What Next?

I am in the strange position of having to face up to a few life changing decisions at the moment, in some way these decisions are a reflection of a bigger question, how do I want to live the rest of my live.   What sort of a live do I want to live.   I suppose some of this is the realisation of quite a bog birthday looming later this year, when I was forty I had just become a parent, when I was fifty I decided that it was high time I started to work out exactly what my gender miss match was all about.   Now I am approaching sixty I have questions about my body, my profession and my education.

Amongst other things I revisiting a question I thought I had settled over forty years ago. At that point I could think of no subject I wanted to study for three years, and what I saw of the student life as modeled for me by both my brothers simply did not appeal.   Instead I decided to join the workforce at that point my plan had been to work my way up, getting professional qualifications on the way, and enjoy a nice suburban lifestyle, with a nice suburban wife and family, paid for through my nice suburban job.   In short I was expecting to have a life in a world that was rapidly disappearing.   The jobs I anticipated doing no longer exist, the qualifications I achieved (AIB part 2) are irrelevant and equally extinct.    It took me about 3 years to work out that retail banking was boring, repetitive, and was never going to satisfy me.   The next job was also accounts based (in those days before PCs my dyslexia prevented me doing anything word based)  I enjoyed working for that Company and expected it to be a job for life ~ alas the 80 were the time when such things just disappeared.   The office I worked in is now a restaurant I can't afford to eat in, and the Company no longer manufactures in Britain, and at least has had the decency to drop the tag line "The Great British Radial"

Maybe that should have been the point to look at this but I thought I couldn't afford to take three years out of earning.   Now I am thinking if I don't do it now it will be too late, and I will have missed what could be my last opportunity.   A few years I ago I did Theology course through the C of E and thoroughly enjoyed it, at that time I had planned to continue the studies, but other matters, like earning a living, supporting a family and then transition all got in the way.   Now I am considering the implications of dropping my business and going to university to study for a degree in theology.   This would mean that after leaving I would still have three years before state pension age in which to try and earn a living. ~ There is a lot  to weigh up, not least how would I cope in a learning environment? and would I be able to manage exams?

What I need to find is a source of information and advise, if I were still at school I would be able to go to a member of staff, but a s a potential (very) mature student who can I go to?

The Gig ecconomy is not new

I have recently written a couple of posts about my career.  This seems to be turning into another one of my occasional series of posts, so here goes with the next installment of my rather odd career.

Chronologically I had got as far as being made redundant from my second job.   This wasn't as bad as it might sound, for quit a bit of my time with Michelin I had not been happy, I really liked my first job there, and my last, but the least said about the one in between the better.

So now I was in possession of my first flat, living on my own for the first time, I had a little capital in the bank, and no idea what I wanted to do when I grew up.   I needed to find something I wanted to do, yet the only thing I knew was that I didn't want to do what I had been doing.   I good friend of mine had a little business buying and selling cars, since I have always been a bit of petrol head I decided that this looked like easy money playing with toys, I rented a corner of the showroom from my friend and started dealing in second hand cars.

I had great fun, but learnt a few valuable life lessons, in commerce it is not the selling that is difficult it is the buying, contrary to what you might think from watching the apprentice where all too emphasis much is put on selling, anyone will buy desirable stuff as long as the price is right. The trick is buying the stuff at a price that allows for a profit.   My problem was that I kept buying the cars that I wanted rather than ones that would sell quickly with a profit.  

An English German band with an Australian Accordion player,

working for Canadians in Spain,

Somehow I eventually extricated myself before I became totally impoverished, while doing the car dealing I had slowly started to get a few gigs with some German Bands, and amateur orchestras. As I managed to get more and more music work I concentrated on that, abandoned the cars and enjoyed a strange lifestyle, driving from gig to gig all over the country.    This in no way represented steady work, so during this period of my life I would do anything I had to to pay my way.   Being self employed I had the flexibility and status to take on anything that came along. I did removals, piano removals, parcel deliveries, for a while I worked for Currys selling fridges and washing machines.   I emptied dust bins and drove trucks. I had a few temp jobs in offices, I laboured for a landscape gardener and cut grass for a maintenance gardener, I worked as a dispatch rider, in short what ever came along.

It was fun! It was also precarious. Work was irregular and unpredictable I would have periods of employment, but I would get bored and go back to the precarious life of a gigging musician, and the periods of poverty and depression which seem to go with that role ~ at least they do for me.

In 1992 my life changed beyond anything I had ever expected. I fell in love and proposed to the wonderful, beautiful woman who later that same year was to become my wife, I landed a good Gig, playing at Expo '92 in Seville, which saved my financial bacon, and my father died.

Now I felt it was time to grow up and get what my Mother called "A proper job" and so ended my second career.

Careering away

Now I can't afford lunch in my old office

After three years working in a bank I realised that every day was the same, every day stretching out over years, and I was so bored I was prepared to do almost anything else, although while looking for my second job I did interview with a Pension Actuary, I was so bored I almost feel asleep in the interview!   Word processors were still a long way in the future so I was limited to jobs that didn't need me to write anything.   I ended up working for the Michelin Tyre Company in a commercial accounts related role. In my first department there we had a Data Input Clerk, a Junior Clerk, three Commercial Clerks a Supervisor and a Manager, later all except the Manager were replaced with a P.C.

The Suit

Mostly I enjoyed the work, I liked the Company and if they hadn't moved location to North London would have stayed with them a lot longer.   I worked in three different departments over a period of seven years ending up in the technical support department.   I was always office based which I did find a little frustrating but did enjoy some odd outings, occasionally even dressed up in "The Suit".   This has led me on occasion to claim that I was a model for a rubber goods company; it also got me into a few race meetings that would otherwise have cost a lot of money to get a worse view.

When in 1979 I started with Michelin there was still an assumption that this would be a job for life, the Company were quite paternal and seemed to care.   By the mid eighties everything had changed, finances were everything, the fine old office building was sold and any staff who didn't want to move were made redundant.   This I consider to be the end of my first career.   My small redundancy payment meant that I could start out on my own doing something on my own account, the only question was what?

I recently realised that I still have a pension from my Michelin days, it is worth a lot more than I would have thought, and will make all the difference wen I do come to retire, hopefully in about 8 years time.

Where it started

My last post spoke something of my current work situation, it may be interesting to note that I have now been running this business for longer than any other period of employment I have ever had.   I consider that I have actually now had four careers, but each of them has included a few different jobs.

It all started way back in the seventies when Harold Wilson was still Prime Minister of the UK, it was then that it slowly started to dawn on me that my idea of going to one of the few music colleges around then was not going to be fulfilled.   If I couldn't do that then I might as well work in a bank, so that was what I did!

Doing a paper round hadn't really prepared me for any proper work (especially since when ever I could get away with it I would do my round wearing a gym slip I had acquired) so I followed advise that since I was good at maths and couldn't spell for toffee I should try working in a bank.   Not the first or the last time I have followed some pretty s#@t advise.

My first place of Employment

My timing was ideal in that it meant I could both afford driving lessons, and get a cheap loan to buy my first tuba.   Not so good in that I had the "joy" of experiencing the summer of 1976 while I had a contractual obligation to wear a suit to work every day.   This was in the days before Margaret Thatcher so we still had banking regulations that would stop us lending to people who couldn't afford repayments, had to record all foreign currency transaction, and wrote in ledgers with fountain pens.   In so many ways this was a different age, including what to modern eyes was quite startling institutionalised misogyny.

On my first day the branch messenger introduced himself to me by his first name, but always called me "Mr".  He told me that he looked after the tea and coffee, he would make the drinks, provide biscuits and collect the money.   "Of course the girls look after themselves" The "Girls" included the first cashier in her mid forties!

In those day, although not so long ago many, many things at work were very different

• We had to put in a red light bulb to use the photocopier.
• Only men contributed to the Widows and orphans fund or (I think) were automatically enrolled in the pension fund.
• Men were obliged to wear suits, women to be "appropriate"
• Only the year before I started, the Bank had been forced by law to offer subsidised mortgages equally to men and women.
• I never met a female officer of the bank above the level of first cashier
• I worked for NatWest for about 18 months before I met a black employee ~ and I was working in PECKHAM!!

More jobs

When I got back from Seville, we got married on the first Saturday available at the local registry office ~ at the time we were not practising members of any church and thought it hypocritical t get married in a church just for some nice photos, but that's a story for another day.

Marriage concentrated my mind and brought me to the decision that I ought to get a proper job, with a salary and a pension, you know be responsible.   While I was looking for something I went back to temping, more driving, warehousing, a bit of office work but mostly light industrial stuff.   Eventually I got a job with the Spastics Society running non retail businesses, soon TSS changed it's name to Scope and my job title to recycling manager, this was a very rewarding and productive period in my career, I feel I built a good solid, sound business that would generate sustainable funds for a charity I believe in.   After a few years I also felt that I had gone as far with the business as I could, it needed somebody else to manage the next stage, and as I was offered a decent job in the commercial sector it seemed only polite to accept.   After another job in commercial side of recycling I set up on my own.   Thus ended my third career.

In theory I now have three businesses, Gardening, music and (this always cracks me up as I remember the sopranos) as a Waste Management consultant.   At the moment I can't imagine doing anything else, but then again 10 years ago I couldn't have imagined where I woudl be today.