Look to the Future Now, It’s Only Just Begun

......as Noddy Holder once sang. Now that I know I’ll (probably) soon be officially unemployed, I have to make alternative plans for my future. And here they are:

Gigolo: My ability to find all sorts of women attractive might have served me reasonably well in this job in the past, but now I’m “of a certain age” myself I’d probably remind them of their ex-husbands.

Model: I’m essentially dressed by my wife, and using stuff she’s found cruising the town’s second-hand shops, so more Jarvis Cocker than Nick Cayman then.

Rent Boy: My mum once asked my what I’d done at school that day and I said “Careers advice”; she was shocked, she thought I’d said “Queers advice”. No.

Stick Breaker: I quite fancied this as a vocation but it was another confusion at skool careers advice class – what he said actually was “Stock Broker”.

Horticulturalist: OK, onto the serious ones now. My standing as The Man Who Introduced the Broad Bean to Romania puts me on a par with Diego Alvarez Chanca (chillies), Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (tulips) and Sir Walter Raleigh (spuds and fags); and ditto with heirloom tomatoes - the tasty 40+ Kg I got off my few plants I put down to buffalo manure and talking to them in the King’s Bloody English instead of the nonsense the locals use.

Teacher: “Ha, that’s a laugh!” will be what everyone who actually knows me is thinking. But I’ve realised during my current job that I’ve been more concerned for the career advancement of my bright young protégé than I have been for my own – which was maybe noticed and what did for my chances there. Also, I’m in a foul mood, and relish the feel of a well-sprung cane in my hand, it’s still legal here and, as they say, “If you can’t beat them…. where’s the fun in teaching?!”

Social Worker: Mrs Dilo is a trustee of a half-way house for orphans here and we know many lads who’ve been through this institution – and a very fine one it is too, teaching them cookery skills, tact, and suchlike – who turn up at our door hoping for a square meal and a bath etc. I flatter myself that I get on quite well with them, and have the advantage that I like some stuff which may appeal to them which their guardians wouldn’t touch, e.g. music and dancing (many are Romany). I wouldn’t be paid.

Please vote for which job I should do! (No voting twice, now, and no bussing in people from other places to vote, and dead people are not eligible, how many times do you have to be told this........)