Retirement

My father retired far too early. He's seen here working in the garden of the first house my parents owned after returning from East Africa, so he would have been about 58. He came back to England after almost four decades....

....of working in ports along the east coast of Africa, starting in a ships' agency in 1923 at Port Sudan on the Red Sea and finishing....

....in late 1961 in Mombasa, by which time he was managing director of the African Mercantile's business in East Africa - their imposing headquarters, built while my father was in charge, is just beyond the railway bridge on the right.

Although he tried to find employment in the UK the jobs didn't work out for him, so he spent his mornings working in the gardens of the various houses my parents had, after which, around midday each weekday, he would set off for the pub. He spent most of the afternoon and evening sitting in this chair, reading the Daily Telegraph, watching cricket on the television - he stopped watching football as he saw the game as being ruined by its commercialisation - and being looked after by my mother.

This regime obviously suited him as he lived to be 86, but there was a price to be paid. For much of the time he was bored. I recall sitting with him in the Blue Boar in Maldon one lunchtime, enjoying a pint or two of Adnam's bitter, while my father reminisced - until suddenly he turned to me and said, "Life owes me nothing." I think it was his way of saying that he was ready for its end.