My brother Alistair says, whether originally or not, who cares? that retirement is like being a teenager again, only this time around we have money and couldn't give a stuff what other people think of us. He told me this when he was here a few weeks ago, riding South on his large motorbike, in company with Sue on her even larger one, and when they had stopped at our place to sit around and talk about the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything. He's right, of course. It's been a year since I retired and there's no doubt about it: hands down, by a country mile, this has been the best year of my life. *** Adolescence is a transition. It's the period of no longer and not yet, that space between the dependency of childhood and the responsibilities of adulthood. It's the time to experiment with ways of being ourselves and to imagine futures. So here, at the end of responsibility, when there is not much future left to imagine, is another transition, that gr...