I have been asked the question "What will you do when you retire?" many times in the last few weeks. Now the time has finally come, I have decided I would record my experiences of retirement in an occasional diary.
In fact as I write, I am not officially retired. I reached retirement age (61) on the 17th of February. However, I will not cease employment until the 3rd of March. I was, or I suppose I should say, still am an officer in the British Merchant Navy. I was an Electro-technical Officer with Blue Star Ship Management, whose parent company is Maersk. I sailed on their large container ships. My retirement brings to an end to a career which started on fishing trawlers sailing from Hull in 1964. I started as a Radio Officer and clung on through the steady erosion of the British Merchant Marine in various roles finishing as an ETO on a London registered, British officered and Filipino crewed container ship called the "Nedlloyd Hudson" My last voyage was from Europe (Hamburg Germany, Zeebrugge Belgium, Algeciras Spain) through the Suez Canal in Egypt to the Far East (Singapore, Busan Korea, Shanghai China, Hong Kong (my only port ashore), Tanjung Pelepas Malaysia back through Suez to Southampton UK where I completed the trip on the 31st of January 2007. I am now serving the leave that I earned on that trip, hence the late start to my retirement.
It is difficult when people ask how I am enjoying "being retired" My work patterns meant I served anything from 7 to 14 weeks and was home for leaves of between 5 and 10 weeks. Thus it doesn't feel any different from normal. Maybe it will creep up on me! I'll let you know.
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