FOR most of us going through life, there are but few key milestones: schooldays, choosing a career, marriage, buying a house, starting a family.

When all these have been achieved, there is one more abrupt change which presents many people with more dilemmas than most: retirement.

I mean, just what do you do when there is no longer the need to set the alarm clock - and the days stretch ahead of you?

So meet David Smith, who a couple of weeks ago retired as the longest serving member of the Skipton Building Society and its subsidiaries. He did 41 years as - his own words - a "small cog in an ever growing machine".

He was, in fact, the cog at the centre of many turning wheels which turned SBS from a small but parochial financial backwater into a nationally-known financial giant.

What's more, his 41 years is just the second half of his family's association with the society: his mum and dad worked for it for another 46 years between them. But if that looks like the record of loyal family retainers, slaving away un-noticed in the "big house" like some Victorian lackeys, think again. It's a long and interesting story.

David was born in 1946, a year after his soldier dad had come back from the war. His mother was a Skipton lass and met her husband, who came from Burnley, when he was doing his army training at Hebden.

They were, I suppose, an archetypal working class family. After the war, father took a job as a railway signalman and mum worked in a fruit and veg shop.

Young David, however, turned out to be a bright spark who passed his 11-plus to Ermysted's. And just as he went off to the grammar school, his parents found themselves a new job - as joint caretakers of the old SBS HQ in Providence Place, off the High Street.

The job was highly prized because, at a time of acute housing shortages, it came with a house - a long-demolished end terrace opposite the Devonshire Hotel in Newmarket Street.

And there, young David got to know the then local legend Cyril Clarke, general manager of SBS, a friendly sort of fellow with a well-hidden iron will.

One evening, Clarke asked David if he fancied a holiday job. Eager to earn some cash, David jumped at the opportunity. Then, still at school, he began working Saturday mornings for 10 shillings a time - 50p in today's money but a small fortune then to a young lad.

It was almost inevitable that, when he left school, David would make his career with the Skipton.

"Lots of people say I must have been bored out of my mind," he grins at his home in Hurrs Road, Skipton. "The fact of the matter is that I never did one job for more than a few months at a time.

"I watched the Skipton grow from a parochial outfit with just 30 employees and two out-of-town branches in Harrogate and Shipley to the giant it is today. It is impossible to say that I was in on the ground floor - the society is celebrating its 150th anniversary - but I was there when the massive expansion began. It like to think that, as a cog in the machine, I did my bit to keep those wheels turning faster and faster."

This is being too modest As the society grew, David Smith was always there when advice was needed. He trained lots of young people who are now senior managers.

He was a key adviser when the society's records were computerised and, his last major triumph, he supervised the huge move of the society's headquarters from the High Street to The Bailey.

That entailed transporting hundreds of computers and tens of thousands of files, including perhaps the most important document the average couple will ever possess - the deeds on their homes.

"We had to leave the High Street at 5pm on Friday and be back at work at The Bailey at 9am the following Monday," he recalls. "It was like a military operation, with fleets of removals vans going along the High Street, up the Bailey, out to the bypass and back in a constant circle."

He takes a deep breath. You can see the tension all these years later. Then he smiles: "Fortunately, everything went to plan."

So, to beg the question I posed earlier, what will David and his wife Margaret do now? "That's no problem," he guffawed. "I shall do what I want, when I want and - the most important bit of all - if I want."

That gives him plenty of scope. They have a large family and, when not with them, go off in their luxury caravan - "We've been caravanning for 30 years and there is still lots of Britain we haven't seen."

He still has other voluntary jobs. He has held several offices with Ermysted's Old Boys and has been a stalwart of Skipton RFC since he was at school.

"I owe everything to Ermysted's," he says. "Without the school, I would have never got the job with the building society and would never have learned to play and love rugby. Now I shall have time to give something back."

I have a suspicion that, for David Smith, retirement will be even busier than work!