A tad late - aka Fun Monday

One of the more noticeable things about retirement is that weeks have a tendency to turn themselves inside out. To explain, for most of my working life, work dominated my days, evenings and nights as well. Now, Mon-Fri are simply a n other days. Sat n Sun are for the workers to as my Dad would say 'Six days, shalt thou labour and on the seventh do all odd jobs.' Hence, it can take quite a while to realise what the day is today. I know Fridays because I go to Chen Taijiguan - Chen-style Tai-Chi. I won't have even that landmark this week. One of the Masters from the Chen village is over here to do workshops, our tutor and his two stand-ins are involved in the workshops this weekend.

What did I want to be? Anything but second-best. I knew what I did not want to do, and that was anything connected with sewing / tailoring. Briefly, I toyed with the ideas of journalism, librarianship and the Civil Service. 

Even when I left school I still had no idea.

Fortunately, there was a lady that worked part-time in the chemist's shop where I worked after leaving school. She changed my life in a good way, pity is I no longer remember her name. 

We had our tea breaks together and once she learnt I'd had a Grammar school education, she kept telling me from time-to-time how I was 'wasting my education' doing shop work.

By Spring I was applying to colleges and going for interviews.

That Autumn (Oct.) found me leaving home and going to college in Liverpool.

As they say, the rest is history.

Photo by permission of Chris Knagg.