Well I’m off to Switzerland for a couple of days to experience the delights of clean air, high altitude and the company of a few work colleagues who want to make a good idea a great business.

It’s a chance to rekindle my aspiration for AgeWage to help people get a wage in later age and I’ve determined that the best chance of that happening is through the Pension SuperHaven, a venture that is being backed by the financier Edi Truell.

Whether we need to go to Switzerland to get this over the line is debatable, but I haven’t been there since I was a teenager when I took an inter rail round Europe and found I could kip at a distant relative’s house in Rapperswill (near Berne). I went round Europe on my own, no photos survive. Over the month in July 1978, I got in a lot of scrapes. I had £100 spending money which worked out at £3.30 a day and I came back with £8.

In the meantime I learned a lot as 16 year olds do , when their parents entrust them to do what they can with their time. I can’t think that many Mums and Dads would allow their eldest child to take off as I did with no plan, no phone and only a passport and a rail ticket to make it round the continent. I thank them for that

Now I am going back. This time I am flying and taking a car up to some resort higher than I’ve ever stayed. It’s like the second biggest adventure of my life and though it’s for 3 and not 30 days, I sense it will be my second coming of age.

After all, at 62 rather than 16 I am approaching a new stage of life, not adulthood but maturity. I don’t think it can be called retirement but it is a moving on to a new relationship with myself and my family. It is a new relationship with my co-workers at AgeWage and at Pension SuperFund and I hope it will mark the fulfillment of what we started at Pension PlayPen over 10 years ago.

Along the way I have to doff my cap to First Actuarial, the finest bunch of people I can imagine working with today. I am so pleased that we are back working with them as we build Pension SuperHaven.

And as I prepare for lift-off , I am reminded of taking a bus to Poole, a ferry to Cherbourg and a train to Paris 46 years ago. I remember getting on a transcontinental train from the other side of that great town after staring up at the destinations; the train said Geneva, I slept on it, using the luggage rack as you were allowed to, as my hammock.