This coming year I’ll enter my seventh decade. If the body and mind hold up, I’ll contest my last local election in 2019 and intend to retire gloriously from the Council in 2024 – when I have hit the grand old age of 66.

I had it all planned out in my mind and was looking forward to the day when no-one will tell me “you should be doing this, or you should be doing that”.

Retirement age

Disaster struck during the week, when I woke to the mellifluous tones of Paschal Donohoe, our esteemed Minister for Finance, telling me he wants me to keep at it until I’m 70. I felt like staying in the bed.

The timetable of my life was thrown into complete chaos by this proposal to extend the drudgery of the working man and woman by at least another five years. To add to my woes, I’ve had occasion of late to spend a lot of time in the company of Percy Pipplemoth Davis. We’re on a drainage committee together and he’s draining the life out of me.

He bounces in every day in a tracksuit, having done a 10km run before his breakfast, ‘twould make you tired just looking at him. He goes around with a perpetual smile you’d love to wipe from his face. The self-satisfaction of the hoor drives me mad. As the Mother says: “He has a great welcome for himself.”

The morning of Paschal’s pronouncement he was leaping out of his skin.

“Well Maurice,” says he, “didn’t Paschal have great news for us this morning? We’ll be able to go on and on and on.”

“You go on and on anyway,” says I. “You don’t need Paschal to tell you that.”

“It was true for Charlie Haughey when he admired those Chinese leaders who stay at it forever, so why shouldn’t we?”

“Why should we?”

“Well, are you not bursting with enthusiasm for public service, making the world a better place?”

“My days of bursting with enthusiasm are over,” says I. “I’ll leave that to the youngsters. I’m ready to enjoy the sunset. The only bursting I’ll do from now on will involve the buttons on my shirt.”

“I find all that most depressing,” said Pipplemoth.

Quiet life

“What I find most depressin’ is the prospect of spendin’ an extra five years goin’ into that Council chamber listenin’ to the likes of you spoutin’ your mouths off. All I want now is a quiet life with no pressure, no deadlines, no enthusiasm. All I want is enough to eat, enough to drink and plenty of time to discuss matters of great indifference.”

“Why don’t you resign from the council forthwith?” asked Pipplemoth,

“Because I can’t afford to and the Mother wouldn’t let me.”

“So you’re between a rock and a hard place.”

“I suppose you could say that, but I don’t know which is the rock and which is the hard place.”

When I went to work at the recycling depot it made for a pleasant change from my sojourn with the irrepressible Pipplemoth.

My colleagues, Todd and The Whip Carey, don’t get too excited about their work, they just get on with it, they’re normal. The Whip’s sole purpose in life is to find a wife.

Todd’s sole purpose in life is to get through it without having too much fuss; he believes nothing is worth getting too excited about and so far he has succeeded in avoiding too much fuss. The Whip, much to his regret, has avoided finding himself a wife, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the finding of a wife has evaded him.

Over the cup of tea we got talking about retirement and the fact that we may have to work longer than we had anticipated. Todd surprised me when he said:

“It’s all about work-life balance,” says he.

I thought that concept might have evaded Todd, just like having a wife has evaded the Whip.

“What do you mean, Todd?” I asked

“It’s very simple,” says he, “I try to make sure my life outside of work and my life at work resemble one another, that there isn’t much difference between the two states of existence. I don’t break a sweat at work and I don’t break a sweat at home – that’s what I call a work-life balance.

So whether I’m on holidays or here at the depot, whether it be Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday, it’s all the same to me. I don’t suffer the Monday blues, the post-holiday depression or anything like that. Life is a seamless garment lived at the same pace.

If Paschal Donohoe says I should work ’till I’m 80 it won’t matter a curse to me, I’ll just keep plodding along in second gear, like the Duracell bunny.”

Now that’s a man after my own heart.

Read more

Maurice Hickey: Call for a ceasefire

Thinkin’ outside the box