Working Life

[poliphilo]

It's been over ten years since I last did a job of the kind that involves getting up at a set hour and putting on some kind of a uniform and interacting with people you don't necessarily like. I've sometimes felt guilty about not having to go through the grind, but I've never missed it.

In my time I've been- 

A clergyman (that took up ten years of my life)

A nursing auxiliary

A school's crossing attendant

A museum and library attendant

A cleaner in an old people's home

A cleaner on intercity trains.

Some of these things were quite good fun. Working on the trains was the best. I got to hang out with the guards (who are brilliant people) and rub shoulders (in an invisible manner) with celebs. 

(One of the guards told me how some bigtime football star had called him over to his seat in first class and asked him, "Don't you know who I am?" and he'd replied ,"Actually, no." )

But I've never felt  my job defined me- the way some people do.  Well, maybe when I was a parson I did. I can't really remember. Did I go round thinking to myself, "Ooh, look at me, I'm a priest"?  Maybe sometimes.

But by the time I quit that job I was so, so glad to be shut of it.  My next proper job was as the school's crossing attendant.  By a quirk of fate I'd done nothing to engineer they put me on a crossing right outside my old church. The guy who succeeded me as vicar called me to his study one day and pompously told me I was causing a scandal. I smiled at him and said (in so many words) "Sorry, mate, but them's the breaks".

In moments like that I become an observer of my life and find it all rather amusing. 

Since 1994 or 95 I've stayed at home to be Ailz's carer. I get paid a pittance for it and I'm very happy.

Comments

[algabal.livejournal.com]

An ex-clergyman turned cleaner on intercity trains...that could be a movie.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The best bit is that I then spent ten years as a witch.....

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

To an outsider like myself your life seems very colourful and eclectic indeed.

What was that about being a witch after being a clergyman?

[algabal.livejournal.com]

And which was more fulfilling: the clergy or witchery?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I had more fun as a witch.

But in the long run they're both forms of organised religion- and equally imprisoning.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wasn't ready to give up on religion altogether and paganism fitted the bill. I was- for a while- a fairly well known spokesman for paganism and witchcraft (a biggish fish in a very small pond).

These days I don't have any particular religious affiliation.

[manfalling.livejournal.com]

If you`d had to have done a job, but could have had some time to choose what- what would you have done? I mean- in order to not only pay the bills as now, but if you`d also had to pay rent or mortgage payments and plan for retirement and all that?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

If I could start all over again- with roughly the same hand of cards, but with some of the knowledge I now have- I'd become an archaeologist.