It was a rum time for Employment, the 80's...
It would seem, in the two final years of my schooling (82-83), that the jobless rate in the UK was 12 or 13% of the workforce, the highest since the war and with I assume, youth unemployment running at much higher levels, finding any kind of work would be a challenge.
What made it doubly difficult was that I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do.
Mum worked at a builders, book keeping and office work, so I was offered 'trade' jobs, I turned down an apprenticeship with a Joiner, a job snapped up by my cousin Paul a year or two later, and I had written to a local painter and decorator about a job with them, but to be frank, I was delighted when they turned me down...
They sent me to see a Careers Adviser, outside of school, some chap attached to the local Job Centre I would have though, but the poor man, grey and desperately dead behind the eyes, just sighed when I showed him the part-time course in ceramics I'd picked out at Mansfield school or Art and Design...
So, as 1983 arrives with prospects of finding work tough, with no skills, little chance of serious qualifications, and no idea what the big wide world had to offer, things were not looking good of our hero...
Luckily there was one more thing that kept me in school, apart from the odd game of Wall-ie or Wembley if someone had a ball, or Badminton on a Monday evening... D&D Club.
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