Living The Dream

Living The Dream?

I was preparing a presentation for a school assembly not long before I retired.  Teaching had been only one of over fifty skill sets and jobs I had done in just over fifty years of doing something that I either got paid for or did as an acknowledged volunteer.  I think the aim was to encourage the students to look inside themselves and realise they had more potential, even already existing skills than they realised.

I think my first ever wage came from the then traditional paperboy.  I loved those early summer mornings when all was quiet and the birds in the trees sang just for me, but I hated the dark, sleet-driven bitter winter winds and all for 12 & 6d a week. No, more of a bad dream than a dream job.  Sure, I kind of returned to it in the mid-nineties when working for a newsagent at weekends as I re-trained as a teacher, but I could get back into a warm car on the farm round and often waved a not so fond farewell to the stuttering starts of the sixties!

I did a good number of jobs in twenty-three years of working for British Rail and loved my early years on the footplate, but even that had long tedious stretches of boredom, ‘spare duties’ and energy sapping unsocial hours.  I had quite a few different jobs on the railways, but my biggest mistake was to seek glory and status by becoming an inspector. People management can be highly rewarding, but they didn’t pay me a good wage for that…I had quite a lot of shite to contend with too and it took its toll on me.  In the end I took redundancy at the ripe old age of thirty-nine. (My free travel pass, which I still receive said ‘retired staff’ on it even back then)

I spent a year driving taxis in a mainly rural area and quite enjoyed it, but that was only whilst I caught my breath so to speak and plan the nest chapter in my quest for a dream job.

Towards the end of my working life, I was fortunate enough to perform as a semi-professional actor in Midsummer Night’s Dream at the RSC in Stratford upon Avon, but whilst I still boast about a ‘dream moment’ I knew I didn’t want to pursue a career in acting… the truth is I was really quite ordinary.  It was after I re-entered teaching (I had a bad accident whilst preparing for a performance in the same year as my brief fling at Stratford) that I found my dream job. 

My last ever paid employment was working for an academy trust doing cover teaching.  I got to teach just about every subject known and some yet to be created, but being given Science Lessons turned out to be my dream.  I had long been fascinated with all things scientific and whilst I would never excel at the subject, it was an absolute dream to learn along with the students.  My passion and honesty when I admitted that I too was learning rubbed off on the children.  My dream job?  Opening up an endless well of enthusiasm for others and sharing a drink with them from the well of knowledge and wonder that at is Science.

My dream job would be to share that enthusiasm and I did, briefly. I lived a very short while in that dream, but it shines brighter than any other star in my life and always will.  Yes, I LIVED the dream.