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A couple of years ago I started to become aware that the world felt somewhat different. Nothing I could put my finger on, but it felt like a change had happened. I pondered and it began to dawn on me. I had the feeling that figuratively I, along with others my age was sliding out of view. Where heads had turned expectantly towards me in the past, now they scanned past, looking for someone else, maybe with fewer miles on the clock.

Now the thing about people of my vintage is that we are just not used to this. Boomers (I know - I hate it too, but we’ll use it for shorthand for now) have been the centre of attention literally since we were born. The sheer number of us meant that the whole world was skewed towards us. From Pop and Punk Rock to Student Riots, from Yuppies to Silver Surfers. All that was/is us.

But now the spotlight is moving on and it's disorientating not to be quite so much at the centre of things.

This newsletter is supposed to be a vessel into which I’m hoping to pour some thoughts on this topic of being a member of a generation whose time is no longer now. The title reflects the fact that there seems to be a bow wave of expectation that we should all retire soon if we haven’t done so already. That if we’ve done well, we must aspire to retire early, but even if we haven’t we must now be starting to “Take things easy”.

Well, in the words of Sam Goldwyn “Include me out”. I am going to document my efforts to do something I have never done before in my life – become an outlier. I’m not retiring for reasons I’ll explain next week (And no it’s not just the money!)

You’ll find that I have a YouTube channel for those who can’t get enough of my boyish good looks. There I’ll explain the mechanics of what I’m doing for those who fancy joining in. Over here on this newsletter I will spread the topic net a little wider.

I wouldn’t describe it as charting the human condition for a second stage Boomer, because that would be trite, cliched, pretentious, boring and wrong, but …. well, you know what I mean. Look out for the newsletter in your inbox, or heaven forbid, in your spam filter. I’ve already assumed that you have pummelled the subscribe button into submission.

Finally, do you think I could prevail upon you to maybe pass a link on to anyone who might find this diverting. Hell, you could even send it to your kids. It will remind them that you (And we) exist!