Time to get hot drink on retirement for the evening? (5)
I believe the answer is:
night
'the evening?' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'time to get hot drink on retirement' is the wordplay.
'time' becomes 't'.
'to get' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'hot' becomes 'h'.
'drink' becomes 'gin' (gin is a kind of drink**).
'on retirement' shows that the letters should be reversed in order.
'h'+'gin'='hgin'
'hgin' reversed gives 'nigh'.
't' after 'nigh' is 'NIGHT'.
'for' is the link.
(Other definitions for night that I've seen before include "- School, - owl" , "End of the day" , "Dark period" , "The dark time" , "Opposite of day" .)