Time Sates For No Man

I have recently retired. Not retired in the post 65 year-old sense of the word; I've not already embarked on an ever decelerating cycle of Littlewoods catalogues, Werther's Original wrappers and calling my Grandson by his brother's/sister's/the dog's name. I mean I've left paid employment and shall soon be back to the gratification-free world of work experience.

It's a world of making tea, inputing data and trudging home after a week of what is essentially modern-day slavery (except without the overcrowded ships and Cat-o-nine tails,) devoid even of the satisfaction of opening your wallet and pulling out a crumpled tenner, before having it whipped out of your hand by a gelled barman.

However - and this will sound like stating the blindingly obvious - it's better than doing nothing. But, is doing nothing better than going to work?

I've been looking forward to finishing for the past few weeks, building up in my head rapturous images of walking into a sunset of unencumbered freedom, inflatable lylo in one hand and a strawberry daiquiri in the other.

Such thoughts of hedonism arose partly from my own MTV ravaged brain's inadequacy to conjure up anything more original than a sepiarised Hollywood replication of freedom, and partly from the the utter lack of alternative stimuli my office had to offer.

The monotony that simmers as your eyes sear ever hotter into your ancient computer screen arouses thoughts of something, anything else. You spend so long lumped behind your workstation that your silhouette becomes burned on the back of your chair.

Again, the colleague who insists on singing along to every track on the office jukebox, even the unattainably high noted sequences, helps precipitate a 'grass is always greener' mindset. Nervous looks are exchanged and eyebrows patronisingly raised, but no-one ever has the heart to tell him to keep his fat mouth closed and his prepubescent voice to himself. I found myself faced with the choice of silently imagining better times, or inducing a keyboard-throwing office holocaust.

This boredom is not unique to my erstwhile workplace - every office is, by definition, not a fun place to spend your days. You are there to work, not play naked Twister. People who say they enjoy their job are either lying or secretly employed as a roller coaster tester.

Going to a work essentially joyless. If you're lucky in the office, you'll either get a window out of which you can forlornly stare, or nab a monitor positioned so no-one can see what you're looking at. I had neither.

Since being handed a painting of a Spitfire and my P45, I've realised that free time can be just as uninspiring and, more worryingly, far more formless. This second point is particularly tender for me.

I have a genetic inability to do nothing all day. Like a lovingly treated petty criminal, I crave structure and (some forms of) discipline. Even when I'm as free as Sharon Stone's agent's diary, I find myself setting-up artificial time-limits.

My free time is represented by a conflict between that which I should do and that which I would love to do, but am afraid of how I'll hate myself if I do it. The paradox is that free time isn't free, there are still rules, still more dos and do nots than the list of guidelines given to you whenever you receive a lap dance. (Which is never, Mum.)

For example, you must get at least five items of fruit and veg, 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise and less than four units of alcohol a day. That's fine. This is health advice and, however spurious and mollycoddling it may seem, it's probably a good idea to stick to it. You don't have to be happy about it though.

Then there are more abstract mantras that have become unwritten rules of free time. You shouldn't get up late, or you're a bum. You shouldn't sit on your unmotivated behind and play computer games all day. Or watch daytime television. Society's general consensus is fairly disparaging toward this kind of profligate behaviour. The body public looks down on sitting on your sofa in your pants eating last night's fried chicken. But this comes from a body that, overwhelmingly, has their time organised for them, by bosses with thick-framed glasses and questionable halitosis.

You go to work to earn money; you only earn money if you go to work. So you can't spend two hours a day reading the paper in the bath, or stay in bed till lunchtime, or even watch the entire second season of The Cosby Show back to back. It's easy not to do these things when circumstances make them impossible. It's much harder to not work, to empty your day of commitment and then attempt to fill it with productive activity.

To fill the arid days until my work experience begins again, I'll do some writing (a good thing, given that sitting at an office desk is akin to being slowly lobotomised; I feel I've lost much of my...er...*) and some exercise. I won't drink during the day, or on my own. Or in the shower. I will eat lots of fruit and vegetables. I will essentially live to a structured timetable, as if I were at work, somehow destroying the very notion of Adornoesque free time.

But. That's not to say I shan't be acting pretty damn naughtily at some points. For example, I'll definitely shower with the door open this morning. And I'll listen to music at a volume akin to a Christian rock concert, free from unwanted accompaniment from the singing workmate. I'll play computer games if I like and I won't feel guilty, not even when running over innocent pedestrians in GTA IV.

All such activities need to be rigorously timetabled however, to prevent the risk of me looking down on myself as a social subservient, like a self-loathing City banker on a cocaine hangover. I'll be lazy, gluttonous or downright unhygienic, but not for longer than I'm being 'productive'.

This structuralism/non-conformity is preferable to going to work; things are better when they're your choice: like voting, or sex. I never would, but it's comforting to know that I could drink milk out of the carton or beer before lunch and watch replays of Gladiators if the urge ever took me. Which it does. All day long.

*perspicacity, thanks dictionary.com.