Have I got news for you. Well, actually it's not earth shattering, except to me. But I've retired, so instead of sitting in the office staring out at the often interesting collection of people walking around the Parade, I'm sitting at home in the sunshine, fending off the cats who think I'm there to wait on their every whim and a dog who wants a companion in hole-digging. I didn't exactly volunteer to retire. I fell victim of the government's new age discrimination policy. If this seems odd to you, think what it seems to me. If you want an explanation of this somewhat bizarre situation just send a stamped addressed envelope. Sorry, that's a joke. I don't want to depress anyone else, but let's just say I know who I won't be voting for in the next election. My colleagues gave me a lovely send-off. Flowers, wine (they know me so well) a jokey teapot in the shape of a duck, which could only have been bettered had the spout been at the other end of its body rather than its beak. I've found it is excellent for watering plants. I also got a super bracelet, in exquisite taste, chosen by the entire assembly of my editorial colleagues. Jewellery is so difficult to buy, you usually end up with chandelier earrings or the sort of brooch you see lurking at the back of charity shop windows. This was, however, perfect. Thanks guys. My big present from the paper was not exactly a surprise. This could have been because I had rather ungratefully said 'please don't buy me some ornate fake gold clock or a hideous ornament which looks like someone's kidney stones embedded in glass, I want an iPod. A pink one.' Which I got. When I get to know how to use it I'll love it even more. So here I am. Not entirely unemployed because this column will continue, along with the gardening page and hopefully some more gardening features. Plus any other work I get. I do feel though that I have now entered what a dear old actress friend used to call the 'not dead yet', phase of my life. She said she used to go to theatrical parties and would often see people looking across at her thinking 'I thought she was dead'. I've already found one benefit to retirement. The lack of Sunday guilt. It's a guilt which comes about when you are lounging around reading the Sunday papers and doing the crossword and you know you really should be getting around to the many jobs that need doing because you have to go to work on the morrow. As procrastination is my middle name I'm going to be fully employing it every Sunday. And probably Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday etc.

Talking of the weekend papers; this week's produced so many illustrations of the fact that we seem to have moved into an alternative universe that I was gobsmacked. Firstly, there was the young man who has finally been acquitted on appeal of having barked at a couple of dogs. His crime, for which he had originally been fined £50 with £150 costs by magistrates who obviously were taking their job just a little too seriously, was going 'woof, woof' at two chocolate Labradors. He was charged with a public order offence of causing alarm, harassment or distress to the dogs' owner, even though she hadn't made a complaint and presumably the dogs had merely woofed back. True, he had been causing a bit of a rumpus, but as the judge who threw out the case on appeal said 'the law is not an ass' I can't help wondering how the hapless police officer who arrested the man explained his decision to arrest the chap to his superiors. 'What's he in for?', someone would have said, as he was lined up with muggers and drug dealers and the like. 'Barking at a couple of Labradors', the man had to reply. If you can get arrested for barking, where could this lead? I often miaow at the cats just for a bit of a laugh to see if they look around to locate where another cat is. Actually they always ignore me in a rather superior way. But if some eagle eyed copper was to be passing I might be accused of harassing a poor dumb animal. And I'll have to curb the urge to baa at a huddle of sheep the next time I'm on a country walk. That's always satisfying, because they always baa back, silly creatures that they are. And, of course, those chaps who made a living out of imitating animal sounds, Johnny Morris and the other one whose name I've forgotten, would be in deep trouble. They'd find themselves behind bars with the key thrown away . Now I'm sure that somewhere there are people who would applaud the long of the law involving themselves in so serious a crime, people who usually write to broadsheet newspapers signing themselves 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells (retired)'. The rest of us think it's just a waste of public money. Incidentally, the woof, woof case cost £8,000 of public money. Barking mad, don't you think?

Moving on to a load of rubbish. Last week there was a story saying that a lot of the nation's councils had been advised not to reveal that they might be considering changing to fortnightly collections of household rubbish until the elections for district councillors (due this week) was over. Now I'm not suggesting our own dear council is being so sneaky, wash my mouth out with soap if you should think I'm saying such a thing. I'm sure we'll be told in all good time if this is going to happen. It's all part of a new government scheme to do with being green and fighting global warming. Isn't everything these days? If it's not terrorism it's global warming and bang goes another civil right. The government's initiative is called WRAP, waste and resources action programme. Put it another way and it could be WARPED. It is not calling the fortnightly collection 'fortnightly collection', or even once every two week collection, but AWC which stands for 'alternate weekly collection' in the hope that some of us are daft enough not to notice piles of stinking rubbish bags in the garage which are going to have to stand there for another week while we're being gradually globally warmed. It's bad enough at the moment. We all have to use black bin liners these days, because dustbins have gone out of fashion. All very well if you don't have a stray cat in the vicinity which can smell a chicken carcass at 500 yards even though it's been wrapped in five carrier bags and put at the bottom of the bin liner. The net result of this on one occasion was that my ginger cat, who isn't too proud to pick up and eat some other cat's leavings, got a chicken bone stuck at the back of his throat and gave an Oscar winning performance of a cat who was choking. Sadly he was. £78 later he returned from the vets' surgery looking very sorry for himself but minus the chicken bone. Then there are stray dogs, foxes, the occasional passing badger and in some areas seagulls (more and more in Callington, where some of them have never seen the sea but are very fond of chicken tikka masala from takeaway containers). All these just love black bin liners. To combat this we bought a wheelie bin from Trago, but soon realised that our dustmen, sorry, garbage disposal operatives, wouldn't empty it. Not their fault, they don't have the equipment on the lorry to do so. We now drag the bin to the kerb and decant it before going to work. Or rather I did when I had work to go to ... There also might be a problem with a wheelie bin in that it was rather a hazard on the pavement, and if someone were to fall over it they might rush out and get themselves a buy one, get one free, or is it no win, no fee, lawyer? These new ideas are all to get us to recycle more. If they want people to recycle more why don't they just make it illegal not to? I'm not one for introducing more laws, but it seems sensible. As I'm now officially on holiday until the end of the month, catching up on untaken time, I'm off to Germany where it is illegal not to recycle. Drop an unwashed can still with its label on into the bin meant for paper and you're likely to get a visit from the litter police and a hefty fine. And it isn't just a threat, either, people do get fined. Ignore the litter laws and you could end up with a long criminal record just for continually failing to sort your aluminium from your waxed cartons or dropping a wine bottle into the food waste container. The difference is that everyone is provided with an array of bins to recycle. It's the first lesson in German that British people get, the ability to read what goes where on the bins. But at least they have some very hungry seagulls in the town. Now, to end this week's first column in retirement, I'll just say I'm off to recycle the huge pile of electioneering waste paper which has been regularly popping through the door, some of it, no doubt, promising wheelie bins for all, no more global warming and lower council tax for everybody. It's going to join the letters from Reader's Digest which have promised me I'm in with a good chance of a £1m prize if I'd just post back their forms and not even have to buy the map book of Britain. In other words, rubbish.