Memories!

Something special for dinner tonight to help us celebrate an anniversary — ham, egg, chunky chips and cauliflower cheese!
Oh yes, and a glass of  Prosecco!
The anniversary? My iPhone tells me that it is exactly 13 years ago today that I spent my last day working with the Daily Echo and Newsquest after what seemed a lifetime.  And in hindsight it was a working lifetime.
I cannot clearly remember that last day at work, as momentous as it should have been.  Maybe tinged with a great deal of sadness as well.
because I had not intended to give up work that day, but the newspaper company generously decided that I could take the best part of a year off before my retirement.  Something that I resisted at first, but as I recall, 2003 was a year when we were blessed with a glorious summer.
My wife and I departed almost immediately for a family holiday in Italy, followed immediately by a repeat in the south of France. When we did eventually arrive home the long days of a sultry summer were still with us.
I am not sure just when it was that my view that being able to spend the best part of a year getting used to the idea of shedding the disciplines of daily working routine, before the day of formal retirement, was not such a bad idea after all.
On that day, June 12, 2003 I do remember a lunchtime beer with a retired police detective  friend, well away from the office and  come 5pm sharing another beer with a business pal in Romsey. There had been a presentation to mark my departure at the office during the afternoon, with a framed mock front page of the newspaper handed to me — that headed ‘The Long and Winding Road’ with an image of me at the wheel of a Jag still hangs on a wall at home.

A sad day perhaps . . . or did it simply symbolise a change in life’s pattern?