W.U.P.P.

Since my retirement I’ve taken to going to my local pub where I have met several other people of similar age and abilities.

We discuss our collective failures, attributing reasons varying from poor management to lack of proper training when young.

“What use is the ability to decline a Latin verb when you end up in life as an engineer?” This is fairly typical of the comments made by our group.

We’ve also decided that given the wealth of experience we’ve had in the real world during a lifetime amongst the working classes, that all of us could perform better in government than any of the present lot, except perhaps the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Nobody in our group could ever understand the way in which the financial markets work. So we leave that subject alone, putting the ability of the people who get jobs there down to having rich parents or an old school tie.

Over the last few months we’ve got most of our moans out of our systems, and have begun talking about our hobbies. Subjects range from archery to zoology, with every other letter of the alphabet accounted for in between.

Recently one of us had a brainwave and suggested that we should form a society for people like ourselves. The objective would be to form a discussion group for those of a like mind. It was only intended to be a bit of a joke, but we considered the name of the society and its rules carefully, after all it helped to pass the time and made a bit of a change from just bewailing our lot.

The result was the formation of the W.U.P.P. The Woefully Underpaid Poor Pensioners. To celebrate the existence of the new club we all had a good laugh and another beer.

A few days after the formation of the W.U.P.P., I was taking part in one of my hobbies by attending a class in creative writing. I had just read my latest contribution, a story about Santa Claus’ sleigh failing the MOT. The next offering was from a lady and concerned the adventures of a ghost who had joined a trade union. Our teacher expressed an opinion that we both had wacky brains to think of plots like that; in fact when it came to subject matter for a story we were obviously both absolutely potty!

On the spot we both decided to form another W.U.P.P., this time the Writer’s Union for Potty People. So if there is any one else of like mind reading this, I have declared myself Hon. Treasurer and am quite willing to accept membership subscriptions right now.