Going back to my roots

Surely there must come a point where you can't fit any more money into your bank account

Peter Edgerton

Friday, 9 June 2023, 15:06

Following Cristiano Ronaldo's departure for Saudi Arabia, possibly in order to hone his footballing skills, Real Madrid's Karim Benzema has decided that he, ... too, would like to play in the same league, presumably also for purely sporting reasons.

His farewell message included something about always wanting to retire from the game at Madrid but life offering other opportunities or some such, while simultaneously trousering 220 million euros or 320 million euros or whatever it is - the numbers become quite meaningless after a certain point.

Anyway, I'm not sure how many spondulicks either of these chaps already have but I doubt they shop at Primark. In fact, I doubt their grandchildren would ever need to do a day's work if they'd rather lie on the sofa for their entire life, munching on burgers made by artificial intelligence bots or whatever the fashion is by then.

Surely there must come a point where you can't fit any more money into your bank account and you think, "I know, I'll do something a bit more imaginative." Of course, you would have to fend off the wide selection of liggers and hangers-on lurking in the shadows whispering all-too-convincing justifications for untrammelled greed but, with a little willpower, you really could turn your attention to better things. Like returning to your first professional club, the one that gave you a chance as a youngster, for instance.

Actually, maybe we should all do this - go back to the first place we worked before we retire. Even if your first job was in a nightclub, you could pop back for six months. If everyone did it, the customers would soon get used to the old timers hobbling about behind the bar, bending down for a Coca-Cola and not being able to get back up again. It would be the opposite of work experience - experienced work, if you will.

My first job was on a farm in Lancashire and I'd love to go back. It was brilliant. Granted, I couldn't hurl 56-pound bags of spuds around with the same gay abandon as I did when I was sixteen, but I could certainly chew on a wheat stalk and point wistfully into the distance, proffering life lessons at some youngsters who would, I hope, be hurling 56-pound bags of spuds around with gay abandon.

Rumour has it they're converting vast swathes of desert into farmland in Saudi Arabia these days.

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