Magic/Crosswords (April 2026 theme)

Nothing quite prepares you for retirement, or the act of retiring, being as fraught as it actually is – at least in my case and experience. I suppose there have been subliminal warnings, the main one being that I have managed to avoid stepping over the threshold for about a decade longer than most. It can’t just have been about the money or the need to think of oneself as indispensable; I guess there must also have been a fear of stepping into the unknown, a relinquishing of what has been the fallback answer to the question of one’s identity. “I am a CFO or Chief Financial Officer” rather than I am me and I am…..what? As an aside, associates in the past have insisted that the initials were really FPO – or Fun Prevention Officer, something I could have considered a compliment in times gone by.

There have been other alarm bells over the last year. My wife suffered under the same indispensability condition. In her case, there was probably more justification. She still gets more calls from head-hunters than I do – and we are both now into or approaching the second half of our eighth decades. With her hallmark ruthlessness (not for nothing was she known as Atilla the Hen in work circles), she decided over a year ago that she needed to apply this to the person she saw in the mirror and duly sacked herself from taking on any more tilts at business – or public sector - windmills. I would rather like to think that had she still been operational, the recent debacle over a certain ambassadorial appointment would have been strangled at conception – never mind birth.

The downside of this has been her need to replicate her day-to-day absorption in other areas. This is not good news on the home front. It is double bad news if we are both of us wandering around looking for other activities to fill the hitherto fully absorbed day. At this point, I should mention that I have wondered if the jury is still out on my actually stepping over the retirement threshold, but I suspect it is close to coming back with a unanimous verdict, which is firmly in the “yes, you are” camp. Too many promises made, and the prospect of what is actually a lunch to mark the event next week to duck back from the doorway now.

The possibility of looking ahead into a future of Werthers Originals and quite a lot of Cross Words is not exactly the kind of magic that either of us wish to conjure up. But perhaps we are starting to slide down some kind of a slope – but don’t mention pipe and slippers, please. We both note the pleasure, rapidly becoming the necessity, of a post-brunch nap. But even this has its potential downsides.

In my case, I recently woke from what had become a deep afternoon slumber with an oppressive weight on my chest. So oppressive that breathing had become difficult. Always the hypochondriac, my immediate fear was that this was the heart attack that was about to end my retirement early. The weight made breathing difficult, as did the apparent muffler across my mouth, filtering any air that I could inhale through a thick mat of material. Panic set in. Almost immediately relieved by the removal of both weight and muffler, normal service seemed to resume. The family cat had followed my example in falling asleep – on my chest and across my mouth – and, on perceiving movement, had shifted alertly to my side in the hope that I should shortly get to my feet, trudge downstairs and use my opposable thumbs as nature had intended. In short, cut open the waiting packet of cat food and feed her. This could be regarded as a new role in life – butler to the cat. But I am not so sure it is beneficial to her. Now that we are both at home and responding to her blandishments, she has gained about 1 kg in weight. Slapped wrists from the vet.

Part of the problem, for both of us, is that while employed in the outside world, one can hide from bigger decisions regarding one’s real life. There is always something urgent to do “at work,” so any really tough life decisions can be conveniently hidden away behind that façade. Now the façade is dropping, or has dropped, away. We need to face up to the “What do we want to be when we grow up” question. Fortunately, some of the big decisions have been progressing slowly over the years; we knew they were there and had started to move on them. But now we need to finalise them. There remain diversions. Crosswords; Sudokus; Codewords; Panagrams. More exercise to maintain muscle mass. All the clutter of telling ourselves we are keeping the brain and body active and avoiding the A and D words. But we still need to come to terms with and recognise the changed circumstances of the Magic in our lives. The next big challenge. We shall get there.

That Was Not The Plan (Feb 2026 theme)

That was not the plan. A phrase, or something similar, oft repeated in in my experience. Indeed, so often that that it has been honoured in our household by a plaque that reads:

“My life can be summed up in one sentence – that did not go as planned”

When I first saw the topic for the month I struggled to recollect when Pat might have visited us and (unkind thought) stolen the concept. But then I realised that this is a common lament and not indicative of only my efforts to struggle through life.

In business, I have had occasion to sit through a plethora of presentations from consultants all basically promising to cut costs and improve profitability. Indeed, on one grey, rainy and windswept afternoon sat in an office in Hull, I idly ran through all the savings promised over the past 2 years from such sources. It turned out that by now we should have operating at zero cost and with quadrupled sales. I can’t speak for their costs, but I am pretty darn sure that the only participants in those meetings who saw sales quadrupled were the consultants. A large percentage of the presentations were based on implementing new IT systems which promised radical change – which somehow never materialised.

Following on with the IT link (and you can debate amongst yourselves as to  whether it is IT that should get the blame) I should love to think that AI could stumble over the same kind of hurdle; but whereas basic IT stuff could usually be relied upon to fail because the gap between what the “system” could theoretically do and what its human driver could either countenance or understand of its capabilities was so huge that there was an inbuilt brake on allowing the machines to  take over. With AI, however, I sense that we may have invited the “enemy” into the camp by being flattered into teaching it how to do the work better and more consistently than any human could ever achieve – and without the need for any downtime. So, to those who delegate writing and comprehension to such a third party (Co-pilot, please tell me how to switch you off) be very careful as to what your inherent idleness is promoting. I read a recent report from the creators of AI saying that within 12 to 18 months AI would be capable of carrying out all entry-level white-collar work. At a time when there are more than a million graduates out there looking for work with only ten thousand job vacancies, this is scary stuff.

Anyway, enough of the diversion. Back to what might be the topic. This rant started with past musings on presentations from consultants. As you can imagine, such presentations gathered TLA’s (Three Letter Acronyms) like dogs used to gather fleas. But it is one SLA (Six Letter Acronym) that has always stuck with me. PPPPPP. Perfect Planning Prevents P*** Poor Performance. (I leave you to fill in the deleted expletive). This always brought a smile to my mind if not my lips for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there is never a perfect anything, let alone a perfect plan. I think that many a general in a war who has said or thought that no plan survives contact with the enemy – or, as Mike Tyson more brutally put it, every fighter has a plan until he/she gets punched in the face. Secondly, if you think that a plan will prevent poor performance – dream on. I have produced countless perfect plans on paper and on spreadsheets. They all read wonderfully well and the figures on the spreadsheets all show sales quadrupling and costs reducing to below zero. But said plans can only be realised if the people relied upon to put the plans into action are actually prepared to change their actions so that the plan can be realised. That takes leadership; with planning coming a necessary second in the equation.

But if AI takes over the planning, you only really need a few leaders capable of controlling the AI to make things change and happen. And ultimately, who is to say that there will not be an AI take over of the leaders………. now that is really scary. Time to reinforce the message to grandchildren that University degrees and huge debt burdens are not the way forward. Learn a trade that requires on the spot thinking and handiwork. And try to find a way not to rely on apps which are “free”. If you are not paying for something you are being mined for information for use by someone else – and to their advantage.

O me miserum! Rant over – for now.