I’ve had a ‘mare of a day today – just about all that could have gone wrong while I was away, did! I was pondering on how much I could (or should) tell tonight on my diary and I hit on an idea.

Forget my immediate woes and think of how this day has impacted on my family because it is a VERY special day indeed for my family.

My Daddy has retired today. He was 66 years old in July and has finally walked away from working life. My Mum retired a month ago so they are both now free. They now have limitless opportunities to do all those things that they have been unable to do while shackled to work. He and my Mum plan to spend a month in the USA visiting friends they met while walking the Coast-to-Coast walk a few years ago and then they will start to cram in all those things they’ve been putting off ‘until they retire’.

And is there a couple deserving a long, active and happy retirement more? No, I doubt it – maybe there are plenty of folks who deserve this as much as they do but I know they have earned their time together through sweat and toil.

I have told some of my family history before, my Dad’s early life and my Mum’s contribution to our home life but my Daddy is someone very special indeed. He was raised in a Children’s Home (from the age of ten) then kicked out to find his own way in life when he was legally allowed to work. He made his living as a coal miner, not actually digging out coal himself but working hundreds of feet underground surveying the seams and the digging process. His time was divided between measuring stuff and first aid. He was telling me yesterday that he had many serious injuries to deal with, including a man who had his leg torn off and another who’d lost four fingers. On one occasion he had to bring a man to the surface who had a fractured pelvis and he first had to convince the foreman that the man couldn’t simply be grabbed by hands and feet and pulled from the 15” high seam of coal he’d been working in.

I know many paramedics see such terrible things all the time but I also know that it takes someone really special to be working in a space 15” high and at a 1:3 slope trying to get the man out alive without losing the use of his legs.

He left the pits when a pitfall terrified my Mum (and him) by trapping him underground and Mum’s Dad was killed in similar circumstances.

His next career move was into the RAF where he saw the world and had to tug his forelock to a bunch of rich kids whose degrees got them into Sandhurst to become officers (they were already presumed gentlemen) and, at the age of 40 was ‘yes, Sir, no, Sir’ to kids of 22-23 who were his boss not by any earned right but by birth.

Still, he used the time to his advantage and took accountancy qualifications before leaving, which meant the later years of his career were more on his own terms than anything before.

When he finished his accountancy qualifications, he was one of only 1% of people who pass all the way through first go. He took a MENSA test for a bit of a laugh and was accepted into their ranks happily. For them, being rich wasn’t the thing, it was the intelligence. …..and he is very intelligent indeed.

No matter what I do in my life I will never achieve a fraction of what he has achieved. He truly did pull himself up from the gutter and make something of his life. All I can do is look on in amazement and awe at how this man made a life for himself and for us.

Now he can enjoy it. He can push on any door he chooses and se whether it will open for him. He can walk, take photographs, do his hobbies and best of all follow his dreams, unfettered by having to go to work each day.

Good luck Dad, I know you probably won’t see this for a few days because of your phone problems but what I have said will keep!