As I began to write The Unretirement, which features recently widowed and retired 65-year-old Maggie bravely embarking on a new chapter, I was required to really think about what community means, and subconsciously, or otherwise, I found my thoughts repeatedly returning to the year 2020. Many of us avoid calling to mind the dark and disconcerting days of the pandemic. For some, it will bring back painful memories of loss, loneliness and uncertainty, and for others – perhaps more of us than we realise – the experience of living through it has altered our lives in slightly more subtle ways, and maybe not all of them for the worse.
For someone like me who grew up in a medium-sized village, home to several generations of my family, ‘community’ seemed an obvious construct. Most children attended the one village school, where parents knew each other and shopped at the only village newsagents and drank at one of our two pubs (wild times). There was a thriving village hall boasting am-dram groups, youth clubs and the WI. There were Brownies, Scouts, football clubs, you name it. This, I thought, no, I knew… was community. Except, of course, being now in my late-forties, I moved away decades ago and my ‘community’ didn’t move with me. Like most of us, I’ve had to find my own, many times over, and as we grow older, this gets harder.
When Maggie’s life is forever changed by bereavement, her life as she knows it is upended. She and her husband had retired to travel the world and enjoy new adventures together, but instead she’s alone, looking for ways to fill her days. She has lost the camaraderie of her colleagues and grief has distanced her from her old life, old friends. Living through COVID, it isn’t much of a stretch for most of us to imagine how isolating these changed circumstances would be.
A community, of course, can be many things. It can be your colleagues in the workplace, it can be a support network, a group of people joined by a common cause or place, it can be your family, your friends, your neighbours, it can even be virtual. During lockdown, our worlds shrank, right down to the four walls we lived within and the stretch of landscape we frequented for our daily constitutionals. In such limited vicinities, our gaze alighted on our neighbours. For many of us, we may only ever have shared a passing word or a wave, taken in a parcel, and then all of a sudden – there we were, standing on our doorsteps among them (or at least peering through the window at them), as the nation began to clap. Strange times indeed. I, like many up and down the country, joined a local group of volunteers to shop for the elderly or vulnerable and met many interesting people I never would have otherwise. Four of my good friends, who hardly knew each other, formed a WhatsApp group during lock down, purely to check in on one another daily, as they each lived alone. Impossible, now, to imagine the long stretches of time that normally sociable people spent in solitude, with only Zoom and Facetime for interaction. How much worse for those that were vulnerable or lonely to begin with. Fast forward to the present day and those four women became the very best of friends. Would that have happened otherwise? Hard to say, but the peculiar circumstances of the time forged a bond between them – they became a community.
In The Unretirement, Maggie finds friendship in an unexpected place and with the unlikeliest of people when she starts working in the kitchens of a beloved Indian restaurant with a hapless new chef, a teenage lad, his feisty feminist friend and the son of the Indian owners. They share a common goal; to save the restaurant from ruin, and so begins an adventure that unites them all. Their small, tight-knit restaurant community represents a microcosm of the wider locality, where their story plays out on a bigger field – and was also a theme central to lockdown – look after each other, reach out to those who might be in need – and with particular relevance to small businesses in the food and beverage industry: Use it, or lose it. Eat out to help out.
The very act of coming together for the greater good, of joining together with others who really care, to achieve something – no matter how small, is surely what community is really about, and is a theme I often find myself drawn to in my writing. There are always ways to relate to a character, experiences we can draw upon when we step into someone else’s shoes, and I found myself thinking back to my old village again, when writing the character of newly divorced single-parent Hannah, Maggie’s thirty-something daughter. Returning to the place she was raised, after many years away, mirrored Maggie’s new circumstances in many ways. Just because you are ‘at home’, doesn’t necessitate a feeling of belonging. Being surrounded by friendship, loved ones and the uplifting communion of others are arguably the crucial ingredients for making a place a home.
(c) Penny Mirren
About The Unretirement by Penny Mirren:
Meet foodie Maggie Lawford.
After spending her retirement travelling the world, she’s home again – and ready for a new adventure.
When Maggie’s daughter, Hannah, takes her to visit their favourite local restaurant, Maggie is heartbroken to find the place empty. But the last straw comes when Maggie realises the chef is at his wit’s end – she can’t resist charging into the kitchen and taking matters into her own hands.
Never one to give up without a fight, Maggie resolves to save their beloved restaurant from failure, and it’s not long before she has a military-grade plan to turn the place around again. Finding herself back at work, all she’ll need is support from Hannah and her cheeky granddaughter, Alice, as well as a little help from her neighbours.
After all, Maggie’s golden days aren’t behind her just yet…
The Unretirement, Penny Mirren’s debut novel, was published by Avon on 23 May.
Order your copy online here.
