All the talk is about jobs for the kids. Where they gonna work? How will they compete with AI, particularly if they don’t posses much non-artificial intelligence? Where are the ‘starting jobs’? Which you can’t get without experience, but how you gonna get experience if no-one will employ you? Should you go to university or do an apprenticeship or vocational course instead? Lumber yourself with 95 grands worth of lifelong debt, at the ‘special student government interest rate’ of about 15% per annum (fuckers) to get a 2.2 in Fine Art and Lumberjacking from Newport Pagnell Polytechnic. Or go become a plumber? Mechanic? How about drug dealing, very lucrative, no experience required but ability to shoot a gun will bolster your cv.

Yeah, impossible to even start thinking about solutions for the youth and what Lila and Joey will do for work. Though I could see Lila in construction. And Joey in destruction. But who knows.

I started working at 14. My dad’s mate, a bespoke tailor, needed a ‘Saturday Boy’, as we were known, back in the day. Now the term is ‘Non-specific gender person on a given but unspecified day’. I was a gofer. It was fab. I spent all day walking round Soho picking up buttons and cloth and stuff, ogling in the horrible little ‘sex shops’ for which the area was famous, and talking to the ‘really friendly girls’ who hung out in Berwick Street, wearing very little. The other ‘featured speciality’ of Soho, back in 1970.

I left there eventually, as working in the West End was a commute I tired of. So I went to work in Mr Byrite in Ilford. The most down-market, high fashion chain there ever was. Come in, buy a shirt to wear tonight, it looks fab, sir. Then just throw it away and buy another next week. You wouldn’t wanna try and wash it. Though, obviously, the residents of Ilford weren’t that big on washing things anyway. It was a great job. Lots of guys (about 20 of us on a Saturday; never girls. It was the first ‘toxically masculine’ environment I experienced and it was great to be a part of it, 30 years before Andrew Tait was born).

Then I drove loads of van for various people. I love driving. I love vans. Ish. But it was fun. I delivered displays of watches all over the country. And on weekends I drove a van full of dresses to Petticoat Lane market and back.

I sold double glazing for a year. I can confess now that the statute of limitations has expired. That was an incredible experience. 18 years old and staying in hotels all around the country, selling a (brilliant) product that no-one knew they needed and sharing rooms with other sales-people, often of a contradictory gender. We, basically, shagged our way round the nation making sufficient money that I bought myself a brand new Mini at the end of the year. What’s wrong with that?? Other than… errrrr… the legal and moral implications of the process, perhaps.

And that was my cv until I became an optical person. Though a few years later I arrived in California and, not realising that I could actually work there, I acted like the illegal immigrant I was and pumped gas at a Chevron in Hollywood. The best job I ever had.

Can I clean your windshield?

Happy Working Days

A xxxx