18 Daily Express Thursday, August 8, 2019
DX1STBy Jane Warren
WHILE son Boris is rather
busy back home, Stanley
Johnson cheerfully flies
the flag Down Under,
assuring hosts all will
be well.
Visiting Western
Australia, Johnson senior,
pictured, acknowledges
Boris faces a “dauntingly large task to
deliver Brexit,” before confidently adding:
“But he’ll do it. He’s a rugger player – he’ll
charge through.”
ALTHOUGH these days an outspoken
critic of old pal Boris (they were on
opposing ends of the referendum battle),
combative Tory veteran Sir Nicholas
Soames rejects detractors’ claims the PM
is “masquerading” as his grandfather Sir
Winston Churchill.
“I absolve him of that particular charge,”
Soames announces at the Edinburgh
Fringe. While insisting he’s still “not
pleased” with Boris, Sir Nicholas says: “I
think he admires my grandfather greatly...
he sees the great lessons to be learned
from Churchill’s life.”
LEFT to lead election flops Change UK after
high-profile colleagues jumped ship, former
Tory Anna Soubry isn’t a good advert for
defecting from the main parties.
Senior Labour politician and Corbyn
critic Mary Creagh explains she prefers to
keep fighting inside her party’s ranks,
cheekily reminding Anna on Radio 4: “You
left yours... look what happened.”
OUTSPOKEN DJ Danny Baker, fired by the
BBC over a “racism” row after the birth of
royal baby Archie, confirms he’s reuniting
with the corporation’s highest-paid star.
He and Gary Lineker will shortly return
for a new series of popular podcast
Behind Closed Doors.
It’s not been heard since Baker was axed
by the BBC in May for
tweeting a picture of a
chimpanzee in a bowler
hat, after the arrival of
Harry and Meghan’s son.
Broadcaster Danny,
pictured, denied racism
claims, calling it a
“genuine, naive and
catastrophic mistake”.
Lineker, whose production company
makes the online show (not connected to
the BBC) was noticeably quiet when it
came to defending his pal at the time.
As he earns £1.75million a year courtesy
of the corporation, how will the Match of
the Day host cope when fiery Baker starts
taking aim at his Broadcasting House
paymasters?
FLAMBOYANT actor Danny John-Jules,
among last year’s Strictly Come Dancing
contestants, pokes fun at the “Strictly
Curse” affecting the marriages and
relationships of celebrities on the show.
“It’s a bit comical really,” responds the
Red Dwarf star and married father of two.
“Next thing, you’ll be throwing bones on
the floor, dancing round the fire, trying to
get rid of the curse!”
“DELIGHTED” to be reopening Croydon’s
Ashcroft Playhouse in honour of late
mentor Dame Peggy Ashcroft,
Oscar-winner Dame Judi Dench has never
forgotten one piece of advice.
Seeing a tearful young Judi after
she’d been picked on by a director, Dame
Peggy told her co-star: “Never let them
see you cry.”
HICKEY
How to have a
L
IKE MANY baby boomers, Celia
Dodd was dreading the idea of
retirement. An endless snooze-fest
of afternoon TV and bowls-playing
boredom seemed to beckon. Giving
up paid employment should be one
of the most eagerly-anticipated times of
our lives, an exciting era of new possibili-
ties, but many find it unbelievably tough.
This is because so many of us are ill-pre-
pared for the radical change retirement
brings. Approaching her own retirement,
Celia decided to write a handbook on
coping with leaving work, which we will be
serialising in the Express.
Not Fade Away – named after the Rolling
Stones’ 1964 hit – has been described by
actress and comedian Helen Lederer, 64,
as “a definitive and rather rocking
go-to guide”.
“Retirement has got such a bad name,”
explains 65-year-old writer and editor
Celia. “These days, no one wants to admit
they are retiring or retired. We are expected
to be busy, not passive, and while being
busy is an accolade, being retired is not.”
In fact, she became so determined to
have a proactive, fulfilling and fruitful
retirement that last September she bravely
enrolled herself and her husband, Tom, on
a four-week pre-retirement course – an
event she discovered while writing her
book.
“When you are married, retirement is a
joint project,” she says firmly. Tom, a
professor of molecular biology, is three
years younger than Celia and won’t retire
until 2023.
“This is a bridging time for us,” explains
Celia. “And the course really helped us
focus our ideas, and work out what we
want to do together and separately.
“I want to do courses, make music, do
volunteering and join a writers group,
while he is looking forward to not having
to commute.
“As a freelance writer I am used to
unstructured time and making my own
routines. He is used to working in a vast
teaching hospital where he comes across a
huge range of people. For Tom, retirement
will be more a cliff edge than a gradual
easing in. It is a huge difference.”A
ND this change in identity goes
to the heart of the issue.
“Retirement is such a dreadful
word, which is a shame really, but your
attitude to it reveals, in fact, how you feel
about yourself.
“When I started out, I really was dread-
ing it myself. It had very negative feelings
for me personally. My father’s retire-
ment was very sad, and that has
haunted my life, really.”
Celia’s father Cyril was 40
when she was born and he
suffered from depression
when she was a teenager.
This became more
acute at around the time
she was leaving home
and going to university,
and just as he was contem-
plating his forthcoming life
as a reluctant retiree.
“He had been a great dad,who used to love playing tennis
and was great fun, but he
lived through his work –
like a lot of men. And he
was not able to ever find a
new purpose.
“It was really hard. For
him, it was a big readjust-
ment and a step too far.
“It is hard to find
meaning outside work
when you have thrown
everything into it and your
identity is so bound up in it.”
Life was easier her mother Kathleen;
the sort of person who was able to take
daily pleasure in simple things while doing
her best to buoy up her troubled husband.
“She was very positive, sympathetic and
empathic, and she tried to get him
interested in things, but I just accepted that
it was a sad situation that wasn’t going to
change and that he wasn’t going to last
very long.”
She was right. At the age of just 69,
Celia’s father died.
Celia is now just four years younger than
he was then and she still finds the distress
of his twilight years painful to discuss.
“It is a really sad story,” she says. “And it
made me think retirement was pretty much
not fun at all.”
However, in a bid to escape this looming
shadow over her own future and
reframe her attitudes, she was
determined to find out how
other people approach
retirement.
She was already the
author of a guide to
empty-nesting – the crisis
of the change in identity
which is often
experienced when
children leave home.
Writing about the next big
life challenge, retirement, felt
like a natural progression. “Iloved having children so it was
difficult and challenging
when they left, and I
missed the relationship
with each one.
“I wrote that book
when I was in the middle
of it and Paul, my eldest
son, was leaving at the
age of 19,” she explains.
Paul is now a 34-year-old
surgeon. Celia’s younger son
Adam, 32, is a Lloyds
underwriter, and her daughter
Alice, 27, is a designer.
“Writing that book was a way of coping
by talking to other parents, and it was very
much the same when I was writing the
book on retirement.
“Having done so it changed my thinking
and I now feel, ‘Bring it on!’ You have these
lightbulb moments when you talk to other
people and it suddenly opens a window on
how great it can be.”O
NE standout interview was with a
retired Irish headteacher who
had a unique way of viewing her
own retirement.
“She said, ‘My mind has been unleashed
for deeper things.’ I loved that,” says Celia.
“There is a lot of research that says that
people become a lot more spiritual as they
get older, look into themselves and find
what has meaning.
“And with retirement generally there is
more curiosity and the sense of the start of
a big adventure, whereas with an empty
nest it is a lot more emotionally charged
and full of regret. But both offer a gaping
hole with the potential of a new creative
space.
“One’s identity shifts hugely when
children leave home, just as you feel
redundant when you leave work. However,‘We’re
expected to
be busy not
passive and while
being busy is an
acolade beingretired is
not’‘People
become a lot
more spiritual as
they get older, look
into themselves
and find what has
meaning’RELUCTANT RETIREE:
Celia’s father Cyril,
pictured with Celia, her
mum Kathleen and her
older sister Valerie