When I grow up… June 19, 2007
Posted by Jen in : Journal , trackbackKW asked yesterday: What would you actually like to do, if you could, as a day-job (ignoring any writerly inclinations)?
I felt a bit miserable for the rest of the day. I don’t know. What do I want to do? Let’s see… so far, I have been:
- A dental nurse (top line before giving local: “you might feel a bit of a prick”)
- An administrator/foreign exchange bod in a small, private merchant bank. My clients included John Paul Getty Jnr and Arthur Hailey. This was in the yuppie 80s. Think power suits, lavish lunches and champagne galore. I hated it. Abandoned glam lifestyle for job as…
- Director’s assistant at the Jersey Arts Centre. Earned a third of my bank salary but could wear leggings, Doc Martens and homemade dangly earrings to work. I did not look a bit like Jo Brand. I loved this job – boozing and schmoozing most nights with actors, artists, musicians and dancers. Cool bananas.
And then it all went wrong. Sort of. I accidentally became fertilized and got the sack from my dream job because of the non-stop puking. But I quite liked my boy when he arrived. So I had another one. He was nice too. (They still are quite nice, really. They do smell a bit though.)
But. Nice as children are, they have kind of obliterated the rest of what I laughingly call my ‘life’. My choice, of course. But still. Part time jobs suck. The highlights:
- An estate agency where three mad duffers wore their wives’ tights under their trousers. This, they said, was just in case they decided to have an impromptu game of golf during quiet winter patches. Yeah, right.
- An architects’ practice. The small team included a 23-yr-old womanizer; a compulsive liar; a depressive chain-smoker and a chap who was rather short.
- PA to a guy who had been declared bankrupt. He was a charming, feckless, lovable rogue who almost got me arrested as an accessory to fraud.
Can you see where I’m going with this? It’s official. I am clearly cursed in the job department.
Becoming a writer is the only option. I can’t think of anything else. *Sigh*
Comments»
Hi Jen, thanks for the welcome into the Novel Racers! I’m so excited to be part of it. As for my worst job, my mum conned me into getting a weekend job at a nursing home when I was 16. She said I would be doing things like making tea and playing cards with the old dears, but unfortunately the reality was a little more unsavoury. Two words - adult nappies.
Oh, no, adult nappies? Ugh! You won’t believe this, but I had a similar weekend job when I was 15: I worked as a chambermaid in a hotel for disabled people. I’ll see your nappies and raise you post-drunken bed sheets. No wonder we became writers!
Thank you for the lovely comment on my blog! Means a lot!
hello - just came over from lqs, where i read what you said about reiki. have you posted anywhere else on your blog about it, because i’m very interested in having some … actually, i’ve just searched an you haevn’t. oh well … hello anyway. (i see we have quite an overlap in our blogroll too)
AW: You know where I am!
Rivergirlie: Go for it! If you’re drawn to Reiki in even a small way, it is the time for you to have some. Email me if I can help - jenny [at] spiralskies [dot] com
X
Jen my worst job was making sandwiches (temp thankfully) I was supposed to put cucumber on them as they wizzed (to my mind) past on the production line. I was rubbish and had to practically chase them down the line (think Charlie Chaplin ) and got moved to stuffing them in the plastic wedges. On the plus side I lost loads of weight cos it completely put me off food. Now when people ask me what I want to be when I grow up I say 5foot8. But I guess that’s the leg thing again
My worst job was at a banana farm in Australia. Some days I would be stacking boxes of bananas for eight hours. Other days I would be out in the trees, hacking dead leaves off the trees and cutting down the banana bunches. And sometimes if I was really lucky, I would wash the lorry-loads of bananas in a gigantic vat of cold water, which involved flicking off spiders, roaches and all sorts of other disgusting things - and once a long brown snake too (poisonous). I only lasted there a few weeks before I had enough money to be able to get down to Brisbane where I found myself a nice sensible temping job. It took me a long time before I could eat another banana though.
That is indeed a depressing question. Loved the cartoon though.
Am here on a semi-official visit from the novel racers to say thanks for your support for the race!
Working at the arts centre? You may have been there when I was at Radio Jersey. Were you there when Rod was Artistic Director?
Betamum: Yep! All 6 foot bloomin 8 of him!! Could never help wondering if he was all in proportion
Did you do the morning show? I remember your name but not quite in which capacity… or maybe a review of the papers? Did I send John Cox along to you once perhaps?!?!!??!?!
I was a reporter (from 1990), then a producer (soon after that), then news editor (from about 1994).
I did present the morning show when Roger was on holiday, and was the regular presenter on the Saturday morning show for a while.
We did live OBs of some of the lunchtime concerts they used to do then, and I was forever at the Arts Centre socially. Where else was there?!
Oh, ‘eck, I’m all back-to-front!
Zinnia: Pleasure! The Novel Racers is a good thing. Glad you ducked the depressing question…
LD: Ugh, snakes in bananas sounds unbelievably grim. You should write novels - no, really! They’d be fab!
Karen: I found a brill link from your website for raised veggie garden things. If we used enough compost stuff, we could GROW longer legs… am rather disappointed you didn’t think of it first. Don’t use it on the chickens though. Just keep telling them tall stories. Poor chickens… oh, and cucumber-chasing could feature highly in my novel…somewhere…
Oh, Cathy, wow! We were probably rubbing shoulders - how freaky! Then you must know my pal Allan Watts too?
Ooooh… scary!
Allan Watts - I’m getting an image of a man with sandy coloured hair and glasses. Am I right?
I think he preferred to think of himself as a blond, 6-foot hunk but, yes, that’s him. He’s the news editor for Channel telly now.
I do find it amazing the way peoples’ lives go off in different directions.
Right, must write!
What a perfect cv for a writer
Oh blimey, Jen, I am so with you there. I have a long list of disparate jobs to look back at, and absolutely no enthusiasm for any of them!
JJx
My worst job was working in charity sales. I had to stop people and ask them to buy a badge. Problem was that I was too terrified to stop people. So I was really crap and didn’t meet my targets. I didn’t even nearly meet my targets. Oh and I did telesales but didn’t like speaking on the phone.
Hmmmm.
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yikes telesales! i don’t think i could hack that. My worst job was probably a volunatry one. I worked for Crisis at Christmas on the night time shift from late o’clock in the evening to early o’clock in the morning. Some crazed guy threatened me with a non-existent gun and we had to spend our free time rolling cigarettes for the homeless to bribe them to wake up in the morning. But at least i learnt to roll the perfect cigarette… not that i smoke anyway!
Just catching up on blogs. I think it is great that lovely bf got the novelracers domain. I think we could use that as the race evolves over the next few months.
Jen I’m going to email you something later (once I’ve written my thousand words - must stop being distracted) about an outlet for feature writing.
Liz: Sounds like the perfect CV for a nutter, more like…
JJ: See? We really are blogging twins
Caroline: Oh dear.I’d be rubbish at telesales too. I can imagine you with your box of badges, standing in the street shadows with your stomach churning!!
Victoria: Crisis at Christmas must be hard but interesting… can’t say I envy you though. Takes a special person to do that sort of thing. Roll-ups rock - there’s something deliciously bohemian about them somehow…
Helen: Lovely bf may have provided us with the means of writerly world domination… mwah ha ha ha…