A Certain Age.

Hi Friends and Followers.

On my Facebook page this morning, the picture below appeared.

What are your memories of typing classes? I remember it well, we had a Miss Lawrence for our classes and oh boy was she strict.  Asdfg. Now repeat she would bark. We would also have to type with the keys covered arghhh. I cannot remember what typewriters we used, but clearly those lessons taught me nothing much because I still only use two fingers to type.

This got me thinking about school days. I went to three schools. Two Infants schools and one Secondary school and I pretty much enjoyed my time at them all.

I was only at my first school for a short period of time, because there were not enough children attending, so the school was closed and we had to move to the school in the next village. The first school is now a dwelling. My second Infant school is still going strong and has expanded. We had a lovely head mistress I remember. Then it was time to go to secondary school and that was a huge shock, because of the size of the place and all the extra children and teachers. I did enjoy school even though I was not particularly academic, I am more of a hands on person. I had some nice enough teachers, although when you are being taught by them you do not always see it that way. Mr Pascoe was my English teacher, he was very much old school, so girls were known by their first name and boys by their surname. Mr Salter was my Maths teacher and try as he may, he could not teach me algebra, even with extra lessons, it went in one ear and out of the other and over my head. French was Mr Green, History Mr Rogers, Drama Mr Jones, PE Mrs Woolly, Music Mr Sawyer. My favourite teacher was Miss Hack who taught me Cookery in which I got an A+ and I will always be thankful to her for her support. I am still in touch with school friends, who are scattered across the world. I do not think I would want to be at school today, there are to many pressures on children and yet I am sure we thought the same when we were at school.

So here I am now in my mid Fifties and I have not done bad for myself, even though I did not do that well in my CSE exams. Once you hit Fifty some think you are over the hill and so you get adverts for incontinence pants, wrinkle creams, stair lifts and walking sticks. Fifty plus is most definitely not over the hill and I personally do not require any of the aforementioned just yet. I do not dye my hair, or need plastic surgery. I recently sent for my Pension Forecast and was told I need to pay in for another six years if I want to get the full pension. WHAT……. A few years ago, I was told I was fully paid up, but because of changes in the rules, I now have to give the government more money or be penalised when I retire at the age of 66, which should be in 2029. Oh my goodness, that seems like such a long time off, but it is actually getting closer and quicker than I think. There is actually petition ongoing to get the women’s retirement age bought back down to 60. The campaign has been started by Margaret Rimington . I am lucky that I do not work, I live off my husbands pension and we manage just fine, but why should women have to wait for their pension? After all many have worked all their lives to retire at 60 and then to enjoy what is left of their lives doing the things they want to do. The further away they push the retirement age, the more likely many women will not live long enough to receive their pension. I have signed the petition. Not just for me but for every woman out there.