I was fourteen years old. I had not been thinking about career choices. I had been spending most of my time trying to work out who should have been High King of the Noldor following the Ruin of Beleriand and, no, that isn't a euphemism. So I prevaricated.
"Medicine, or law?" I said, but vagueness was something I was not going to be allowed to take with me to Middle School apparently. This was the time to make Decisions.
"Which is it?" he pressed. I flipped a coin in my head.
"Soliciting," I said firmly.
The Head of Lower School might have raised an eyebrow at that, but I didn't notice. "Good," he said, gently washing his hands of me. "I'm sure you'll do very well at that."
That was the second and least helpful piece of careers advice I had received. Much more useful had been a conversation I had had with my mother when I was six. She had firmly told me that no, I did not want to become a spy because if the Chinese caught me they would rip out my fingernails. I was immediately persuaded and that's why I am not a spy today.
Then in the Sixth Form the school made a final attempt to help me choose a career. We were made to answer questionnaires that were fed into a computer and then, just many weeks later, we got back a dot-matrix print out with a list of suitable jobs. This was a Jiig-Cal test. It looks like it's a little more sophisticated now than it was back in 1993. At the time it was a little underwhelming.
The results came back: a list of jobs that could be summarised as 'indoor work, no heavy lifting'. I think the highest matches were librarian, journalist, teacher, but none of it was very revelatory or inspiring. It wasn't until many years later that I realised that I had wanted something very different from this test. It had given me a list of jobs that overlapped with the sort of tasks I did well at school. What it hadn't done, what it would never be able to do, was unlock the dreams and desires I didn't know I had, to show me potential paths that I still had time to take.
Today I have the best job in the world but I do, occasionally, get sudden insights into careers I might have pursued had I but known they existed.
Five Jobs I Would Have Loved, Had I But Known
1. Marine Archaeologist. To be honest, what with the Mary Rose and For Your Eyes Only, this was staring me in the face the whole time and I just didn't see it. All I can do now is gnash my teeth at the missed opportunity. Okay, I can barely swim and I have a potentially crippling fear of deep water, but I am convinced that I could have overcome these if I had but realised such a job existed. I may, even now, have only a sketchy idea of what being a marine archaeologist actually entails, but I imagine it's mainly spending summers splashing about the Mediterranean, hoovering sand away from amphorae, which would be brilliant. My prospects might have suffered when I refused to explore the abyssal wrecks of the Atlantic or the chilly waters of the North Sea but, on the other hand, I might have discovered something like the Antikythera mechanism. And whenever people asked me what I did, I'd get to say "I'm a marine archaeologist," which would be just so cool that the very thought of it makes me all excited.
2. Nail Varnish Shade Describer. It never occurred to me this was a job until just the other day when I went to the shop to pick up some nail varnish for my wife. This made me slightly stressed. Firstly, it is impossible to resist the suspicion that the women in the nail varnish aisle think you are buying it for yourself. Which would, obviously, be fine, but I'm not and there's no way to casually announce that I'm not without turning into a sitcom character (not Ross from Friends, a different one.) Secondly, the labelling is appalling. How am I supposed to find the one particular shade? The rows aren't labelled, the bottles are all mixed up and so the only way to search through them is to pick them all up one at a time and find the name which is helpfully printed on the bottom. Of course, this merely compounds the first problem, because now it looks like I am browsing for a colour I like rather than assiduously hunting down the one out for which I have been sent.
Anyway, it was as a result of all this that I discovered the joy of nail varnish shade descriptions. I don't know if it's true for all makes, but the particular nail varnish my wife was after is made by OPI and they have some wonderfully silly ones. Some are dull and some are awful, but many are delightful; my favourites: 'I'm Not Really a Waitress', 'Catherine the Grape', 'Bastille My Heart', 'Mrs O'Leary's BBQ' and 'Melon of Troy'. After a while a very clear picture emerges. It is a picture of a room full of clever men and women brainstorming puns, wordplay and terrible jokes with which to describe the colours of nail varnish. This is their job, the lucky so-and-sos, and I would have loved to have done that.
3. Run My Own Opera House. This is obviously a lie. I couldn't do this at all, and I probably couldn't even imagine half the things one has to do in order to keep such an organisation intact on a daily basis. But I do know a load of people who could work together to run an opera house for me whilst I had very long lunches and, every so often, planned out a season's worth of unworkable and unpopular shows. I may be talking myself out of a job, but I feel I must admit that opera and I are often at cross-purposes with each other. For example if ever there was an opera which deserved a swash-buckling heroic victory at the last minute, it is Tosca. (Oddly, I have the opposite reaction with Rodelinda where I fully expect the drippy royals to get it in the neck and SPOILERS they don't.) Instead, the sudden final tragedy of Tosca leaves me with a strong desire to cut the third act completely. Or, even better, Tosca jumps and then a splash of water appears over the ramparts and she calls out 'Fortuna meglio la prossima volta, perdenti!'. How would that not be brilliant?
It is with a Calvinesque sigh that I realise that, when it comes to opera, I probably shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a position of responsibility. Anyway, video games are much better: in Assassin's Creed, your character can sneak into the Castel Sant'Angelo, kill the big baddy, fight all the guards and then leap from the battlements wearing a parachute given to you by your friend Leonardo da flippin' Vinci. Puccini really missed a trick there.
4. Duke of Norfolk. I went around Arundel Castle in the Summer and good fun it was too. Many British castles are crumbling ruins. They may be atmospheric and beautiful, but nevertheless they are merely ghosts of buildings, rent and wrecked by sieges and long abandoned by whatever ancient lords and ladies were once ensconced there. Arundel is the other kind of castle. It is immaculate, luxurious and not conserved but maintained: those ancient lords are still living there, nine hundred years later, and for roughly half that time it has been the home of the Dukes of Norfolk. Not metaphorically either: even today it is their actual home.
Now pay attention because the aristocracy are tricksy and confusing. For a start they never live where they should do. The Earls of Pembroke lived in Wiltshire, the Duke of Devonshire's house is in Derbyshire and Arundel is in Sussex, not Norfolk. But the Dukes of Norfolk are also the Earls of Arundel so this, at least, makes some kind of sense. The current one, Edward Fitzalan-Howard, is styled the 18th Duke of Norfolk (although he's actually the 25th man to hold the title) and, as well as being the 36th Earl of Arundel (or the 17th depending on how you count it), he is also the 16th (or 36th) Earl of Norfolk, the Earl of Surrey, Baron Beaumont, Baron Maltravers, Baron FitzAlan, Baron Clun, Baron Oswaldestre, Baron Howard of Glossop, the Earl Marshall, the Hereditary Marshall of England and, according to some, the Chief Butler of England.
Walking about Arundel, two things occurred to me. Firstly, there seemed to be an awful lot of overlap here. Given the current rates of unemployment, was it fair for one man to do all these jobs at once? Couldn't some of these titles be shared out amongst the jobless? Don't Surrey and Norfolk suffer from having to share an Earl? And secondly, I realised that I never will be a duke of any kind. The realisation came like a slap across the face, and it depresses me more than you can know. I can't play football, paint or invent things; I could never be a millionaire businessman, or a statesman, or an actor. These things require not only talent but furiously hard work. On the other hand, I know I've got what it takes to be a bloody great duke. I would be brilliant. I'd knock it out of the park. The best ever. Sadly, it won't ever happen.
5. Pope. I understand there's a vacancy and, let's face it, I'd be a wonderful pope. Even though I'm not a woman, I still think that I could bring the fresh-thinking and unexpected qualities that any moribund two-thousand year old institution desperately needs. And if for some CRAZY reason you consider my atheism a drawback (it's not, it's what would make me a bold and brilliant choice and allow the Church to move in a new, modern direction) then I'm still eminently qualified. Not only do I have grade B GCSE Latin, but I also have a passion for travelling around the world telling people how to live their lives.
I'd have to negotiate terms quite carefully, though. I'm happy to work all Easter (it's literally just another weekend to me) but I would need Christmas off, obviously. And if Benedict XVI can invoke centuries-old precedents then so can I, which means that my marriage and vow of non-celibacy shouldn't be a problem. The good news is that, even were I to fail to persuade the Conclave of my suitability, I could just call myself Pope anyway like this guy.
So there we are. Five rather nice jobs that I won't ever get to do, for reasons that still remain unclear to me. At least I still have all my fingernails.
