JOB interviews, eh? Don’t you just love them? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.

We all know they’re a game; a game in which those either side of the desk know the rules but neither must admit to that fact.

For both parties a job interview is a performance – and like many a performance you have to learn your lines. To hell with honesty, you have to parrot what your interlocutor expects to hear.

For example, when your would-be employer asks: “What’s your greatest skill?” you know the truth is the ability to lay on your back and blow smoke rings but you dutifully spout some rubbish about being “self-motivated”; when they enquire: “What can you bring to the table?” you know it’s really a decent bottle of Carménère but you blather on about “enthusiasm”; and when they ask: “Where do you see yourself in 20 years?” you have to summon up every iota of restraint to not scream the word – “RETIRED!”

At least, that’s how it was. Of late, retirement has become a bit of a dirty word. Having cocked up the economy, our lords and masters don’t like the idea of us plebs calling it a day. They want us to get out there – and stay out there – till we drop.

Age may be “just a number” and 66 may be “the new 46” but tell that to my knees.

And I’m one of the “lucky” ones. I’ve been yoked to an Apple Mac for most of my working life – I have the hunched shoulders and pasty-faced myopia to prove it – but I have friends of a similar vintage whose jobs are far more physically demanding. Humping concrete blocks around may have kept them pretty fit in their 30s but time’s winged Zimmer frame has taken its toll on their time-ravaged 60-year-old bodies.

It’s okay for some pen-pushing, spreadsheet-obsessed career politician to decide when we drones can throw in the towel but my ageing landscape gardener friend is a physical wreck, each movement leaving him wincing in paroxysms of pain. I’m really not sure what he’d do if the pension-entitlement age goes up to 70 but I suspect Sainsbury’s shelves would be well-stacked.

I started work at 18 so have waited nearly half a century to retire, but now it’s here – like most things in life – it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

As a young buck, you imagine the retired life to be one of endless sun-drenched Viking cruises and evenings of sophisticated G&T-fuelled banter, not one of clinging to the radiator in an under-threat library waiting for The Chase to start.

That delusion is promulgated by the fact that you’ve imagined those sunlit uplands when in your prime. But when you’ve clocked up six decades – with crumbling molars and the chiropodist on speed dial – things are very different. Your views change. Even if you’re confident that your pension will outlive you, you worry that you’ll be well enough to enjoy it.

If you’re averagely fit, in your middle years you don’t give a moment’s thought to the ravages of time. But as you approach the Steradent Years minor ailments seem to take forever to clear up and – if you share my hypochondria – every twinge, throb, ache, lump or hitherto unseen mole sends you scurrying to Dr Google.

We all know pigeon-holing labels are dangerous… “pensioner” being a particularly unwelcome one.

I remember a former employer telling me about a recent experience at his local post office. Remember them?

Running a successful business, he’d been going there for years, exchanging pleasantries and the odd joke with those behind the counter, but as soon as he visited brandishing a shiny new pension book the very same staff members started addressing him as if he was a hard-of-hearing two-year-old.

See, one day, you’re a thrusting, virile young entrepreneur; the next you’re a “pensioner”. But inside you’re the same person. A “pensioner”, you tell yourself, is your nan, not you.

Looked at positively, retirement should be seen as simply the next phase of your life. God knows, there’s no shortage of self-help guides steering the bewildered towards a fulfilling salary-free future, and I fully intend to volunteer for something or study something. Just not yet.

I’m still new to this life of leisure. I haven’t done it long enough for boredom to kick in, and with the luxury of time I’m beginning to learn a lot about myself.

Chiefly, I’ve learned that I could now tell putative employers that my greatest skill is my capacity for indolence.

How I envy those over-60s in The Guardian who’ve carved out a new life as a travelling knife grinder or Hansom cab lamp fitter.

So, for those of us less motivated, what do we retired folk do slumped in front of Talking Pictures TV, our eFoldi up to its wheels in Werther’s Originals wrappers, while waiting for the Wiltshire Farms man to arrive?

I need a hobby.

I’ve always thought writing looks a doddle.