The overwhelming response when I’ve told people I’m retiring
from full-time paid employment has been, ‘what kept you?’ ‘You should have retired when
your first novel came out and devoted yourself to writing,’ one friend told me.
Others are astonished that I’ve still been working all this time. ‘What!’ they
exclaim. ‘You’re still working!’ As if this was somehow a sin.
A lot of novelists never give up the day job of course.
Anthony Trollope wrote ten novels while working for the post office. Conan Doyle was a doctor. Kafka was an insurance clerk. T.S. Eliot was a
publisher. Nabokov was a lepidopterist (I bet you never knew that). Most of the
writers I know still do a nine-to-five of some kind. Personally, I never wanted
to give up the day job. Not really. I have always rather enjoyed working. I
like the people I work with. I get carried along with the projects we’re doing
and the ambitions we have. It’s fun. I have worked in my industry (healthcare
computing) for so long that I’ve become something of a sage. There are very few
of us left who recall the early days. I remember one of the first computer
systems I was involved with (a lab system at a London hospital). It had 512KB
of memory. Half a megabyte. It seemed a lot at the time. I remember the clunky
green screens and the colossal monitors and the achingly slow response times. I
remember learning BASIC programming on a Commodore PET. And all those things that might now be hard to
explain. Queuing for the photocopier. The telex machine. Memorising phone
numbers. Carbon copies. The tea trolley. Circulation envelopes. Treasury ties. Ties!
Fax paper. Floppy discs…
… and now, like a very-slow-motion movie, the decades have
passed, and I’ve watched things change. The kind of systems we’re installing
today would have been extraordinary science-fiction to my twenty five-year-old self.
The almost limitless power of mobile tech, and the coming of AI are
transforming this space beyond recognition.
I have been incredibly lucky. I’ve visited hospitals in ten US states, in
UAE, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait and most of Europe. I’ve worked
on deals in South Africa and Malta and Nigeria and Scotland and Ireland and too
many other places to mention. It has been a blast.
I am, however, now in my, er, mid-sixties. And here is the
truth. I’ve become a bit of a dinosaur. I didn’t see it coming. But perhaps we
aren’t supposed to. Maybe it takes everybody by surprise. You wake up one
morning and you realise, with a start, that your time has come. There is the
door, there is your coat, what’s your hurry? This is what happened to me. I can
escape it no longer. I am no longer a programme manager.
But I am still a novelist.
I won’t ever give up writing. I couldn’t. It is what I do. So
I am doubly lucky – to have had a first career I enjoyed, and a second to keep
me going. Thank you to all the amazing, fascinating, brilliant people I have
met and worked with for so many years. I will miss you guys a lot. Do, please,
stay in touch. Keep on making the world a better place. I want to read about
your great successes. And, by the way, if you fancy, just occasionally, putting
your feet up with a good book – ask in any good bookshop or check out my page
on Amazon.
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