Dear LPG readers, 

I phoned LPG one day back in March 2025 to enquire as to what they could tell me about the Savoy Rooms in Catford.  I spoke to Maureen B and while we found quite a bit of information about the history of that night club on the internet, she got me talking about my personal memories of the venue.  During that conversation, she also got me reliving a few other recollections of being there and having remembered them, I have been persuaded to share a few more on this platform. 

We were talking about some very important people that always have been and still are part of my life; I am talking about the very special friends that I have kept in touch with in spite of the ones that I have made and lost during the rest of my life’s comings and goings.   

During my last message, I mentioned my friends Sandra and Burnie who I still keep in contact with, in spite of the distance that our different life paths have taken us on. I now live in the Isle of White while Bernie moved to Australia and Sandra finds herself in Kent, about 125 miles from where I live.   

We all met at Kidbrook Station while habitually waiting for the same train to take us to different jobs each morning a long time ago, and there is nothing like the many train cancellations or delays, to bring friends together.  Our chats on the platform revealed a shared love of evenings out and it started there.  Our three-way-friendship has endured in spite of our geographical locations and different lives.  

So many aspects of life change over the years as we come into and lose touch with so many friends.  Life has a way of forcing us to change jobs, get involved with our own families and our own children, and all the chaos that comes with that part of our lives.  

I believe that this applies to everyone, whatever our age or whatever the decade that defines our childhoods and younger years.  When we are young, we all think that we will be friends with those young people for ever.  

Then life gets really hectic as our spouses and children take up our time and it can be so easy to have no time to keep in touch but, as busy as it all gets, retirement has a habit of arriving really suddenly, no matter how meticulously we plan for it, and that is when the friends that are closest to you are usually the friends that you leave at the job you retire from.

I have made the time to keep in touch with my oldest friends all the way through my life but I know many people for whom those really old friends are a distant memory when perhaps you need them the most.  For all the other friendships we forge during life, those very early friends are the people who are most likely to be of a similar age and at a similar stage of life when we need friends who have the time to talk.  This means that they are most likely to retire at the same time as you and be going through the same issues as yourself during those early retirement roller-coaster months.  Wherever life has taken you in the interim, there is something so important to be said about having a few people who are going through what you are going through to compare notes with.  

While we were talking, Maureen reminded me of something that I feel that every LPG reader needs to take the time to remind their working-aged children about, no matter how busy they are.  We agreed that those youngsters (be they in their twenties, thirties, forties or fifties) need to bear in mind that so much will change quite suddenly as they stumble through the complexities of life at any pre-retirement stage.   Remembering that retirement will come with a whole lot of changes and extra time for most people, even if those changes don’t all come immediately, is one aspect that so many of us are not prepared for until it actually happens.  

As we continued to talk I felt the need to leave a little advice that perhaps all we pensioners can pass on to the younger generations of our families as they approach their own retirement years while being far too busy to even think about how it might impact their social lives.  

When all those friends that you leave behind at work, try though they may, just don’t have the same amount of time that you have on your hands for lengthy telephone calls, your oldest closest friends will be the same age as you and so much more likely to appreciate those time-consuming chats and have the time to share them with you when you need them most. 

JW, Isle of White.