About Looking For Work:
At the labour exchange I spoke to a nice young woman who was impressed by my qualifications. “With two years University you really need the Professional Register, they’re the ones who have the kind of jobs you’re looking for.” “Sounds good to me,” I told her. “Just point the way.” “It’s in Sheffield,” she said.
By the end of the week I had shown my credentials and was signed on to the Professional register. Every Monday a typewritten letter would drop through the mailbox giving me details of the newly listed jobs they thought appropriate to my qualifications. Several vacancies were for ‘Trainees’, particularly ‘Management Trainees’ in various industries. These really interested me but the money was pathetic. One was in Doncaster, and I called in to chat with the HR folk. The company made ice cream, popsicles and other frozen goods which they sold wholesale to various companies, including the ice cream company I’d worked for, who resold to the public under their own names. The HR man walked with me through the factory. “This is not for you,” he said to me. “You can do much, much better.”
By November it was beginning to look like he was wrong. I’d had two interviews with the Government’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, but both were lab jobs, and in the words of one interviewer “We’re really looking for young lads just out of school with a couple of science O-levels. You’re a bit overqualified for these jobs.” Everybody was telling me that I was over qualified and that I could do better. I semi-seriously considered going back to the brewery where the beer was free and I could pile on some muscle. There was little left of my £60, and I certainly wasn’t squandering money.
I was becoming very depressed, and if I’d known the difference between ‘depressed’, ‘clinically depressed’, ‘bipolar’ and ‘manic depressive’ I wouldn’t have cared.
And then at the eleventh hour a letter dropped through the mailbox with a job that looked like the answer to my prayers; except that it was based in Doncaster.