It has been a poignant month for me. I’ve retired from the ‘day job’, what I described as the job of a lifetime and some called the Best Job in the Island. So there have been a whole string of ‘lasts’; the last committee meeting, the last management meeting, the last monthly report, the last appraisal, the last niggling bit of admin I could do without.
In what I grandly called ‘Farewell Tour 2019’ I embarked on a series of nostalgia trips to picturesque parts of Guernsey and historic sites, plus a fortnight of parties, informal drinks and dinners with friends. No-contact policy be damned, there were a fair number of hugs with my colleagues and the odd tear shed or held back. On one level it was great fun, but on another level the ‘Farewell Tour’ was an act of bravado. Nobody likes good things to end, but if they continue indefinitely they become stale. We want to say ‘that was a good book’ and set it down, ‘that was a good meal’ and push the plate away, satisfied. I read a piece recently about the ‘reverse bucket list’ which is essentially ‘things I no longer need to do before I die.’ I no longer need to be a museum director; done that, tick box.
As a delivery truck missed me by inches on my last day but one, I was reminded of the familiar movie trope of the ‘one last job’. Baby Driver – one last job and he’s free. Unforgiven, The Wild Bunch, The Town, Memphis Belle, we could go on. It often ends badly – or ironically. Sometimes we cannot let go of the job – as in The New Centurions. You almost want to call ‘retire now!’ to Robert Duvall in Colors or ‘Just keep down’ (in German) to Paul in All Quiet on the Western Front. In the end we want to be Shane, riding off into the sunset or Gary Cooper simply laying down his gun and his badge, job done, and walking away. Yes there were things left unfinished, but after 50 exhibitions, and the same number of big events would my life be better if I completed 52 or 54? It was time to go.
Of course I made that quip about badge and gun in my farewell speech and indeed symbolically removed my ‘Head of Heritage Services’ badge; made all the more symbolic by the fact I had almost always forgotten to wear it for the past 13 years, and indeed once accidentally put on the ‘Head of Nerdery’ one of my staff made up on Big Geekend.
Never renowned for keeping a low profile, I was allowed to indulge and have fun. I fired the noonday gun dressed as Sir Isaac Brock, and received a Brock-themed leaving card as well as an amusing dress-up doll of myself as either Brock or an Archaeologist.
Plenty of cards, prezzies and a bunch of flowers from the Latvian consul decked my desk. A lovely speech was delivered by colleague not renowned for speech-making, who I won’t name because he isn’t on facebook and won’t read this anyway. You will not be surprised to learn that a fair amount of alcohol was consumed over those two weeks. Indeed you might be disappointed if it hadn’t.
There was also the fun of the last Press interview, and the last trio of radio interviews where in the end I decided to pull punches and not make any political points about the state of Heritage. I slipped a few lines into my closing speech but in the end I decided to go out on a high. No drama, no gunfight, no ironic encounter with a delivery van. I rode into the sunset, or rather sailed into the dawn.
PS. I’m not retired from writing. An end is simply a new beginning.
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