Dear LPG, 

For months before it actually happened, I made plans for what I would do with all the extra time I would have once I retired, but for all my planning, retirement left me well and truly lost for a while. 

You have to do something, though, and I soon found a new pastime that started with a chance meeting in the street where I live. Late one spring morning, a few weeks after my golden handshake day, I was leaving my house for one of those leisurely but relatively lonely trips to the shops that you can afford yourself when your time is your own. I shut the gate and turned shopwards and had not gone very far when I passed the front garden of the lady who lives next door but one. There she was with pruners in hand, and as I passed, I said hello. 

She must have appreciated my brief greeting because, although I planned to keep on walking, she started talking about how hard it was to keep the garden under control. I mentioned that her garden looked a lot better than mine, and a relationship which had, up to then, been an occasional nod of acknowledgement as we passed each other's homes became a full-blown conversation. It was not long before a third neighbour, who lived opposite, nodded our way as she arrived home and, having missed the greeting we offered, she ventured across to our side of the road, and we three neighbours began a friendship that is now a pretty important part of our lives. It was the fact that we were all ladies of a certain age who had recently retired which provided the common denominator for the rest of that first chat.

On the day, we all got talking about adjusting to retirement, and we discovered that we had all been through it relatively recently and that, although our experiences were similar, they were also quite different. 

The gardener had always been a housewife, which meant her daily schedule had not changed much. We, the other two, were slightly envious. She told us that it was the fact that her age had officially notched up to the big 67 that most reminded her of her change of status. 

The lady who lived opposite told us about the Friday that started like any other workday. She said she spent most of it updating the person taking over from her on last-minute details, followed by the obligatory presentation, her colleagues' best wishes, and a Monday with nothing to do. She mentioned just how much she missed having target dates and cut-off points to keep her focused. 

I got the best of both worlds because, while I worked relatively long hours before retiring, I did not do a particularly demanding job, which left me time to get involved in quite a bit of voluntary work. I have to say that I think that that bridged the gap between work and retirement for me. 

Between us, we found a lot of common ground, and each found a couple of new friends. We now meet up for cups of tea and a chat, go shopping together and help each other out with random projects and other problems. All this has given us a few more things to do with our time. 

Since that day, we have come to the consensus that, however it happens and whatever the financial implications, working out what to do with your time once work is taken away from your life might well be the most challenging aspect of the whole process until you make a few new friends.

YA, Bellingham