The retirement of the BBC cricket commentator Henry Blofeld at the age of 77 has reignited the debate about when exactly is the best time to retire. It’s an impossible question to answer, really, because everyone feels differently about it. For example, I have one friend who is a long way short of retirement age who has retired on a reduced pension and another who is working past retirement age because he cannot bear to spend too much time with his wife! There are, of course, plenty of reasons why people retire and why people carry on working but, as someone who retired from full time work as soon as I possibly could, there was only one commodity that mattered to me: time.

When I was young, I knew I was going to live forever. Even when people died from time to time, I would, for reasons I didn’t think about, be the lone survivor. Old age would not reach me. I would be exempt, spared the uncomfortable realisation about my mortality. No more.

I took a substantial financial hit from a dead end, insubstantial, poorly paid civil service job precisely because time was beginning to run out. It was when, some four years ago, I found myself in a hotel in Runcorn where I had gone to attend a meeting I knew my time was up. In previous years, I enjoyed travelling for work. It was quite nice travelling to a nice hotel, having something nice to eat as well as a few beers, going to that meeting and then driving home again. But something this time was very different. My job was changing, and not for the better, but moreover I was changing even more. The job was taking up five sevenths of my life, Sunday nights became a period of dread at the Monday morning to follow and people were dying all around me. With the death of my father in 2011, I was now the oldest person in the family. Physically, I was in reasonable shape but I knew I would not always be. Without trying to come across as too gloomy, much of what was round the corner would not be good. Time became everything. Sitting in a distant hotel, away from everything and everyone I treasured was not life as I wanted it to be.

I had heard all the stories from people who carried on working long into retirement, some because they simply couldn’t give it up, others working much longer to build up a better pension and some who really didn’t know what to do with all that extra time. I am not them, but it made me sad for them. One friend of mine told me about his father who got to 65 after a working life in a job that was just a job and nothing more and a week later into the retirement he had waited for throughout most of his later years he dropped dead from a heart attack. So, all he did in life was work.

And let’s be honest about this. If we retire after age 50, we are in any event well into the long decline. We can take up a sport, like I did with golf, or we can run or we can cycle, but we will never capture the vitality of our youth. It’s all better than working for a living but we fool ourselves if we think we are what we were. For the first time in my life, my knees ache; those knees that have held up without a niggle are now stiff and achey and sometimes it’s an effort to stand up. Other joints ache, all those football injuries from long ago have all come back to haunt me. Life has consequences.

How long have you got when you finally retire? Five good years? Ten? By the time you reach 80, if you make it, you are not going to be doing a 10k without a zimmer. It is likely to be a sedentary lifestyle until your body stops working altogether. It is not a pleasant prospect, which is why I realised years ago I couldn’t afford to wait to reach state retirement age. I would have been gambling that, in the middle to far distance, that I would still be around and in a fit state to be reasonably active. I concluded that full time work, whatever the financial benefits, was a waste of life. I didn’t want to be the wealthiest man in the graveyard.

I have never regretted leaving the civil service. There were career options in other government departments, there were career options away from the civil service, some of which might have been relatively lucrative. But it would have stopped me going to Greece to write a book, playing golf pretty well whenever I wanted to and, did I mention writing and writing and writing, the one thing I always wanted to do.

When I hear a story of someone on the TV news who is still working well into old age, my first reaction is “you poor sod.” What is it in life that you really enjoy? Family? Doing something creative? Travel? Gardening? If it’s work, then that’s your shout. I work to live, not live to work and every day I spend working for someone else, is a day wasted.

Whichever way you look at it, time is running out.

Earlier this week, the Guardian published a cartoon By Martin Rowson of a white van with the words ‘Read the Sun and Daily Mail’ on the side. It was a representation of the attack on people near the Finsbury Park mosque. There was no accompanying comment because there didn’t need to be. It represented the corrosive nature of the red tops in this country today and their role in much of the race hatred that exists. Today, the Mail explodes with rage in a an editorial that rips into the Guardian, attacking its journalists and readers, referring to them, us, as the “fascist left”.

The cartoon was, according to the Mail, “sick and disgusting” and “deranged and offensive”. “The Guardian was telling its followers that the Daily Mail and its readers are vicious bigots with the blood of innocent, peace-loving muslims on their hands.” I am not sure why the Guardian has “followers” and the Mail has “readers” but the cartoonist is pointing out what many of us believe, with good reason, that the Daily Mail (and the Sun) is produced by vicious bigots with the blood of innocent, peace-loving muslims on their hands. For as long as I can remember, Paul Dacre’s evil organ has pumped out racism, xenophobia, anti-migration scare stories and lies. No one is saying that all Mail and Sun readers are vicious bigots, but buying the newspapers they condone vicious bigotry.

It is worth pointing out, for the umpteenth time, that before World War Two, the Mail supported Adolf Hitler and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. “Hurrah for the Blackshirts,” they trumpeted before complaining about Jewish refugees escaping Germany, the migrants of the 1930s. They didn’t like migrants then and they don’t like them now. If anything, the Mail has moved to the right of politics since then.

Read it for yourself elsewhere, but the Mail’s editorial is full of anger, hidden threats and not a little madness. It is as if the Guardian cartoonist has struck a raw nerve. And plainly they hate the idea of a free press where a newspaper chooses to publish a cartoon which might not necessarily reflect the views of its editor. I am sure that not every piece that appears in the Guardian chimes 100% with the editor’s view but you can bet your bottom dollar that every article that appears in the Mail certainly does.

The final paragraph isn’t even borderline madness, it’s complete madness. “The truth is the Guardian and the fascist left are the REAL purveyors of hate in this country.” In fact it’s far from the truth. The Guardian was so close to the “fascist left” that it urged readers to vote Lib Dem in 2010. The editorials are left of centre, yes, as are many, though not all, of its contributors. But none of them are in any way as extreme as the right wing filth that fills the pages of the Mail from the likes of Richard Littlejohn and the failed Apperentice contestant.

The truth hurts. The Mail exploded today because they know that Martin Rowson was right. The Mail and the Sun have a pernicious effect on the country by way of a combination of half-truths, lies and right wing propaganda. I buy the Guardian and Observer because they are great to read and I support good journalism. The Guardian is the only national newspaper to be owned by a trust and not by big business. If you read the Guardian/Observer on-line, why not make a voluntary monthly payment of a fiver to ensure strong, independent journalism is maintained? The website shows you how to do it.

I am surprised to see myself described as a supporter of the “fascist left” and a “purveyor of hate”. It doesn’t greatly bother me because I am know that I am neither and actually it is quite a compliment to be so described by a lump of journalistic excrement.

The Mail is a purveyor of hate, just like Abu Hamza, Amjem Choudary, Paul Golding, Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson and of course the woman who used to be on the Apprentice. For Paul Dacre to accuse the Guardian of fascism is beyond parody and shows he is worried and has been found out.

I urge all newspaper readers and advertisers to stop funding hate because by giving money to the Mail and the Sun you are just encouraging them and you are guilty by association.

We are well into the season now where we are supposed to make up how hot the temperature is. You know the sort of thing. “We’ve just got back from Ibiza. It was 47c every day.” “Santorini was amazing. It got over 50c on a few of the days.” To which I always want to rely, no it fucking wasn’t.

It shouldn’t bug me, I know, but it does and I don’t know why. When I see a Facebook post boasting of record temperatures, my inclination is to see what the actual temperature was on that day. There are countless excellent websites which faithfully record the actual temperature rather than what people think, or would like to think, it is. I just wonder why people feel the need to exaggerate?

When my old acquaintance said he’d enjoyed lying on a sun bed on 47c degrees of sunshine, by which we mean the shade temperature, I suggested mildly that if the weather had really been 47c, he’d have barely left the hotel. In the late 1980s, I was in Greece in the middle of a heatwave. It was absolutely desperate. The temperature rarely went below 38c (100f) and it was impossible to enjoy yourself. For most of the time, you couldn’t lie in the sun and you certainly couldn’t walk about in it.

We’re enjoying – or is it enduring? – 32c at the moment and I find myself wishing it was a few degrees cooler. 28 or 29c is usually as hot as I want it, anything in the low thirties and it begins to get uncomfortable. The reality is that high forties celcius is up near Death Valley levels and you would not want to spend a fortnight in Death Valley.

Living as we do in a maritime climate, a good summer’s day can be somewhere near the low to mid twenties celsius and that’s just fine. Perhaps we are so unused to warm weather than when it becomes very warm, even hot, we can’t quite believe it’s “only” about 24c. It just has to be hotter than that, doesn’t it?

None of this matters, of course. If folk want to exaggerate how warm it is, it’s up to them. I just don’t know why they do.

My early thoughts on the latest terrorist atrocity, this time at Finsbury park mosque, are down to one thing: how was the terrorist radicalised? It appears he was a “clean shaven” white man, so what was that inspired a clean shaven white man to kill people? Several people and organisations are in the frame.

High in the list must be Nigel Farage who has spent his entire political life losing elections and stirring up hatred, culminating in the evil posters before last June’s disastrous EU referendum. If you are given as much air time and space on newsprint as Farage, it is surely possible that some people, probably not the sharpest tools in the box, will see Farage as the some kind of anti-establishment man of the people who says things that other racists and bigots are afraid to say. In their eyes, Farage’s poison is mainstream opinion. The former, and probably future, Ukip leader has attempted to legitimise xenophobia and racism. I’d say his hands are covered in blood.

Speaking of hands covered in blood, step forward Paul Dacre of the Mail who has been stoking up hatred at the Mail ever since he became editor. Barely a day goes by without foreigners being blamed for all our failings. It would be wrong to say that all Mail readers are racists, bigots and xenophobes but by buying a newspaper that actively supports and promotes hate – and don’t be so stupid as to suggest it doesn’t – they condone it, unwittingly or not. You can obviously add the Sun and the stark ravingly bonkers Express to the list of haters and again if you buy the filth they come out with you are part of the problem.

And then you have the rent-a-mouth thugs like the EDL’s Tommy Robinson, Britain First and all manner of extreme figures and groups on the far right and you have a society in which an awful lot of people think it is perfectly reasonable to drive a van at a group of people whose crime happens to be the religion in which they believe.

The latest attack happens, ironically, the day after the Great Get Together which happened a year after the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox by a right wing terrorist. We do not yet know the motives of the man who mowed down innocent people last night but we will soon find out. It is instructive to learn that when the man was caught last night his life was saved by the Imam. What an amazing act. After such an attack, who among us would have protected a thug from the mob until the police arrived? I’m not sure I would have done.

A terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist. Last night’s awful attack was no different and no less disgusting from, say, the Westminster attack. And as we seek to discover how some muslims are radicalised we do well to do the same with “clean shaven” white men.

How do you celebrate Father’s Day when your father has been dead for over six years? I don’t buy all this “I’ll bet you’re having a great time up in heaven” malarkey because, like my dad, I have never believed that somehow we would survive our own deaths and meet again. When he died, I was pretty certain that it was the end. Since then, nothing has happened to make me change my mind.

My dad, Anthony Johansen, was an incredible man, although we weren’t close until his later life. This was because for much of my life he lived in Canada and I lived in England. Whatever anyone says, miles can separate you in more ways than just geography. I missed the daily, weekly, monthly and sometimes yearly contact and I never got to know him properly until he was in his seventies. I am very grateful that I did get to know him and to spend some quality time with him. When he died, the loss hit me, but not as much as the lost time.

Having never had a father figure in my life did not affect my upbringing. At least that was what I thought. What you have, you don’t miss. But having children of my own, I now know what I missed. I am in no doubt that having a father at home would have given me a better, more stable life, some decent scholastic and professional advice and maybe, just maybe, better mental health.

Of course at the time of growing up, you don’t realise what you are missing. Everyone else had a dad who played football with them, took them places, helped them with homework. I really didn’t give it a single thought that I was not the same as them. My mum and I were very poor but again at the time I didn’t realise it. I thought everyone’s mum hung around the butcher shop after work to try and pick up the off cuts before they were thrown away. I assumed that when the milk ran out midweek, everyone would have to go without until Friday and pay day. I thought I was the same as everyone else. I wasn’t.

Not that I blame anyone for that. What’s the point? My mum and dad made a mistake by getting married and soon got divorced, but not before I turned up. That happens to lots of people. After the thrill is gone in a relationship, the future is dependent upon what’s left. I’ve been there too. I was left to muddle through school, muddle my way into a lifetime of dead end jobs and any potential I had never came to fruition. That’s just the way it was. I do sometimes feel “what if?”, which are the saddest words known to man, because I do feel that so much of my life was a waste of time. Until my soul mate came along and two children came along after. I determined at the outset that they would never be like me. That they would have all the opportunities I never had and they would have better lives. Seeing them succeed has been the great achievement of my life, although I readily acknowledge my partner deserves the majority of the credit.

My dad wanted the best for me and I felt his love particularly at his 75th birthday in 2004 and at his 80th in 2009, when I flew to Ottawa to see him. A few days after I took him to see John Fogerty in concert, I said goodbye, flew home and never saw him again. The next time I flew to Canada was in 2011 for his funeral.

I am thinking of my dad today, as I do on many days. I am grateful that we were eventually like a “normal” father and son and I am sad that for most of life we were anything but normal.

My final memory of him, just before I flew home in 2009, was seeing him sitting in the lounge listening to George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass on vinyl. He adored that album and so do I. And whenever I hear a track from it, I am immediately transported to that happy day some eight years ago when we were together.