A new start after 60: I worked in a tiny office for 30 years – then I took up falconry and am out in rain, shine and cold’

Chok’s away … Mitch Law with his Harris hawk, Chokky, near his home in Cheshire. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

For nearly 30 years, Mitch Law went to work in the same office – four metres square, with a window that overlooked a car park. As an IT manager in Warrington, he wasn’t isolated. Besides, his wife Bernice was a colleague. But Law spent his working life tethered to a desk in a room like a box.

When they both applied for redundancy, Bernice was turned down. “But for me, they went, ‘Mitch, oh right, 28 years – yeah, byeee!’”