RETURNING TO THE RAT RACE

Well, here I am, at the dawn of a new working year, and already the disappointments have begun. Yesterday, I looked out of the window and saw that there had been another snowfall and this filled me with a melancholy that would surprise some, I’m sure, especially those who embrace the joyful loveliness of snowfall as they allow their inner child to surface every time it happens, For me, however, whilst being unable to deny the beauty of it, fresh snowfall is always something of a pain in the backside.

The car will usually have to have all its windows scraped before I can go anywhere, the locks will no doubt have to be defrosted, and the drive to the railway station on untreated roads is always a pain. Then, assuming we get there in on piece, there’s the negotiation of the station car park and all the fun that it entails.

Then there was the annual ritual of being unable to find the beloved’s rail pass after the Christmas break coupled with the disappointment of missing the partial eclipse of the sun due to the cloud cover, and, of course those family problems have persisted over the holidays and are continuing.

So, all-in-all it was not the happiest of starts to the working year.

Strangely, it is twenty three years this very week since I took my first tentative steps into the world of full time employment. Once upon a long ago there was a younger (and possibly more annoying) version of me that stepped out into a harsh and forbidding world carrying nothing but a professional qualification that was already becoming increasingly worthless as everything he had so successfully studied for four years was already becoming useless knowledge as the mighty computer age swept through the design industry. I suppose that the fundamentals of “good design” that we’d been taught still had value, but the analogue processes we had used were fast disappearing.

Although, at that time, not for a while yet.

I’d gone to Art College with the rather bizarre idea that one day I might work for the BBC. The pre-1990s “creative” BBC was really the only company that I ever really wanted to work for, and, quite possibly the only ambition I can honestly claim to have ever had. After graduation, I did my level (and obviously not very good) best to persuade them to employ me. Sadly, they never did see it my way, and that dream eventually fizzled and died on the vine. After qualifying, I spent eighteen months failing to find any kind of work at all (this was the mid-eighties when 60% of Graphic Design jobs disappeared forever) except for my laughable attempt at setting up my own business as a freelance illustrator on the “Youth Enterprise Scheme” which did at least remove me from the government’s jobless totals, even if it never got me out of the rut of afternoon naps, a daily Toblerone, and watching “Neighbours” twice daily. I didn’t make much money either, but then I was never destined to be a businessman (or a “Dragon” as I believe they are called these days) and would probably have been much better off if I’d known that a lot sooner.

Back at the dawn of the new century I was clearing my stuff out of my mother's house before she moved, and I found an envelope cram-packed full of my old rejection letters from that fruitless 18 months during the decade of big hair and shoulder-pads. So many rejection letters you would not believe. Actually, given the massive “success” of my subsequent “career” maybe you would believe.

It could be they all had a point, but I digress.

Amongst them was one from the man who eventually became my first manager, dating from a full 7 months from before I first went wide-eyed and fearful – my future team leader almost scared me to death on one of the interview days which is bloody ridiculous when I realise what a terrifically nice bloke he turned out to be - through the dusty portals of that top floor office of  a building called Barlow House. I have no recollection whatsoever of making that earlier application, and if it wasn’t for some youthful resilience which I sadly lack nowadays (or possibly just a very bad memory) I might never have filled in the application the following December that finally brought me a successful interview that brought me into that intimate circle which was then known as Barlow Studio.

In fact I still find it hard to quite believe what a difference my interview that day has made to my life. For good or ill, that studio was the only place that took a punt on me back in 1988, despite my turning up as “the prat in the hat”, despite my failing utterly at the interview (I’ve been told that it wasn't the interview that persuaded him, it was the fact that he had no other plans for the afternoon so we might as well just “have a chat” - a very devious interview technique I now realise, but one I wish I'd come across more often...) and despite the choice coming down to a girl called Petra, myself and A.N. Other (with A.N. Other apparently the preferred choice...).

So, despite all the odds, for twenty three years I have carved out some kind of career at the blunt end of the Graphic Design business, where many of those who graduated with me went off instead to be bus drivers or other things not remotely connected to the training we did, so I guess, despite the many times I’ve railed against what I’ve been doing on my more ungrateful days, I guess I’ve been kind of lucky.

I also realise that I’m still very lucky to be working at all, especially after the child they allowed to interview me at one agency  a few years ago told me quite bluntly that “I wasn’t really a designer”, but, despite all this, the annual return to the Rat Race after the long winter break still remains a very tough thing to face, no matter how lucky you are.