About 18 months ago, the other half and I started having conversations about life after work.

Mrs M has been happily settled into a life of dog walking, crafting and grandchildren-sitting for several years now and she kept hinting that I should join her.

But, with 60 not yet upon me at that point, I wasn’t quite ready.

Since then, several people I know, and several celebrities, have either died or had life-changing illnesses, leading me to reassess.

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As I announced in these pages a few weeks back, I have bitten the bullet and put in my papers for an early semi-retirement, relinquishing the editorship but keeping my hand in with a couple of smaller roles within and outside CP towers.

If ever there was a timely reminder that you don’t know what is around the corner, it was the sad death of one of my early musical heroes last month.

Terry Hall. of The Specials, was only 63 when he passed, and his death hit me harder than any celebrity demise I can think of.

I got to wondering why that was and I guess it was the fact his youth had mirrored my own and his voice was the soundtrack of a happy young adulthood.

So, this was a big tick in the box to say I was doing the right thing at the right time and in my colleagues Lori Little and Lucy Morgan, I know I am leaving the CP in the best possible hands.

My thoughts now turn to how I am going to spend my time after the end of March.

I have started making mental lists of tasks, challenges, fun stuff etc that I will have more time to do...but I know from older mates that some people take to life after work better than others.

I am a sociable fella I think, with lots of great mates, and whether it will be playing cricket and football while I still can, digging a pond in my garden (wife’s first-year task for me...and it might take that long) or hopefully helping out one or two Island good causes, I shouldn’t be worried.

“You’ll never know how you had time to work,” the smugger retirees I know tell me.

And yet it is a huge life change..having been a wage slave for the past 42 years after starting work virtually straight from school, I have had structure and order to my existence.

From April 1, I will basically be able to get up when I want, walk the hound when I like (although he may have a view on that) and even watch ITV4’s seemingly endless repeats of The Sweeney, Minder and The Professionals should I so wish.

The Third Age, as people grandly call it, can bring pain, illness, deterioration and other miseries...but the alternative is worse.

Or it can be 20 years of doing those things you never got round to.

Will I ever write that novel I promised myself? Lose those office pounds that have piled on over the years?

To paraphrase Terry Hall in Enjoy Yourself, “I’m Alan, and I’m going to enjoy myself first.”