Are retired people 'much busier than they have ever been?'

Do retired people always say that they are 'busier than they have ever been' just because, poor things, they are so old that they just take much longer to do everything and are more inefficient? Thus getting up in the morning takes them twice as long to get dressed because now, instead of putting on their socks by balancing on one foot and pulling a sock onto the other, they now have to sit on the bed and laboriously lift one foot up and slowly, slowly poke a toe (chiropodised of course) into the sock, wriggle and push it until it fits, and then lift the other foot up (after a brief pause for a little rest) and....well...ditto....

Do they also need more tea and general refreshments because of their low level of energy as retired people? That of course would take longer as they cannot now easily reach the shelf where the cups are and have to get a small stool to stand on, and of course their balance is not so good so it takes a while of holding onto various shelves and counters to get there, and then they decide they had better move everything to make it easier (another three quarters of an hour gone)? Moreover they are more finicky about not filling the kettle more full than the cups of tea they are about to consume and thus spend time finding their reading glasses so that they can see on the indicator on the side of the kettle just how full it is?

Then do they walk slower? Do they find it harder to 'catch on?' so conversations are three times as long as they try to understand what the hell someone means? Partly through bad hearing, but also because the world has moved on and vocabulary with it (what is all this 'dissing' and 'shanking' and usb-ing, downloading, uploading etc)?

Then of course they rant more at the television, the unfairness of the world, taxes, women who push into queues etc which all takes time previously used in writing reports, making business calls or, lets be honest, standing by the coffee machine having a chat. No wonder they have no time to sort out the garden!

Then medicines. All retired people need copious amounts of pills. This entails finding the reading glasses to read the labels on the bottles, counting out the relevant pills, finding the glass to fill with water, contemplating the pill prior to ingesting it, swallowing the water, rinsing out the glass, drying the glass, putting the glass away, putting the pills away, losing the reading glasses, finding them, putting them in a safe place.....All things no working person has time for.

Then what about communications? Retired people by their very definition have far less communications aimed at them (well, they all are either medical, insurance or holidays, but certainly a more limited range) and yet they make more of them - for a start their e-mail keeps on breaking down mysteriously, and then equally mysteriously righting itself, and they are helpless until the magic has occured. Then they have to go through all the business of finding their reading glasses again. Then they always immediately lose whatever they have written on the e-mail (that key on the right is the DELETE button you know, not backspace), and have to do it all over again. Then they get distracted by all the spam since they are unable ever to work out how to just junk it and often believe that you must reply POLITELY to all those young men trying to sell them books on how to age gracefully.

Thus we see that retired people are more busy than they have ever been but that is only because they are slower and more inefficient. But correspondingly look at how happy they are! Why are they happy? They are happy because they are busier than they have ever been! Without anyone breathing down their neck criticising their poor time-keeping, tardiness, rubbish work, inefficient meeting management, and moreover they have the pleasant drip, drip, drip of a pension into their bank account without having to experience any of those unpleasant things!! This is heaven indeed.

Also, let it not be forgotten that all those things that in youth make people unhappy - such as not enough fun/alcohol/sex/money/friends/travel etc - no longer exist for the retired person because every single part of them has either slowed down or lost its tolerance for excess. Look at our famous OAP rock stars (Mick Jagger springs to mind) they no longer classify themselves as hell raisers. They have lost the urge...and the energy..and you can see why......

So ladies and gentleman I say to you - do not fear retirement, except in one respect, if you think you are busy now you will be far, far busier then....and you will have to be in bed by 10.00 to get your beauty sleep and give you the energy to find your reading glasses for the twentieth time. Just make sure your neighbours are old too - you won't want to be woken up by drunken shouts as they return from the pub at 11.30 which will involve you in a whole lot of laborious letter writing to the local council. Mind you, that will keep you busy.