Retirement Leaving Do

Work leaving dos. Funny things. Retiring is another strange thing. Can't imagine what it must be like to wake up the day after leaving a job you've worked in for 20 years and realise that you have nothing to do today. Must be strange. Unless of course its like a great weight lifted.

Librarians - often quiet people. I'm not naturally a quiet person. I don't wear grey cardigans and glasses. Oh no. Actually I do wear glasses. I try to steer clear of cardigans though.

I've got a head full of stereotypes and I've worked with librarians for years. They are not all true but sometimes slightly. Tonight there were some definite librarian-types about.

My boss was a librarian and he's just retired. The do was in one of the libraries. Nobody did the music, which was sort of a shame. But the food and drink was plentiful. In the speaches one of his colleagues made a joke about his favourite colour being beige. They even baked him a beige cake. There were lots of long bobs with fringes, some dodgy dentistry and some not-terribly-modern-glasses but nobody had resorted to spectacle chains.

I used to work with a librarian who had been demoted after he threw a telephone at a colleague in a fit of rage. He was moved to another site. He wore the same sweater for a whole year. It had a hole in it slightly off centre toward the bottom. And when he got stressed he put his finger in his mouth and bit down on his knuckle. Funny though, when on form. The woman he threw the phone at was also a librarian - spiteful and bossy, would sit in the office and fart silently but deadly enough to evacuate the room. Then there was the woman who I was certain did her makeup on the train because it was usually all over the place, until one day I got into work early and bumped into her in the ladies leaning over the sink to see into the mirror and still making a absolute mess. Oh and the woman who's ambition was to be a librarian from the age of 11. I always struggled with the thought of what do you do when you've achieved all your ambitions?


(With apologies to all librarians, especially the ones I know and love.)