in, which is when many of us find a club or day centre to get involved in. One such place is at Stanstead Road in Forest Hill. They offer a programme of many activities, and one afternoon I found myself attending a film show where their film production company showcased their work. As they took a lot of time to explain, the group is in its infancy and has much to learn about making films. Each movie they showed on the day was an experiment, but one, in particular, fired my imagination. 

It featured a few individuals in the group talking about where in the world they would like to be. Though each of the people featured had their film-making pursuit in common, the diversity in the places they talked of got me thinking about where I would like to be if I could be anywhere.

I experienced happiness and contentment throughout my teen years (the other set of vulnerable years we all live through), and I can define it. To be able to have the things that you need or want (simple things), like having nice clothes, the mobility to go places, the health and freedom of movement to do anything you want, at a time when you are still working out what fear is. When I think about it, that is my view of true happiness, along with so many other things that my friends and I took for granted as youths in Kingston, Jamaica, although I didn’t even really appreciate it then.   

Once the momentum that comes with the initial change of retirement starts to slow down a bit, I think that we all get to that stage where we think about the times in our lives that, at the time, we took for granted.   

What memory would you have discussed if you were part of the film?

Rudy Morgan.

LPG found the short film that Rudy is referring to…

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…and LPG adds some information on today’s celebration…

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