When I first joined The Argus in the Seventies, one employee was in the Guinness Book of Records.

He was a linotype operator called Danny Watts who had a unique record of service to his employer. Danny retired aged 87, having worked 72 years for the company.

Things are different now. I am hurtling towards 60 and am almost the oldest living inhabitant on the paper yet it will be the best part of 30 years before I reach the age at which Danny finally decided he'd had enough of work.

Looking round at my contemporaries, I find most of them have retired - some of them have been enjoying their leisure for several years.

Among these friends are some who did not start proper paid work until they were 25, after university and training.

They are retiring at 50 or 55 and could easily live to be 90 or 95. If that occurs, they will have worked for less than a third of their lives.

These lucky people may be the last in a line who have received generous pensions for a fairly small personal outlay. But I do not agree with forecasters who fancy in future we will have to work well into our 70s to afford retirement.

In the past, most people did not expect anything more than the old age pension. Many did not survive to receive it and others, such as a next door neighbour I had in Hove, did not live long after work.

He had dreams of riding his bike over the Rockies in Canada but died of a heart attack three days after his retirement party.

People of my age were told by Barbara Castle in the Sixties that we would all be generously provided for in an enhanced State system.

This, like many of her notions, never came to much and she, like the rest of us, had to make her own arrangements to finance a long and active old age before her death last week.

But these days there is so much money sloshing about that many youngsters will be saving a high proportion of their incomes for the future, either in pensions or in other ways.

A minority will make so much money there will be no need to bother. Far from working on into their 70s and 80s, they are already retiring in their late 20s or early 30s.

We will have to be much more flexible about work in the future.

There are some youngsters who will never be any good at it. Equally, some of my recently-retired friends could, if they wanted to, carry on working part-time, giving society the full use of their undoubted talents and earning some pocket money in the process.

It seems almost criminal to pension off people in their early 50s, especially from the public services, where taxpayers have to foot the bill for their often lengthy retirements.

Equally, there is no reason why many more people could not work part-time for much longer than they do at present.

My line of business is particularly suitable for flexible working. With new technology, it is perfectly possible for parents to work from home at times when they need to be near young children.

They can also carry on well beyond normal retirement age, weaving words magically into a readable fabric.

Examples of people who are already successfully achieving this are Keith Waterhouse, who is 70-plus, Nigel Nicholson, aged over 80, and our own voice of the third age, Lis Solkhon.

Among novelists, Mary Wesley did not really achieve real fame until she was 70, while PG Wodehouse continued to churn out comic masterpieces when well past 90.

I doubt if anyone will beat the record of dear old Danny Watts. But it should be possible in the future for more of us to work when we want, where we want and for as long as we want, providing a good service and pulling in a proper pension too.