I have left Durham County Council. After seven and a bit years I have taken the bait and retired, or at least semi-retired. I have a new found freedom and am looking for some new and interesting things to do.
It has not been an easy time. Giving up on something that has been so dear to me has been difficult. Without really admitting it my body and soul has been tied up with the work I had been doing. It had become a fundamental part of who I was. Perhaps too much.
Talk about a life work balance, but I have never been sure that there is such a thing. It seems a long time since my first days at Rivergreen.
The job occupied so much of my present, there was always something to be getting on with, yet the most noteable wrench has been that it occupied so much of my future. My mind was always racing ahead with all of the things that I was going to do. I think in the future and my diary was packed with new schemes and plans. Some of those I will be able to carry on with and others I will leave to the new wave. Of course there are some things that will fall by the wayside.
That is the nature of the kind of work I was involved in. Much of it only existed because of my stirring the pot. My job was created in my own image and very soon it will be someone else to define what is required.
Now I have a new future to create, one that is yet to be defined, with new pots to stir and new causes to take up.
What I do have now is perhaps the greatest of luxuries, the freedom to choose what I want. I am free to go where I want, free to meet up with who I choose and free to follow whichever path I fancy, within reason.
Is this not what I have always wanted, freedom from location, freedom from hierarchy and freedom from dogma.
I am still going guerrilla.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 
Best of luck, Phil, and keep in touch.
I will do and no doubt our paths will cross. Let me know if you hear of anything interesting.
I used to work at Rivergreen and loved it there (especially the tuna and sweetcorn baguettes you could get in the canteen!). There were 50 staff at the time, working for a software development company that produced data extractions for seismic prediction and drilling to the oil and gas industry.
Well we all know what’s happened to that in the last couple of years (due to the plummet in the price of oil). Last I heard the staff numbers are down to seven, and they’ve had to leave the lovely Rivergreen premises to rent a small room in another office at Aykley Heads. Tragic really.
Yes it was a lovely place, especially as you could go for a walk in the woods. Also it wasn’t County Hall.