Chapter 1

A Chapter by Brian

This describes the events bringing about the mid-life career change

In at the Deep End

Chapter 1

25 years ago, Eileen and I were recast in the unlikely role of travel writers. It’s not as if we were born for the job but it was more a rebirth but without the agony. No pain killers were required, but the gas and air must have been laughing gas. It was full of fun, hilarity and trepidation and the happy period of gestation lasted well over a year. The experience is buried deep somewhere in our memory cells and we have never talked about it in any detail.

People talk about a 7 year itch but this was more of a 50 year itch with ended with us heading off to the Greek island of Lesvos for a year. Unravelling the events now is easy to do without the tumbling and chaotic emotions we experienced at the time. Going out on a limb and taking a chance in life either brave or foolhardy depending on the outcome. At the time all you can do is look at scenarios, the best and the worst, and see hoe confident you feel. Our friends cautioned against it but by that time we had managed to push all those over-cautious and negative thoughts into a box and clamp the lid shut. We decided to go for it. The outcome is even more spectacular than we could have imagined in our wildest dreams, a bit like winning the travel lottery. Looking back, it hard to believe we have travelled the world, lectured on the QE2 cruise ship, written more than 50 travel guides in print format and a further 12 for digital media. The ipad and iphones weren’t even a distant dream when our travel career started and here we are selling books through them. It is true to say we are not rich but we have enjoyed an amazing quality of life.

Change needs a catalyst and the catalyst is very often some dramatic event which springs out of nowhere, totally disrupts the flow of life and leaves you thinking ‘hello, where do I go now?’ That is exactly the way it happened.

There was nothing extraordinary or very different about our earlier lives, Eileen and I came together in contemporary style from broken marriages. We met in the era before the supermarket system of internet dating. We met in the rather more sophisticated meat market system of a singles club. At least you could see people in the flesh, so to speak, and chat if you felt inclined. Speed dating didn’t figure so our relationship built up slowly. Eileen was in a better place after her break up than I was. Women were not trustworthy, I had convinced myself, and they were certain to let you down. So we were off to a slow start but, thanks to Eileen’s patience and reluctance to give up on me, we built up gradually a relationship which grew to something deeper. Even the man thing of toe nail clippings on the bedside table failed to panic her into flight. The happy days of courtship were shortly to be rocked by unpredictable events which were about to reshape our lives.

Perhaps the exploring part of my scientific mind was a shape of things to come. Some might think I was a single-minded boring old fart since I had been in the same employment with a large chemical company for 30 years. My job as a research chemist I found very fulfilling. Letting go of a problem or a challenge to me was next to impossible, everything had some sort of solution. Chemistry was nothing more than shuffling molecules around like some giant jig-saw puzzle until a picture emerged. My work had resulted in a large number of UK and worldwide patents on topics as diverse as colour photography, mining chemicals and dyestuffs which was all very satisfying.

Then it happened. One routine day working on some nicotine derivatives, I felt my chest tighten up and my breathing become difficult. With this allergic reaction I was instantly withdrawn from the laboratory and dumped in an office. I had always been a hands-on chemist so a transfer to menial work in an office went very much against the grain. It did mean my employment was secure and I couldn’t be laid off but office work was not my style. I felt at first my life had been snatched away from me and my thoughts were turbulent and confused. When the emotion of it all settled and I was able to stop looking backwards, I suddenly switched into a surge of excitement mode, recognising this was a ‘what now’ moment and ‘where do I go from here?’ If I could just engineer my escape, there were so many things I could do and I had so much to offer. My health and fitness was good, my mental energy still bubbling and I felt confident I could make my way somehow in life.

This happened in the 80’s at a time when the UK was going crazy with lay-offs and early retirement. Newspapers were blazing out headlines: ‘Everyone to Retire at 50’, ‘Not enough Work to go Around’ and all that sort of nonsense. Still, it played nicely into my hands since I was had 50 in my sights with a mere two years to get there. I was impatient now my mind was looking to the future. Life had too many exciting things to do and achieve without wishing away a couple of years so I devised a cunning plan. I volunteered for early retirement at 50 providing the company sponsored me full time at University reading botany and starting immediately. The proposal was accepted with some alacrity by the Company, after all it was an easy way out for them to solve a long term problem. So off I went as a mature student on full pay to back into the classroom with a load of 18 year olds.

Botany was not such an odd choice and there was a purpose to it. Gardening was in the blood inherited from my farther. Growing parsnips and broad beans, antirrhinums and chrysanthemums was almost second nature. In those very pleasant hours of pottering in the garden, my mind would often wander off to the Alps, to Peru or South Africa thinking about the living conditions of these plants in their natural habitats. In the years just prior to these unfolding events, Eileen and I had taken our holidays chasing flowers, particularly orchids, in the wild. So I was anxious for more knowledge but there was another thought at the back of my mind. With some qualification in Botany, I could always lead wild flower holidays for tour operator specialising in flower or natural history tours. This wasn’t a career move I had in mind just a back-up, my dreams were still on a grander scale.

Eileen’s background, on the other hand, was much more colourful. She had worn out several careers on her journey to meet me. In her early life she had trained as a classical singer and spent some time as a professional singer. She worked in council offices and for a solicitor before eventually training as a teacher. By the time we met up and were settling in a steady relationship, Eileen was fast losing her enthusiasm for teaching and realising it would be a far better job without children. In other words, she was up for change.

I would often ask my colleagues on the point of retirement about their plans for the rest of their lives. ‘Oh, I am going to redecorate the house’ was a common answer. ‘What after that?’ I would ask and this was mostly met with a blank look. I was too bursting with mental and physical energy to think that retirement was the end of the road. For me it was the beginning of a new journey. There is a world out there and opportunities waiting to be uncovered.

Retirement is a traumatic event, especially when you have been in the job for 30 years and made many friends. The transition from literally working amongst colleagues on Wednesday and starting a university course on Thursday left no room to for emotions to run riot, it was time to get your ahead around a new challenge.

Life amongst the students took years off me. If I was expecting to lead a hedonistic life style for a few years amongst hormone supercharged teenagers then those thoughts were soon dashed. The kids turned out to be dedicated and hard working. They absorbed me as one of their own, I was facing the same problems and challenges so I began to see life again through the eyes of a teenager. I remember so many of the conversations. ‘Should we go to the local pop concert’ asks one student of a friend. ‘I can’t’, replied the other, ‘I have no money.’ ‘It’s no problem, I’ll pay, my overdraft is less than yours.’

Two years passed very quickly. For me it was head down, hard work. I had a lot to catch up on. The disappointment came at the start of the third and final year. The course started out as a traditional botany course, exactly what I wanted but I was warned that it might change before the end. Unfortunately, it did change. The final year had no botany options, only genetics. This left me with a problem. The degree was of no significance since it was never my intention to use it in a professional capacity, I wanted the botany knowledge and it was clear now that I had taken as much as I could from the course. There seemed little point in pushing myself through the final year for no gain, especially now I had reached the magical age of 50 and had officially retired. There were ties left, no demands, nobody to please but myself. I opted to resign from the course which did not win me many friends from the University management. I still believe it was the right decision for me.

Cast loose now, it was the time for decisions. The boundaries of my life had been breached in so many different ways I felt no compunction about crashing down even more. We all of us build a life to suit ourselves and in doing so unconsciously erect walls and boundaries which restrain us. It is all with good intent and to make our lives more fulfilled. The garden needs looking after, it grows so quickly in June and there is so much to do we can’t possibly go away then, anyway, who will look after the pets? What about badminton on a Thursday night, I can’t miss that we have some important matches coming up and, of course, it is not the school holidays yet. So we spend our lives juggling priorities trying to keep everyone happy. You can easily find yourself in a rut, one which you have built yourself and are happy with but still hard to break. All that had been swept aside and a new future beckoned.

There had been a bug inside me for many years, stirring me and sometimes irritating me but it always stayed at the back of my mind. Subconsciously, I suspect, I kept it there out of harm’s way. One way it manifested itself was on my journey to work. I drove to work each day along the same 12 mile route, five times there and five times back every week, for almost thirty years. It was a good journey and not too arduous or stressful but eventually the mind played its own games. In my mind’s eye I could imagine the route of my journey drawn on the map of England. It would barely be a scratch; I used to think as I drove along. If it were drawn on the whole globe it would be nothing more than a microdot! Here I am, for 30 years, spending my life trapped inside a microdot when outside is a whole wide world. Now, with a freedom to choose, I realised instantly where my future lay, in travel. I was well and truly infected with the travel bug.

The last of my children was on the point of fleeing the nest and with a little financial help from Dad towards a house deposit, he was on his way. That left me with a rather large house and a very large garden. This same garden which had given me much pleasure over the years was now a millstone, holding me back. A smaller house and garden beckoned so the family home went on the market.

Eileen had not been idly waiting for me to finish, well she had in a sense, but not without purpose. Not content with her teaching position at that time, she completed a course for teaching English as a second language and moved on to take a position teaching newly arrived immigrant children. It was a new challenge and a learning experience for her. Many of the children could hardly hold a pencil let alone draw of write. For more you must wait her story.

The ‘what now’ moment had arrived and it was a question of where do we go from here. The answer came from an unexpected source. Eileen was still getting the Times Educational Supplement regularly and noticed an advert for teachers wanted in Greece to teach English.