September 2007

What does retirement entail? An answer from a long line of Bowlers

In his feature article for The Australian (some time in 2006), Richard Nile put forth the argument that retired Humanities scholars are 'highly credentialled (sic) and very able former salaried professionals' who 'have the potential to positively redesign national debates and discussions.' Nile looks forward to these contributions from those once salaried, now comfortably well-off thinkers who are free to research and write whatever they choose. Initially, I found this a wee bit offensive. Don't young(ish) voices have anything to offer? Or is it that we feel restrained in what we are able to say publicly? Now, don't get me wrong. I have never believed in the retirement of able bodies and minds that do not seek to be "put out to pasture," though I suspect if you asked a factory worker if they would prefer work to retirement ... well, I am still not sure, but I suspect the free time might be enjoyable. Maybe this is a class thing. And, for the intellectual class, today, retirement entails more time to do what was always the desirable aspect of their work in the first place.

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In my family, well my father's side at least, retirement meant one thing: Bowls (always with a capital B). This is what I have learnt to associate with retirement - regularly dressing in white and being a member of a club. In other words, Nile's revolutionary 'free radicals,' those retired academics with an enormous amount of grey matter and (clichéd) hair, just don't sit with my understanding of the retired individual in Australia. Now, ok, I am only 37 years old, and I am just now starting to think about a career, but when I read Nile's piece on retirement for academics, it got me thinking. Is retirement really about relaxation or doing the job you always wanted to do without the pressures from "above?" Are they the same thing? I don't know. Frankly, I just want a job at the moment. But you'll have to forgive my desire to tell you about what retirement entailed for my working-class family (hey, I have some free time for this!)

My great-auntie died in her late-eighties after falling down bus steps in the city. This woman, who looked 60-something and not 80-something, swore to ... well, she was agnostic so let's say she swore to ... no-one in particular, that three things kept her youthful: beer, Bowls and baby oil. She drank beer every day straight from the stubby, never in a glass. "Why move it from one glass to another?" I remember her asking a male relative who had the guts to ask Mary Kelso. The baby oil went on her face, I presume, and not the bowling ball (that, no doubt, would be dubiously legal).

Mary fell in love during WWII with a married Yankee. Fifteen years later, after she waved off his ship, he came back to her after divorcing his wife. All I remember of Uncle Elmer is that he was a Yankee and he played the organ (he died when I was ten years old.) But when, every now and then, I'm looking out the window of a bus or a train, I like to try and imagine a young, robust Mary (6 ft tall, scary to most men) and a dashing, but morally torn, short Yankee sitting in New Farm Park in the 1940s, holding hands and pondering the impracticalities of their love.

Things happen, and as a consequence they spent the rest of their lives together. I don't know what Uncle Elmer's "Wills and Burke" was, but I think Aunty Mary worked the totes at the races. I am, however, sure of something: her retirement involved one passion. Bowls. She used to play at Clayfield and at Sandgate. As a child I remember constantly looking out the window of my Grade Five classroom at Sacred Heart, Sandgate, searching for her distinctive frame - tall woman in white, dyed brown short hair under her hat, long, brown legs. Often, I'd see her orange Datsun (Daddos were a Kelso favourite) parked at the side of the green. And sometimes, I'd see a tall woman in white whacking the chest of some fella before they bent over for a laugh. "There's Aunty Mary," I'd think to myself. It was really comforting as a kid to look out a school window and see "one of my people" living it up.

In my late-teens, I came up from the Gold Coast, where my family was holidaying, to go to my part-time retail job. Unfortunately, I had sun-stroke so I couldn't go to work. I stayed with Auntie Mary in her widow's unit in Clayfield. Only two memories remain: the risqué novels (Harem stuff) that she had in her spare bedroom where I was recuperating and Auntie Mary kissing my cheek, dressed in full whites, saying "I'm off to Bowls love. See you when I get back." This woman never had children of her own, but when her sister died from renal failure, she reared little Yvonne as her own. She made me feel so safe there. And welcome. I guess that's what families can do for you as a kid. Looking back, the strangeness of realising that my great auntie had a thing for bawdy literature, along with a somewhat vampish past, is not inconsistent with her drive for pleasure in retirement. She would continue to do want she wanted, which was have a damn good time. Actually, I quite miss her in my life.

Here's a story about her older brother (I'm building up to the Bowls bit, so be patient.) My Dad's Dad (my paternal Grand-Daddy) was an avid Bowls player from the time of his retirement from AMP. Now, old Percy Kelso was a bit of a character around Banyo. He would go down to the Commonwealth Bank around opening time dressed in his pyjamas, dressing gown, slippers and pipe (why get dressed just to go down to the shops?) Occasionally, those that didn't know Perce Kelso (there weren't many in the 70s in Banyo who didn't, but sometimes new folk would move there) would become alarmed, and the bank manager would have to come out and say "It's ok ladies, it's just Percy Kelso." He couldn't see a problem. He'd built one of the first houses in Banyo. In retirement he had a "right" to what he perceived were his predilections. But some others unfortunately saw only a disconcerting eccentrism.

Percy used to take my brother Michael and me to Margate for a swim when we were young. His tobacco and Steamroller-smelling Datsun would chug along for an hour from Banyo, across the old Redcliffe Bridge, and along the rocky coast line. Mick and I would sit in the back fighting. Percy would yell, "Back across your lines!" referring to the linear indentations in the vinyl backseat that we were not supposed to cross to give each other Chinese burns. He was, at 6ft 2, kind of terrifying. But, he always took us places, especially the beach.

We're a family of swimmers. Not Olympic, just recreational (Kelso means "dweller by the water" apparently.) Actually, we're more floaters than swimmers (which means I come from a long line of, um, oh dear, "floaters.") Percy would wear his brown corduroy slippers in the sea because of the rocks. He would float for hours on his back, letting the small waves lift and drop him at their will, with his brown corduroy slippers appearing out from the water in rhythmical motion. It's been a very long time since I've seen anyone else do this. Come to think of it, I've never seen anyone else do this (I worry that I'm turning in to either Percy or my Mum's Mum, the late Julia Armstrong, another slipper lover, because I sometimes stroll up to the shops in my own comfy fluffies. There's just no escaping familial tendency.)

But you should have seen Percy when he went to the races at Eagle Farm or Doomben. Highly polished shoes (the anti-slipper, no doubt), dapper trousers, pressed shirt (ironed by his wife), braces, bow tie and, the piece de resistance...a hat with a feather in the side. Most spruce and natty Perce would get in his Datsun 200 and head for the track, smoking rollies and popping Steamrollers in his mouth, putting some money down on a "dead certainty" that his mates from the stable had given him.

Grandad was a man who could withstand pressure. Too young for WW1, and too old for the second, he decided to go anyway, as the postman. He drove around Britain delivering mail in a car with the picture of a kangaroo on the side. He even survived a bomb coming through the roof of a house he was in (playing cards at the time with his mates). The bomb didn't go off. Perce was a little shocked, but took it like an Aussie male - sardonically.

But, Percy Kelso had two heart attacks at the track. The second one saw him finish last. It was only moments before his death that he told Frances May (my Grandma) that she should look in his suit pocket. And then he, well, snuffed it. May found a wad of cash hidden in that suit. In our family, we like to remember Grandad by saying, "A true Scot to the end."

Old Perce was always in trouble, but May never knew. And here, finally, is the Bowls bit. One day, after having a few to many with his fellow Banyo Bowlers, Percy Kelso got into fisticuffs with some other old fella from the Banyo Bowls Club. He was, apparently, from that moment on banned from the Bowls Club. However, for YEARS (we're not sure how many, but we think it's around the ten year mark), Perce would get up every Bowls day, put on his whites, including the crown (white hat), kiss May goodbye and say "I'll see you after Bowls love." Where did he go? We don't know. Toombul Shoppingtown? The Prince of Wales Hotel in Nundah? All bets favour the latter. Grandma never knew.

Maybe there is not that much difference in retirement after all. I mean, difference amongst the classes, difference in activities, etc. It is such a cliché (and often a demeaning one) that when we age we return to childhood. Yet, maybe Nile is right, in a way. Retirement means a return to an age of fearless flouting of conventions, the courage we lose as adults to say, write and do want we want. I've always known that I will continue to write in retirement. Maybe, I'll take the example of my ancestors to be "a little bit naughty" with me into that stage of life too. I hope so.

Julie Kelso e julieanne.kelso@uq.edu.au