The Careers Advisor who visited my school had been next to useless and had given the same advice to every boy who queued up to see him regardless of what we said we wanted to do.

"You should go down to the Job Centre and see what they've got on the boards. Here's a leaflet."

My friend, Tim, had him sussed. When he sat down in front of the chap and was asked what he wished to do when he left school he said the following;

"I've given this some thought and what I'd really like is a job that involves travel, meeting lots of new people and getting paid a lot of money for doing as little as possible."

The Careers Advisor scoffed and said that everyone would like a job like that.

"Sure. But you got one. What's the secret?"

I've had so many different jobs that I've probably forgotten at least half a dozen of them. With hindsight, one of the most entertaining was my second job where I went to work in a camera shop in the mid-1980's.

I had a rudimentary knowledge before going there but soon learned how to develop and print in the back room and when you are talking to customers about the mechanics of these contraptions all day, you soon learn the, well, mechanics. Thankfully, I have managed to forget about them over the years.

I remember the luddite in me creeping out when the early auto-focus SLRs came into stock. If you didn't know how to do everything manually you were cheating and it also went against the slogan on the sign my colleague, Graham, had hung over the counter.

"People that think they know it all really annoy those of us that do."

Oh, misguided youthful arrogance.

We did all our own black and white developing but the colour stuff was sent out to a nearby Kodak lab. Going through the customers prints each morning over coffee was a great routine to start each day. In amongst the standard Christmas-tree-at-each-end-of-the-roll-with-a-Summer-holiday-in-the-middle order you would occaisionally find a remarkable gem. Adult nappy parties were a favourite.

There were some interesting characters that used to come in regularly. My favourite was The Astronomer. This chap used to bring in a bag of rolls of film like clockwork on the same day each week. He'd tell us that he'd been taking pictures of the planets and the Moon but the next day when the prints came back it was always the same thing. Picture after picture of Patrick Moore taken off the television whilst presenting 'The Sky at Night' complete with flicker lines.

The camera-loving public are an odd bunch. One chap walked in with bucket full of oil and put it on the counter. When asked what he wanted he rolled up a sleeve and plunged his hand in to retrieve a Canon AE1. He stood there looking at me, waiting for a response. I informed him it was knackered. He then explained that he had dropped it in the sea and had prevented it from being knackered by putting it in the oil, "...to protect it from the salt water."

As we sold second-hand equipment, kids would regularly come into the shop with bags of gear that they had clearly stolen and asking how much we'd give them for it. They had no idea what they had and it was a cheap way of getting your hands on some serious equipment. I know...I know...

Like all good things it had to come to an end. Graham got a proper job and the Manager, Simon, stole a week's takings and ran off to Spain. I think I lasted about a month after the new manager took the sign down. It just wasn't fun anymore.

Mind you, neither was much else that followed.



Opportunity Knocks.


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