Golden Memories: First Job

This means my first full time job, really. Like most 1960's kids, I'd already had a series of part time jobs, beginning with paper rounds and moving through washing up and table clearing at a sea front cafe, cleaning at a bakery, cashier at the bingo and cushion salesman at our local cricket ground. A friend and I had even had a stab at self-employment, selling bundles of sticks to people for their coal fires.

But I digress. My first immersion in full time, post school work was as an insurance clerk (no doubt something called trainee assistant manager these days). It was in a tiny provincial sub office, with only four other staff and two typewriters. Strange, again, how the unremarkable remains in vivid memory....

I remember the curious plastic roller machine which I used to seal envelopes and attach stamps. It ran in a small bath of sticky water which could never be changed often enough. I remember too, the girl who came in to insure her car and waited until all the forms were signed before showing me her right forearm which had no hand. Ancient binders were packed with arcane documents, some sealed with red wax; and lunch time never came to soon.

Shiny suit or old fashioned sports jacket. Tortoise shell glasses, grubby shirt and tie askew. A hollow feeling inside.

I was a blind boy in a desert. The choices had been made for me. Control was superior to freedom. Only when I delivered our local mail during the postal strike, did I begin to breath again.