I’ve had a somewhat chequered career. My original choice involved joining the merchant navy as a radio officer. Unfortunately the end of my time in college coincided with the decline of Britain’s merchant fleet. I dropped out of my final year as I realised that I was studying for exams leading to a career that wasn’t going to happen. And, truth be told, studying for those exams held no interest for me without that incentive.
Afloat on the job market and partially qualified led to some interesting career choices – if that’s the right phrase… I spent a few months working in the warehouse of a subsidiary of British Cellophane during the dying years of the nineteen seventies. Within a matter of months, I was promoted to credit controller and remained with them for three years before itchy feet led to a disastrous move to a carpet wholesaler doing much the same thing. I stuck it for two months before cutting myself adrift on the job market as a temp.
The next full time job came up about two years later when I worked for a couple of years as a despatch rider working for a local motor factor delivering car parts to garages in the Bristol area. While I was doing this, I studied for and obtained my qualifications as an approved driving instructor. Parallel to these dead end jobs I’d been actively involved with the local training school teaching motorcycling part time and I realised that I liked it. It was something I naturally gravitated towards. And, importantly, I was good at it. The ADI route made sense. Perhaps, at last, the floating on the employment market would cease.
For five years I worked as an ADI. Until, that was, the combination of 15% interest rates and the Poll Tax colluded to kill my business in a matter of months. That’s when I gave it up and joined the rail industry. Firstly as a signaller and subsequently as a signalling manager. I finished my railway career working at the Network Rail HQ in operational training development. I’d gravitated over a period of thirteen years back to training. Indeed, that’s where most of my railway career was spent. When I left Network Rail following redundancy, I returned to self-employment, this time working for an agency providing training and assessment in the rail industry.
Self-employment is a feast or famine existence. The rail industry at the moment is not spending money on training. This is inevitably short sighted and will, sooner or later, catch them out. In the meantime, work is tight – meaning that so is money.
All of which has led to a decision that’s been staring me in the face since last summer when the work started to tail off. It involves re-taking three exams. It means learning what has happened in the intervening fourteen years or so. But, getting my ADI back makes sense. There’s an inevitability about it. Now that I’ve made the decision and started putting things into motion, I’m looking forward to completing my qualification and getting out on the road and teaching again. The circle, it seems, is complete and I’m right back where I was twenty years ago.
Now playing: – Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Moonlight:3 Presto agitato
How interesting that it should be happpening to you due to financial constraints, I am having to look very seriously at doing a second job to supplement an inadequate income and the likely first port of call is a return to the job I did 16 years ago. I quite understand the chequered job career thing having been through lumberjacking, silver service, wine cellarman to IT specialist via a German degree has been unconventional but rarely dull.
How do other people have enough material to write about eh?
It was one of my clients who pointed out the obvious. He teaches train drivers and keeps his ADI going as a part time activity. We had a long discussion about it last October when I was assessing him for his training qualifications. He asked why I hadn’t kept up my ADI as it is always a useful qualification. I didn’t really have an adequate answer. I’ve been mulling it over since.