That kind of career is easy for a family to miss. It was never the headline. It happened between school runs and hospital appointments and everybody else’s crises, and there's a fair chance nobody has ever written the number of years down anywhere.
Write the number down
Ask her, or ask whoever would know: which job, where, and how long. Twenty-two years at the same nursery. Eighteen behind the same counter. Those three answers are the whole brief, and until somebody collects them the gift hasn't got anything to be about.
The name print
The name print takes her name, her profession, her years of service and where she worked, sets them into type under the fixed Happy Retirement line, and prints it here. Nothing else goes on it. The restraint is the point: the page says she did this job, in this place, for this long, and lets the number carry the weight.
Unframed that is £14.99 in A4, £28.99 in A3. Framed and hangable, A3 is £69.00. Those same four details also print on a mug for £16.99, which is the version that gets used every morning rather than looked at once a week.
When several people are paying
If children and grandchildren are chipping in, one person orders and the rest settle up afterwards; there is no group basket. A framed A3 name print at £69.00 across five of them is under £14 each, and delivery is inside that price rather than added at the end.
Timing
Order a fortnight before the day itself: the press needs two to four working days, the courier two to five, and neither is charged on top.
For a mum rather than a nan, the guide to buying for a mum begins with the photograph instead, and retirement gifts for women covers the career at length. Who is retiring lists them all.
