I’m sure there are many here who aren’t able to buy hifi on a whim. Having to save for months, maybe years to be able to afford their hearts desire.
There is a misplaced feeling of superiority that permeates here and does nothing but alienate those with less financial advantage.
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Very true
Not sure I am with you on this Ray. I am sure I am more financially challenged than many here but I will always celebrate their talent and hard work. I love seeing their systems in System Pics. Success should be a positive always.
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If people ar econsiderrign second careers after working, I’d certainly encourage some of you to consider taking a non-executive role in the NHS. You sit on the board, help the strategy, ask the daft questions, offer challenge and support - and they are keen to get people from other backgrounds and not just medical or financial into the system. Yes, the NHS is frustrating, but it is possible to make a significant difference to the services in your local area. It’s also paid - (£12-15k p.a. for a day or so a week plus some evenings reading), and it helps to be reasonably good with a variety of people. But if you have had an interesting career and gained some valuable experience, then look on the Public Appointments website from gov.uk and give it a try.
I’m still working (as an academic) but also do a non-exec role in a mental health trust and did one in an acute trust before that. Boards are looking to diversify in both ethnic mix, gender and diversity of talents, and I find it interesting, challenging and useful…
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I’m amazed there are no farmers here. I’ve become used to agricultural farming being a retirement goal where I am (livestock is a young mans game. Too many early mornings and no days off).
It’s basically the dream for many here. I was too young to think about second life careers when I left the UK so never really had a sense of where it was in my fellow countrymen’s psyche. Not seeing it crop up makes me think it might still have too much of a Cold Comfort Farm image back in the UK. Certainly dreary days hearding cows for milking as a lad were dismal. But if I get the kids off to Uni, I’d love to be a herb farmer.
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“Crop up”…see what you did there.!
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That sounds like a great blueprint for retirement, especially for a music lover.
After nearly fifty years doing “digital electronics design/engineering” - of which 44 would be considered as “gainful employment”, the only second career I want is “hifi operations manager”!
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Qualified as a Medical Laboratory Scientific Officer, now renamed as Biomedical Scientist in Medical Microbiology but spent all my first life, starting, part owning and running a diagnostic veterinary laboratory, one of only a handful in he UK with my wife and a Vet partner…
In 2007 after 21 years some-one made us an offer we couldn’t refuse, we didn’t and we sold the lab.
It was too early for me / us to ‘retire’ so in order to extend the pension pots Glass of White now gardens for a number of people and I turned what started out as a hobby - dry stone walling into a 2nd life job, over the years this has expanded into more hard landscaping ie can you build me a fence / patio / deck / pond you name it.
Hence the profile pictures.
We are fortunate in that we don’t have to work full time but we made a pact that if anyone offers to pay us to do something we’d take it.
It allows us to play with the dressage horses (there goes the 500 series HIFi😁), I’ve competed at PSG level, and I am currently a British Dressage list 5 judge and training towards moving up the lists.
We also volunteer at a number of British Eventing Horse Trials, either as fence judges, in the scoring team and primarily as Chief Dressage Steward (this involves everything from booking judges to setting up and putting the arenas away at the end of the completion and running the team of other volunteers getting competitors in the right place at the right time for their tests) for Frickley Park Horse Trials.
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Wow, fascinating journey and diverse interests.
Thankyou
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Interestingly there are quite a number of ex police working professionally or as hobbyists in dry stone walling I can think of 5 in my local branch of the DSWA.
Also Frickley has pretty much all of the South Yorks Mounted Police as volunteers or running a phase, and 3 of the dressage judges i have got booked for 2021 are ex police 1 x Inspector 1 Chief Inspector
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i worked for 50 years. and retired at 65. after taking jam sandwiches for lunch at work for 50 years i have had enough. my mother used to make them. and when i got married
my wife made them. i was a bookseller. and then a civil servant
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You quit your job and retired because you were fed up with your wife’s jam sandwiches? 
Is she that difficult to let down gently and ask for cheese and Branston pickle instead?
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Seemingly surprisingly to some, it’s even possible for a man to make his own sandwiches. Who’d have guessed?
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I love a good jam butty still even at my age, it must be a yorkshire thing
I had no grand plan in life. Just seemed to follow a line of least resistance. Left school, applied for and got a job as a civil servant. Worked for the govt for 25 years, latterly mostly in personnel and training roles.
Applied for voluntary redundancy in 1997, moved north and worked for 10 years as a freelance executive coach whilst managing a 12 mile, double bank trout and salmon fishery for 17 years (it’s a long story - I don’t fish).
I decided to finally retire in 2008, but one of my last coaching clients asked me to help him establish an applied ecology practice and work part time as HSEQ manager. Still there and we now have 10 staff with a large client portfolio of major civil engineering, construction and utility companies.
Challenge is to work out what you will find rewarding to do, then identify the options, steps needed to realise that goal.
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Well, not being able to get a hair cut and the way my bloody hair’s been growing
Think I’ll get a second career as a Scarecrow 
Lyndon
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Worked in advice work/welfare rights all my life. Retrained as a network engineer doing my MCPs/MCSE outside of work time about 17 years ago. Hoped for career change wasn’t practical but weirdly my odd skill set has allowed my current role to morph so as to include both things.
You wouldn’t know this reading on here my posts about trying to set up a wireless bridge when sheer exhaustion brought me into total brain fart territory.
Over the last decade I’ve also volunteered as a committee member for Wrexham AFC DSA; been a founding member of an award winning transport accessibility group and volunteered as a benefits adviser for two national charities related to my eye health. Immensely rewarding.
Edited to add that I also do some work with second year medical students at the University of Manchester and for a period did some work encouraging fifth year medical students into post graduate genomics study as well as doing a pile of publicity for Cameron’s 100,000 Genome Project.
One forgets the sheer volume of things it’s possible to constructively fill your time with.
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i asked the manager at sainsburys if i could have my hair cut under the bacon slicer.
he said they have no insurance cover
the good lady cannot stand the smell of pickle.