Earning a little extra cash to top up your old age pension may not seem like a completely alien concept, as we a see an ageing population steered towards giving up work later in life. But what about working when you’re 80?

Joanne Parkes talks to John Howe who, after two divorces, finds living on a pension a little tight. So he wants a job.

To ensure a few luxuries in life, 80-year-old John Howe finds some light paid work can come in quite handy, and his name is on the books of a Reigate recruitment agency.

“I like to run a car,” he says. “Have holidays, go to the theatre.” He also has family in New Jersey, and needs to save up before he can visit his new great grandson.

Though John has been an army officer, managing director, successful salesman and lived in a “nice house” in Reigate Road, Redhill, two divorces and a poorly performing pension have set him up for a rather less comfortable retirement.

“The pension I organised in the 1970s doesn’t equal the amount I need to live to the standard I would like in 2003,” he says.

“Inflation has eaten into it. If I don’t work I have to question having my car.” Since retiring in the late 1980s John, who now lives in Ranmore Close, Gatton Point, has had a string of paid jobs – delivering newspapers to hospital patients, attending the car park at Safeway in Reigate, and serving on the deli counter at Sainsbury’s in Redhill.

For a while, with two friends he ran an odd jobbing business around Reigate, called Jackson’s.

“I did anything that came along, purely because I wanted to supplement my pension,” says John, who also keeps himself busy as an author, local historian, chairman of a voluntary organisation and avid user of e-mails.

“But I did meet a lot of friends in the course of my year at East Surrey Hospital. I am still in touch with a few.” He also recalls enjoying his job at Safeway, which only started as a winter job, but kept his attention for five years.

Though John’s cited reasons for pursuing a working retirement are financial, the benefits are obviously much wider and embedded in his personality.

As a former salesman he enjoys contact with people, and takes pleasure in the detail of life as an ever-unravelling journey.

He says: “When I retired I thought the world would be full of people who would welcome me with open arms, because of my experience. But they didn’t even reply to my letters.

“I did plenty of unpaid jobs – I drove for Meals-on-Wheels and for the Red Cross, driving people to hospital – but there comes a time when you do want to get paid.

“But they want young people because they’re prepared to work for 20 hours a day, when I wanted to work about 20 hours a week.

“Then it was a question of saying, ‘what other assets have I got?’, and I thought, well, I can mow a lawn, so I teamed up with a couple of fellas and we started Jackson’s.” John’s second divorce aged 60 followed a 10-year marriage, which gave him two sons, 20 years after his first marriage ended.

His first marriage failed around the time of his return from the army in 1947. He has a son, Peter, from that marriage, who is now 57 and a very good friend.

“Divorce affected me very deeply,” he reflects. “I couldn’t believe what was happening to me.” He found the worst thing about his first experience of divorce was leaving a child.

“Peter was about two years old and it broke my heart, but I was determined not to disappear.

“Over the next few years I took him out every weekend and was involved in his schooling.” John’s instinctive sense of responsibility towards his children has spurred him to become heavily involved in supporting families who have suffered a split, and is now the chairman of Redhill’s Contact and Access Centre.

Funded by Churches Together in Redhill and Salfords, and based at Park Church in Park Lane, the centre provides secure, neutral territory for estranged parents – usually fathers – to spend time with their children.

He says: “It’s a vital thing. When men are separated from their children they need to bond.

“When the children are bigger they can go and do all sorts of things with them, but when they’re small they tend to run out of options, especially when it’s raining.” John’s experience of helping run this kind of facility goes back to 1984, when he went to a party organised for divorcees.

He saw the frustrations of women at Gingerbread meetings, who were mostly looking after children while on benefits and couldn’t apply for jobs for want of childcare.

John and some others formed a committee and set up the Gingerbread Childcare Centre, which operated at Subud Hall in South Park from 1985 for around six years.

His other interest is history, and he is currently researching for his second book, this time on the history of the Catholic Church in Reigate. He has also recently been trying his hand at lecturing for Reigate Historical Society – a University of the Third Age venture.

Asked the key to being 80 going on 40, John replies modestly: “There are far more 80-year-olds around nowadays and some are bound to be more sprightly.” If you want to offer John some work, call Joanne Parkes at the Life newsdesk on 020 8645 8820.