The Retiree

Between the innocence of infancy and the recklessness of humanity lies a wild-eyed unsung hero known as a retiree. Retirees can be found in bars, in arguments, in bed, in debt, intoxicated and sometimes in their garden. They are tall, thin, dark, fair, but never normal. They hate paying tax on a pension they’ve already paid tax on. And they hate that their offspring will have to pay Inheritance Tax on money that has already been taxed. They also hate sympathy, by the way. They don’t like being old in the first place, so the last thing they want is fucking sympathy.

Contrary to popular opinion, they DO believe everyone could have survived what they went through, but a lot of people chose not to take that path. Their choice, their loss.

Watchful as a cornered ghost, a retiree is a psychoanalyst with a battered old copy of Reader’s Digest on the table, Don Quixote when helping an old lady onto the bus, the saviour of mankind with his back teeth awash and democracy personified when dealing with the authorities, whatever form these ‘authorities’ take.

That last is a lie. He’s hardly the embodiment of courtesy when writing to his local MP, most letters of which go unanswered because his MP knows it could damage his career to agree that the retiree is making a compelling augment, for which he has no answer.

The retiree hates the idea of digital I.D., cashless society (CBDC), bank closures, self-checkouts at supermarkets and Social Credit Scoring, but knows full well this current government – despite their lies – is planning on sneaking them all in surreptitiously. He doesn’t believe a word the Labour party says. NOT ONE SINGLE WORD. Sociopaths the lot of them, with a habit of pathological lying and absolutely no conscience.   

No one is subjected to so much abuse or wrongly accused so often or misunderstood by so many people as the retiree. He speaks his truth quietly and never backs down. And that pisses off a lot of people.

On a daily basis he converses with people who are convinced they know more about retirement than he will ever know. He can never be right. When he simplifies, he's patronising. When he gets a little technical, he's talking over their heads. Half the people wonder what he does with his time while the other half think they know exactly what he does but are convinced he's doing it wrong! He has more critics than Donald Trump, Keir Starmer and Gianni Infantino combined.

Even though he’s past his best, he’s still convinced that Giorgia Meloni and Marine le Penn fancy him.

A writer is a provider when migrants and those lazy fuckers on benefits want his money, and a parasite when he wants everything he’s entitled to (pension, older person’s bus pass, senior railcard, fee prescriptions) and he HATES that this shit government continues to change the pension age (something he understands quite well as theft) and that they insist on terming his pension a ‘benefit’. It’s not a benefit; it’s a savings account he’s paid into his whole life.

The retiree has the patience of Job, the honesty of a fool, and the heaven-sent ability to laugh at himself.

At varying stages throughout the week, the retiree will feel irritable, confident, tired, emotional, intelligent, articulate and isolated. Until finally he is weary of the whole human bloody race.

I know because I am one of these great men.

Copyright © Karl Wiggins