After just five years of employment, my retirement is a very long way off – about four decades off, actually, which, if I think about it for too long, will make me collapse with despair.
I look forward to my future spent tucked up on a beachside deck chair, reading a book with a packet of Hobnobs; my 6am alarm clock and packed tube a distant nightmare. “We can paint in the afternoons,” fantasises my best friend, a civil servant who will retire early and also plans to live in the dream beach house. “And we should have at least three dogs.”
