Suddenly I was 16 years old, and just as suddenly I had taken my O levels and was then ceremoniously thrown out of the school gates and told never to darken her door again, “Off you go and get a job, you bastards”, thus spaketh our Headmaster Cheesy Holland, he had a right way with words did Cheesy Holland, he’d been to Cambridge you know.
I didn’t get a job, unless you count selling scorecards at cricket matches and programmes at the Leeds Flower Show a job, I wasn’t even sure that I wanted a job, some of my friends were “staying on” into the Sixth Form to take A levels, I liked the sound of “staying on”, it suggested that you didn’t need to make any decisions about your future just yet, I decided to “stay on”.
In these modern enlightened times every child “stays on” and does A levels, its the done thing, but in 1973 only a small percentage “stayed on” for A levels, out of the 240 pupils in our recently enlarged school who took their O levels at 16 years of age, only something like 50 or them “stayed on” and I’d hazard a guess that only a dozen or so of them went to university – thats the way it was.
So “staying on” was a big deal in academic circles and the excuse that “I can’t be arsed getting a job just yet” wasn’t going to persuade the head of the Sixth Form, a large over-powering man named Juicy Adams, so called because of his propensity to salivate constantly, showering you with his spittle every time he opened his mouth to speak.
Everyone who wanted to “stay on” had to be interviewed by Juicy Adams, I didn’t impress him at all with my argument that I couldn’t think of anything better to do but by some miracle of bureaucratic bungling I found myself “staying on” in the September of that year, to re-sit my Maths O level and study Geography and Art at A level.
But not for long, for some time in October I was invited to attend a further interview with Juicy Adams in his office during which he explained that I was only there as a result of a bureaucratic blunder and that as I only seemed to be studying for five hours a week I’d have to pick another subject, or leave.
Curse the man.
I picked Human Biology, a subject that I had no interest in but a subject that involved watching lots of cine films in the biology lab, some of which could almost be described as porn, if you like that sort of thing.
And then it was the end of the first year of Sixth Form and to be honest I’d had enough, I couldn’t face another year of sitting on a hard stool in the biology lab watching a film about the workings of your stomach, so I decided to leave.
Juicy Adams went ballistic, I must have been his first pupil to quit halfway through his A level courses and I was drummed out of the school like a military tribunal, stripped of my text books I was flung out of the main gate by Cheesy Holland with a huge cry of ”Go get a job you lazy bastard”, he had a way with words did Cheesy Holland, he’d been to Cambridge you know.
So finally I had to do the thing that I should have done all of those years ago when the Careers Advisor advised me, one thing was for certain, Marine Biologist didn’t have quite the same ring as it had when I was 14.
I sat at home that evening and told my father that I had officially left school now.
“About bloody time too” he said from behind his evening newspaper, and ripping out a section from The Yorkshire Evening Post he threw it at me – the jobs section.
Fortunately for me, 1974 was a bumper year for employment, it was a jobseekers market and there were pages and pages of job vacancies for young men like I, there were even things like “apprenticeships” available, a forgotten phrase in these days of youth unemployment.
“Pick one of those and get yourself some interviews” is the careers advice that my Father gave to me on that fateful evening, words of solid gold which were uttered without even removing the newspaper from his face.
I hummed and ha’rred a bit, sucked the end of a pencil, and circled three prospective jobs, I fancied a career as an architect but having left halfway through my A levels that was not to be, Art and Geography wouldn’t have opened any doors anyway – so I circled three draughtsmen jobs, I would spend the rest of my fifty year working life behind a drawing board, it was decided.
On the Monday morning I walked to our nearest phone box and made the three phone calls, I was offered three interviews for later that week, I went to the first one on the Wednesday and was offered the job immediately, I cancelled the other two interviews and started work the following Monday, yes it really was that easy.
It turned out not to be a draughtsmans job but a trainee estimator/surveyor, and so began my life in the electrical trade…
