Boomer and bust: Covid is fast-forwarding us into retirement

It was on a foggy walk to Hell’s Mouth that the sea fret lifted and I looked down, down, down at sea smashing against rocks and yes, it felt like a sign.

I was on a socially distanced hols — if we define ‘socially distanced’ as ‘a bunch of mainly metropolitan friends romping in north Cornwall’ — for my summer of 2020 epiphany, which was this. Of the dozen or so happy, shiny, busy fiftysomethings bodyboarding, yakking and stuffing down Kettle Chips in their wetsuits, only one had what a retired major in Tunbridge Wells might call a job — and that was the books editor of the Oldie. As we gossiped about X, Y and Z (Ms Claudia Fitzherbert of the Oldie has twin sons called Xavier and Yvo, and I have a puppy called Ziggy), this aperçu hit me with the bracing tumble of an Atlantic roller.

We tail-end baby boomers had always assumed that if we wanted it, work was going to sweep us — Thatcher’s children — into our eighties like so many mini-Rupert Murdochs.