Speaking from experience, retirement to me was fine for the first 6 months or so indeed enjoyable, lazy 09-00 hrs breakfast in the garden, lazing in the gazebo watching the world go by.Pottering about on the farm in Surin attending to things that needed to be done around the house and in the garden fine, then there was little or nothing to do from sunrise to sunset. One gets bored after work runs out and you're left with the Internet, movies, reading, rural rambles etc.

Asked by the village headman if I would help out at a school in Buachet with their English classes, they had no teacher, I agreed to do so on a temporary basis,  lovely to be mentally active again, social contact, boredom vanished...

Well after about a year our house in Bkk which we had leased out became empty, wife wanted to move back so we did. Old friends came to play, I was approached by an old Thai colleague who wanted a head for the English programme at his KG/ Primary school.

Four hours a day all air con office and classes, I said I'll give it a go, still there four years later with a staff of five foreign teachers, easy work, good fun plus a nice bit of pocket money each month too. Money wasn't nor isn't the issue or problem for me and the wife. It was boredom a feeling of being useless and frustrated by inactivity.

Yes in the UK there are many groups that cater to older folks who wish to remain active or need, nay want the stimulus to do something constructive. Here my work fills that bill, a nice easy task, and at 73 I feel I'm all but fifty. Kids keep me young, work keeps me happy mentally and physically. Not dissimilar to Oldies plans methinks