The word has certainly got around that I am in my last months before retirement – just over two months / 9 weeks to go. “How do you feel about it?” lots of people are asking. Quite apprehensive, is my answer. I’ve lived here far longer than anywhere else in my life – nearly 32 years in Shotley Bridge; eight years before that just down the valley in High Spen (down but also up the hill, so at approximately the same altitude). So wherever I go, it will be different – starting a new life at 70.
One thing I have never experienced is what it is like to live in a house with double-glazing! Now it looks as though I will be moving to a new-build house. So perhaps I will learn to live with fewer than four layers of clothing. Even more than the change in the sort of house I will have will be the difference in the community. There’s so much that’s special about the villages where we live and the whole of the larger town of Consett – itself really a huge village where even if you don’t really know people, you can nevertheless talk with them. And hopefully get on with them!
There won’t be a community as such on a new housing estate. But there will be the opportunity to build a community. I gather the plan is to move all the residents of my new road into their new homes at the same time. So we will all be on an equal footing – except I wonder how much older I will be than all the rest!
Already I am having to think of what I can take with me – and even more, what I need to get rid of. Difficult, when I still haven’t sorted through many of the things from the family home which I have just sold! And not just possessions. Planning my diary for the coming month, I have been deleting all the “recurring” events which makeup the bulk of my diary – now from the beginning of July it is almost empty. That’s scary – but also an opportunity; how can I use that time?
That’s a challenge to all of us – at whatever stage of life. When Jesus leaves the Disciples at the time of his Ascension, he leaves nothing by way of material possessions – but he does promise them his Holy Spirit. It’s in his power and presence that we are called to live.
Martin Jackson
This is an item from the May issue of our Parish Magazine - click here for the online edition
