Some days, I feel like every conversation I have involves the word ‘pension’. Last weekend, sitting beside a stranger at a convivial dinner in Clare, we got into it early. Three years retired, he’s flying it, advising everyone to down tools as soon as they possibly can.

My partner retired on Monday, so we’ve more or less spent the past six months discussing ARFs, something that only a year ago I thought was just the sound a dog made when it got its paw caught in the door.

Even my baby is talking about pensions. At just 24, she’s now been enrolled in the My Future Fund, the State pension pot for employees whose employers aren’t in a scheme, launched earlier this year.

Twenty-four. When I was her age, pensions were something we presumed you didn’t start thinking about until your late 50s, if at all.

This week, new retirement rights came into effect that allow eligible workers to choose to remain in employment beyond their contractual retirement age, where that age is below the State-pensionable 66.

Previously, thousands of employees were forced to retire at 65, creating a late surge in social welfare claims to cover the year before the State pension commences.

The new rules will give workers the option to work for an additional year to bridge that gap – though there will be no requirement to do so. Pensions, pensions everywhere. For all that the Government is now taking proactive steps towards providing greater financial security post-retirement, we’re clearly still engaged in a massive game of catch-up where pensions are concerned.

This week’s legislation – while welcome – feels like a bit of a sticking-plaster solution to a loophole that wasn’t fully anticipated when the qualifying age for the State pension was raised to 66 a decade ago. Paying a year’s worth of unemployment benefit for a cohort with no intention of getting a job has proved an unexpected drain on State coffers, so this particular new dawn is more about reducing that bill by keeping at least some of those would-be claimants in the workforce.

The My Future Fund – especially for people starting off their working life – is a far bolder initiative and, from closer to the sticking plaster, I can only look at my daughter’s situation with envy. Yes, the contributions are tiny, but 40 years of those acorns should one day lead to the sort of substantial oaks my generation could only dream of.

Ah yes, talking about my generation. And here’s where those pension conversations become pitiful. A lifetime of prudent financial management means that I have an extremely modest pension pot, but that’s more than can be said for most of my friends, a raggle-taggle band of musicians, actors, freelancers and people who generally moved through the gig economy without anyone ever mentioning the P-word.

On the rare occasions when retirement was considered, it was to dream of exotic travel, fine food and second homes by the sea. The fact that so many of us would be wholly reliant on the State pension to bankroll this fabulous lifestyle is, sadly, the massive disconnect of my generation of workers – and neither the My Future Fund nor tinkering with the expiry dates will address that.

I grew up at a time when people were expected to die soon after they retired. And while we might have daydreamed, we had neither the arrogance nor the evidence to suggest that most of us might live for 20 or even 30 years beyond retirement – and that, with improvements in healthcare, the bulk of those years would be active and engaged.

The result is thousands of people who worked for 40-plus years and now face into retirement on benefits of €300 a week and nothing more. Successive governments have warned about pension crises, but always in a far-off, how-will-the-children-manage way. Yet here we are, and that crisis is upon us.

Socially, creatively, we are finally beginning to get our heads around the fact that the Third Age is not a time for fading away, but for continuing to actively contribute to community, country and, frequently, the economy. It is only the money that we need to sort out now.

Sadly, in the end, it always come down to the money.

If the Boys in Blue ever need a new star scorer...

In a rare case of life imitating sport, I see Dublin influencer Charleen Murphy appears to have eclipsed Galway footballer Seán Fitzgerald in the Love Island stakes, capturing all the headlines for her lip-locking debut in Casa Amor, hours after the Dublin footballers kissed the Tribesmen’s All-Ireland hopes goodbye.

I’m not sure how the fixtures list works in Love Island, but if it’s anything like here, then I’d imagine a home contestant will still be lucky to make the final.

Sorry Tay Tay, but I’m tied up this weekend

Given that I’ve only attended nine weddings in my life – a paltry bouquet-throwing average of one every seven years – I can’t quite believe Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have chosen the exact same date to jump the broom as another, equally beautiful couple, whose invitation had unfortunately landed in my inbox before Tay Tay had even sent out hers. So while I’m spoken for this Saturday at a nuptials that doesn’t involve traffic restrictions, all eyes will be on Graham Norton and Niall Horan to represent Irish interests in the other wedding of the decade. At the very least, we’ll be hoping for reports of the two men leading the lines for Rock The Boat. Ireland, after all, expects. 

HAVING filled in my World Cup wallchart before a single ball was kicked, it’s been fascinating to chart how many scores, results and qualifiers I and my crack team of family analysts correctly predicted. Now we’re finally into the Round of 32, I can report that we correctly called 29 of the 32 qualifying teams and scored a less emphatic eight of the 16 pairings. Which, if it were being played out in a stadium in the States, would probably constitute a plucky 2-1 victory. Round of 16, here I come. 

COULD David Beckham and his mother, Sandra, have looked any more miserable in the Royal Box on the opening day of Wimbledon? Footage of the beleaguered Beckhams watching Jannik Sinner opening his defence of his singles title suggested they’d rather be anywhere than on Centre Court. Though given the family’s woes, perhaps staring at a scoreboard with the word ‘Sinner’ on it for several hours was a trial too far.

OLIVIA Wilde says she changed her name to pursue a Hollywood career, as her surname, Cockburn, was likely to be mispronounced Stateside with predictably hilarious consequences. The actress and director describes growing up with a ‘challenging’ surname as ‘character building’, which is one way to look at it. Given my own name is more character questioning than building, I suppose it at least explains why I’ve never cracked Hollywood.

DRAMATIC photos of the five-hour rescue of an unfortunate pony, found sinking in a bog hole in Offaly, are obliging me to rethink my theory that Irish people of my generation’s obsessive and crippling fear of quicksand was probably not entirely realistic. Lads, it really is out there…