One of the things I have been doing in the run-up to my retirement, is a photography course aimed at getting up to speed with the Nikon D7100 which I now use. This is not as complicated as trying to understand how a nuclear reactor works or even the interior of a Kray supercomputer, but it’s close. One of the things we have been studying is black-and-white photography, and classic photographers such as Ansel Adams, the American who invented landscape photography. Black-and-white photographs are very difficult to capture with modern  digital SLR cameras and images are never quite as resonant as those taken in the old days with film. I was delighted to receive an email yesterday, from Margaret Carney, former Balmoral Beach Club captain and Manly swimming icon, containing this black-and-white photograph, taken of Margaret at Loreto Kirribilli in 1966. She is being presented with a sporting prize.

This is an extraordinary photograph. We would find it difficult to get a shot like this today. Note that the photographer is focused probably on either Margaret’s face or the trophy. Everything in that plane is in focus including the nun’s hands, her habit and her face. The clarity is extraordinary. I have blown this photograph up on my computer and there is not the least amount of pixelation even though I’m looking at only a 2 MB file. The detail around the crucifix is extraordinary, as is the writing on the trophy, which is clearly visible.

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After a tumultuous week I had a very different Saturday

Belinda Van de Ven – she who must be obeyed – suggested recently that it would be good to introduce some road bike work into the rehab programme as it is my second year. By sheer coincidence Ron Wilson, my good friend from the BBC and a great cyclist, invited me on a ride from Thirroul to Wollongong which he organises for a group of friends each year. I was reluctant as up until now I didn’t think I had the strength in my broken leg to twist out of the pedal cleats. Also, after my recent experiences, I’m wary of further injury and there’s always plenty of that on offer when riding road bikes. Still, given Ron’s invitation and Belinda’s advice and a desire to introduce something different into the rehab programme, I decided to participate. By strange coincidence, my brother Damien was staying with me, recuperating from his latest Ironman triumph and decided to join in.

By good fortune, I’d left my cycling shoes – the ones with cleats – at home and had to do the ride in a pair of Sperry Hightop boat shoes. While it felt a bit ridiculous, it proved to be a godsend. I hadn’t been on a bike for many years and had forgotten the setup of the gears and derailleur so I struggled at first to get in the right gears. It didn’t matter because if I got confused I could stop, and in one case get off and walked. I didn’t have the added issue of twisting out of the cleats. It would have been too much on the first ride to worry about balance, the gears, the cleats, traffic and foot pedestrians. Don’t underestimate how difficult it is getting back on a bike after a broken leg. For one thing your balance is shot to pieces and your confidence is not much better.

The ride, which was over an easy bicycle/pedestrian path through beautiful coastal country took only two hours not including lunch.

One of the saddest things about retiring is the day you close the office. You have to pack everything in boxes for shipment to the new owners and say goodbye to the staff. You turn off the computers and turn out the lights for the last time. Everyone on the floor assembled for drinks at 4pm – my shout – some speeches and reflections on a long career in the securities and investment business and it was all over. The inevitable question, “What are you going to do now?” and the inevitable answer, “I don’t know.” And so I prepared to leave the office on a Friday afternoon for the last time.

One of the poignant things about packing up is going through all the old files and folders. Years of correspondence with clients, sharing with them the ups and downs of markets and investments, the good times and the dark days of the GFC, the struggles of their daily lives as represented by their finances. I also found the times sheets of both my daughters, Hilary and Catherine, when they worked for me years ago in the early days of the business. written in their own handwriting I could not bring myself to put them into the shredder and put the file back in the cabinet. It will come home with me and not go on to the new owners. Cleaning those out will be a job for another person at another time. Not me.

 

Today an era in my life ended after I signed a contract to sell my investment management firm Sirius Fund Management. My working career is over. I first started work as a 10-year-old chipping Bathurst  burrs with a hoe for my stepfather Alex Kelly. I went on to start my own business as a rabbit trapper and shooter and became a careful manager of my meagre cash assets. Interestingly, the contract I signed today was in the offices of a legal firm in George Street just down the road from the Royal Exchange building where I started my career with the chartered accounting firm, Price Waterhouse and Co in 1972 as a university undergraduate doing holiday work experience. I never wanted to be an accountant and in 1974 I was inducted into the firm with the senior partner giving me an introductory speech that included the never to be forgotten lines, “Well, this is the first year that Price Waterhouse has ever employed female graduates or Catholics.”

“That’s very enlightened. If they exclude those people where do they get their graduates from? Must be tough here for a female Catholic,” I thought.

I hated working as an accountant. Hated every day at PW. The firm had given me an undertaking that I would never have to be an auditor, a promise they reneged on from the first day. I never trusted them from that day on and spent every spare moment of my early career there in the public gallery of the Sydney Stock Exchange watching with fascination what was going on. When my three year qualifying period was up I left.

So what does the future hold? I don’t know. Everyone tells me that I should have a plan. Well I don’t have one. I have a work out period with the new company getting the clients settled down, then I’m done. The only bigger change in your life than starting work is when you stop.

Doing the cancer two step

This is a day that I’d rather not have to endure and hope that no one else has to either. About three weeks ago I presented at Dr Havyrk’s rooms – he is a prominent bronchial physician – because earlier CAT scans had shown two calcified nodules – growths or tumours to you and me. Could be nothing; a result of infection or exposure to asbestos on the farm or two much dust or mouldy hay or animal manure on the farm. They even have a name for it – Farmer’s Lung. Farms are dangerous places apparently. If I’d told him how much 2-4-D and 2-4-5-T (Agent Orange which contains Dioxin and came to fame in the Vietnam War) I’d been exposed to as a kid he probably would have thrown me out of his office.

Anyway Dr Havryk says that because I’ve survived three melanoma the things in my lungs might be malignant and I need a Positron Emission Tomography scan (love that medical verbosity). It’s a specialised type of whole-body scan called a PET scan for short. They are trying to find if little bits of melanoma have broken off and gone wandering about in places where they shouldn’t such as brain, liver or lungs. Women who have endured breast cancer have the same problem. Both types of cancer survivors are particularly prone to cells wandering around in no go zones, many years after an apparently clear diagnosis, and getting way too comfortable there.

Anyway a PET scan involves injecting the patient full of radioactive juice and watching the results as it travels around the body. I won’t bore you with the details but essentially a bunch of radioactive isotopes are attached to glucose molecules and then shot into your blood stream. The active parts of your body – brain liver etc need a lot of glucose and glow luminosity as they use it up and leave the isotopes behind. Really, really active parts of your body like growing cancer cells, suck up an enormous amount of glucose and attached isotopes and glow like a Dresden searchlight during a bombing raid. The scan picks up the glow of the malignant little buggers.

Anyway I had a very stimulating discussion with a nuclear medicine specialist after I was injected with the glucose solution. He told me all about how the isotopes are generated (not from uranium) and how it is safe to inject such a deadly substance into a human being (short half-life of the isotope.) This was reassuring until he told me that under no circumstances should I approach a pregnant woman or a newborn baby within ten hours of the scan. Reason: you are highly radioactive. I asked him if I would glow in the dark. Probably, he replied. At least he had a sense of humour.

Anyway, as I was being driven home by the ever-reliable Margaret Carney, I received a call on my mobile from the nuclear medicine specialist. The bad news is I have 4 nodules in my lungs, not 2. I’ve got a regular little herbarium going on inside me. The good news is none of them are glowing which means they are benign. I will probably have to get this procedure repeated annually for the next few years. That’s all good I suppose. I’m really glad I’m retiring. I can’t deal with all this stuff and look for a house and work too. Way beyond that.