Saturday, September 25, 2004

Yesterday was my first day ever as an unemployed person, and it set me thinking about the start of my working life. Way back in 1978, I was all set to stay on at school to do the 6th form thing, even though I was not really blessed with any great academic abilities. In fact even though I had really enjoyed school from a social perspective and loved the fact that they organised lots of sport for you to take part in, I had becoming increasingly bored and lazy by that whole going to lessons and doing work thing.

One night I was lazily looking through the jobs section of the Evening Post, when a small ad caught my eye. I always avoided those big, boxed job adverts, as they were obviously looking for someone much more talented then me, if they went to all the trouble of paying for a large advert. Anyway this particular advert said that a joinery firm in Kingswood was looking for someone to do general office work. I had no real idea what general office was, but I though that I would send them an application.

Amazingly they called me for an interview and after that offered me the job, I was somewhat shocked. It turned to be a lovely place to work, run by a pair of fervent socialist brothers, with the occasional input of their virtually communist father, it was never going to an ordinary place to work. The tone was set, straight away, my first day coincided with the start of Wimbledon and for the next two weeks, my job seemed to consist of keeping a record of the scores in all the games, via the office radio so that I could keep everyone up to date with the tournament!

Later similar attention was lavished on football tournaments and various elections. The brothers looked after the staff brilliantly, in fact they were probably rather too generous as the firm went bust in late 1984 despite having a full order book, and it was time for me to head off to BT. I still see one of the brothers regularly at the City ground, as he sits very near to me. I’ll always be thankful to him, his brother and Father for helping to ease me into the adult world in such an enjoyable way.

On a different note, the great and good (well some of them are good) of the rock world, have banded together to make an album in support of the Burmese struggle for freedom, anything which helps to highlight the dreadful situation in that country is welcomed and long overdue.


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