Three projects for retirement

I’m not that far off retirement and I’ve been thinking about what I might do with all my free time. Improving my golf, getting fitter, enjoying my garden, seeing some of the places in the world that I’ve only seen in books or on television, restoring old motorcycles and writing some books have all figured in plans at various stages in my thought processes.

I work and commute long hours. I leave the house at 6.20am and get back in at 7.50pm most days – that’s thirteen-and-a-half hours a day or sixty-seven-and-a-half hours per week. It’s a lot of time that’s currently occupied that will be free fairly soon. What could I do with that time? Go to bed a bit later and wake up later will probably be one thing, but even so, it’s a lot of free time.

The question I’m asking myself is do I rejoin the golf club or could I do something that makes a difference? Could I even do something that makes a massive difference? I have thought of lots of retirement projects in the past few years and there are things I must complete, including family history, but these are three projects that just might make a difference (and one that wouldn't):

Oaks for England

Oak trees are the climax species of much of England, but oak woodland has almost disappeared. It’s a great wood for building (and burning) and everyone has helped themselves over the centuries until now there’s next to nothing left.

My project is to plant oak trees on any land where I can or where an owner will let me. I thought of this idea some years ago when walking Jack up Toneham. There are lots of gaps in the oak avenue that could be filled up and there are (at certain times of the year) lots of acorns on the ground. I picked some of from a tree halfway up the avenue that I’d fallen into conversation with (well I said good morning and gave it a pat each day) and I planted a number in the garden with the idea of creating a triangle of oak trees.

I was staggered how easily and quickly the acorns germinated and within a month of planting them, I had a lot of trees. Oak trees are amazing things when they germinate. First of all you get a shoot, and then almost immediately there are full-size oak leaves. It looks really odd to see this tiny oak tree, three inches high with a thin woody stem and two perfect full-size oak leaves at the top. I’d planted two patches in situ, but now had far too many trees. Andrew Knights said he’d have one and I lifted one of the seedlings to put into a bucket so he could plant it more easily.

The tree was less than six inches high and had three or four leaves on it, but the thing that surprised me most was the root. The first thing the plant had done (and most of its energy would have gone straight into that) was to put down a long, deep tap root. I thought all I'd have to do was lift out a sod, drop it into a bucket and take it to Andrew, but as I dug around the sapling and tried to lift it out, it was clear there was no way it was coming. I dug down further and still it wouldn’t move. Eventually I got it out, but I broke off probably a third of the tap root and what was left was still a couple of feet long. I curled it round the bucket and carefully filled in with good soil. I kept the tree in the bucket for a few months until Andrew was ready for it and it was growing nicely. I couldn’t help thinking that this oak with a corkscrew tap root was not quite what nature had intended. Recently, Jane and Alan Crossland’s daughter Beth was married and they gave all guests an oak sapling. These were of a similar size to the one I gave Andrew all those years ago with the same full-size leaves, but they were all packed into six-inch pots made up as a tiny, galvanised bucket. They must have just chopped the tap root off when they potted them up and they were quite a sight – over 100 little oaks all sitting in shiny galvanised buckets outside the marquee. I thought it was quite a nice idea, planting a tree to mark a wedding, but not many people were taking them.

We took just one and it has completed the triangle of trees that I’d originally planned. I’d put one in the border by the hedge (sown in situ), one transplanted by the bottom fence and one in the bottom border towards the den. The plan was that when they reached a certain size, I’d take down the conifers, the hazel and the elderberry. What actually happened was that Margaret, during a weeding blitz, took out the tree near the den and so there were two. Over the years, they have grown into a decent size and I've had to make a slot in the side of my decking in front of the summerhouse to accommodate the one that was in the border near the hedge. The one on the back fence has grown, but because it has got less light, it has made slower progress. I think it will pick up now the conifers are down and I've trimmed back the laurel and hazel and it is to the left-hand corner of the summerhouse. Beth Crossland's oak is at the corner of the garden at the bottom and to the right of the summerhouse. I hope it flourishes even without a tap root. I guess, oak trees know what they're doing and it will simply grow a spare.

Anyway, one idea is to do this myself. I'll collect bags of acorns in the autumn and plant them in likely places; places where they will thrive or where they might thrive - places where livestock or mowers are unlikely to destroy them. That would be quite fun, but it would also be quite random. What kind of success rate could I achieve like that? An oak tree is hardly inconspicuous - give it 10 years and it starts to get a certain presence and not everyone wants an oak tree.

Next I thought about a business (Chris Coakley with his woodburner would be the ideal partner) for oak coppices. You just need some land (£6,000 per acre) and some acorns and some time. Oak trees make good firewood because the wood contains very little moisture. It can almost be burned straight away, but it is slow growing and ash has all the properties of oak, but grows a lot more quickly, so any sensible business would grow ash. Anyway, the idea was to replace lost oak trees, not plant a coppiced field of them and cut them down in a five-year cropping cycle.

So what's the best way forward? I could do this as a one-man band, a slightly eccentric old man writing to landowners asking if I could plant some oak trees on their land; I could be a clandestine squirrel-like planter, popping acorns into little holes here, there and everywhere or I could create my own charity Oaks for England and try to get grants and raise funds to employ people to organise volunteers and talk in schools. You could sell oak tree packs to people who want to plant their own trees.

What I could also do would be to take the idea to an existing charity as a project and offer to manage it for them. A charity such as the Woodland Trust (and there will be others) might be interested in this if it complemented some of their other work. The host charity would provide publicity, authority and some kind of infrastructure, but Oaks for England would then not be my project and it would lose a key part of its appeal: the amateur tree-planter, someone doing something themselves to make a difference - direct action.

The big drawback of the project is, of course, its timescale. An oak tree would take 25 years to make a tree of any decent size, which would make me at least 85 before the fruits of my labour became apparent. Maybe that isn't a problem, you plant an oak tree not for yourself, but for your grandchildren and, depending upon the location, there's every chance it will be around in 500 years time.

Pop-up Shops - POPS

This is quite a recent idea and it has grown out of a number of different trains of thought:

1.      I had an inkling to set myself up as an artisan baker, but where would I sell my loaves?

2.      I've noticed that many people have a secret (or not-so-secret) wish to set up a shop or small high-street business, but are put off by red tape and the need to invest in fittings, lease, etc. If they could dip a toe in the water with little risk, how many would turn their wish into reality?

3.      Our high streets, once the hearts of communities, are in a pretty dreadful state. High business rates, competition from out-of-town retail parks and the poor state of the economy has led to lots of empty shops. Even where there are higher rates of occupancy, the shops are often national chains, so that every high street is the same and local diversity isn't recognisable.

The idea of POPS is to set up an infrastructure and a basic display pack that would enable someone to find the landlord of an empty shop, agree a short-term lease and then have a support pack that would allow them to easily set up a shop and start trading. The support pack would include advice, legal help, business advice and mentoring, accounting advice and things such as a till and a credit card machine with an easy-to-set-up merchant account.

A POPS shop could be any kind of shop. It might be a Christmas Shop run for three months from October 1 to December 24; it might be a bookshop; it might be a produce store run by the local WI; it could be a cafe, it could be a nailbar. How about a ski shop run for six months from October to March?

POPS could help bring diversity back to the high street, it could fill up empty shops and encourage shoppers to return and it could and should result in people who have made a success of a pop-up shop setting up a permanent business. How good would that be for enterprise and employment?

So how do I get started? Perhaps I should open a pop-up shop of my own to see what is entailed and how easy it is. I know from renting a shop in Whittlesey to use as a temporary office that it can be done quite quickly, but I was offering an annual lease, not a three-month one. Perhaps I should take the idea to an enterprise fund, a council or business group to get backing. Perhaps I should create a charity or not-for-profit organisation (a co-operative where the members are people running the shops).

It could make a TV series with Mary Portas (her of Queen of Shops fame) being the presenter, or resident expert. I could punt the idea at her production company - it would be a good way to kick start the idea. Still on the TV theme, I could take it to Dragon's Den and present the idea. They wouldn't be able to say anything nasty to me because the idea has such good intentions - regenerate the high street, increase diversity, start hundreds of small businesses, create jobs ...

Christian Spirit

I've come up with this idea, but I don't like the name. It's exclusive, or sounds exclusive, because its name implies affinity to Christianity. It's the spirit of the "good Christian" I'm seeking to emulate, however, not a new mission to regenerate Christianity. I could call it something like Helping Hands instead ...

Social problems of the 19th Century spawned a wave of hands-on organisations, which set about righting wrongs in a practical, sleeves rolled-up way which we've lost today. True, there are still people giving soup to tramps, but we are more likely to fund a pressure group or think tank to try to put pressure on a government to increase social spending than we are to get stuck in.

The name will have to go, but what I want to achieve is a national volunteer force for good works based on helping people. I might need to be more specific? Helping old people would be a good place to start, but actually, the wider the remit, the stronger the potential. A modern Salvation Army that has Christian values (or simply good values) that will offer volunteers offering practical help to anyone who needs it.

It's easier to achieve this through a religious organisation. You can see how the Salvation Army got started and perhaps I should join that (would they let me in?) and try to get a splinter group going. I think most charities (like Sue Ryder) start with a small scheme that snowballs.

If I set up Peterborough Christian Spirit or Peterborough Helping Hands in the first instance, perhaps we'd have a model that we could extend nationally. Perhaps a charity such as Help the Aged would use it as a test bed if I offered my services as an organiser. I'd aim to use the internet to match volunteers to people needing help, like the dog rehoming sites do. People volunteering, especially young people could perhaps be rewarded in some way either with certificates which could be used in their CV or even with some kind of credits which could be exchanged for discounts - free cinema tickets, Nectar points, etc.

I'd have to write a spec, a business plan and then take it to a charity proposing a local trial.

Mobile Still

There's no altruism involved here; just a dream of a different lifestyle. I don't even know if what I propose would be legal, I'd have to look into it.

In Normandy, which is cider country, they have mobile stills which travel around the countryside visiting farms. Farmers are allowed to make and sell a certain amount of cider without paying tax (a little like you can in England, which is why you get farmhouse cider). However, In France, they are allowed to take the surplus cider and distil it into apple brandy (or Calvados).

So each autumn, mobile stills travel from farm to farm taking the surplus cider and distilling it. Now there's a cider tradition in Somerset and even someone making apple brandy, but they also grow a lot of apples in Kent and Cambridgeshire. Wisbech Apple Brandy is a concept that could catch on. Why not? We don't value our agricultural heritage enough in the UK and we have some fine local products. Perhaps I could combine Apple Brandy with POPS and open a pop-up shop in Wisbech!

Actually, I doubt that I could get this off the ground. It would require some huge outlay in equipment and an investment in time (at least five years in the barrel) before you had a product to sell. There would also need to be a few years where you acquired the necessary skills, so it's something I should have tried when I was 50, rather than 60-plus.

Food for thought and any more ideas welcomed.