I suppose I was quite lucky because I worked for adult social care, and I had quite a broad role. I was very involved in the work around age friendly Leeds and making Leeds the best city in the UK to grow old in that's our strap line. Prior to that I had done other work other work Around aging and old people. partly around services, partly around looking at what does living a good life mean . That was informed by some great older people in Leeds. Some of the people involved in Leeds older people forum. One of the threads that came out of those discussions was about older people and retirement. So we had a look at what had happened, including some people who ended up quite isolated and lonely where it’s been a shock to the system.

I have the theory about it, which I know is not always the same as living the life. I was Approaching 60 which is still quite a bit from retirement when I started to think about going. I was lucky because I had worked for the council for my entire adult life and ended up quite senior and had a very good pension which allowed me to go a bit earlier but I was enjoying my work so I wanted to stay a bit longer.

There were three other factors that made me think it is time to go . It sounds shocking I know, but one of them is go before you F ..K something up, but generally particularly at that level people can sometimes make quite significant mistakes so even though I didn’t think I would, which no one ever wants to think they would, that was one of the reasons. And the second one was although my personal health was alright I was aware of people who were approaching retirement or had just retired and then died or got cancer or been taken ill.

I thought well I don’t want that much as I love my work and I’ve done very well out of it I did think well I’m entitled to a few years of retirement .

The third one will it’s a bit of an odd one but I’ve just known so many people who stayed on the jobs and then became so resentful of their job and their work. For example there may have been a grievance against them, or they’ve not got a job they wanted, or their work have been taken away from them

I loved my work and generally got positive stuff back so I thought why not go at the top of your game . And weirdly it’s quite hard to go at the top of the game because that’s when it’s the most exciting but I also thought no.

So I started to say I was ready to go in a bit and I started to think about it. I was lucky because of the work I did and because of how recognised I was seen as quite important, so I did decide to stay on a couple of extra years which allowed me to work on some key pieces of work. It was really great and I had a great time and it actually reduced some of the stress that would’ve been pushing me out, whilst keeping the really positive bit. I stayed in that role for another couple of years. What I did took me up to 63, by then LCC were trying to reduce staffing .