Wednesday 26 June 2013

Career Opportunities


A career is wonderful, but you can't curl up with it on a cold night. - Marilyn Monroe 

He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career. - George Bernard Shaw 

The Careers Officer at school got the same response I gave to everyone in authority back then - a blank look. I'd like to think I was part of 'The Blank Generation' because that would lend my apathy and cluelessness an air of cool, rebellious chic or, at least, excuse me from responsibility due to socio-cultural circumstances. But how can you brand a generation when each one will contain so many different successes and 'failures'? The Lost Generation...Generation X...Generation Y or Z according to research demographics - baloney, convenient tags for marketing types and the media....

...although Richard Hell & The Voidoids' 'Blank Generation' is still a great record...


...it came out the same year (1977) as The Clash's debut album, which contained the other seminal 'sums-up-my-life track...


...of course a career opportunity never knocked because I wasn't in. Opportunity could knock as hard as it liked, I wasn't listening. I had no talent, for anything, even knocking a tin against my head whilst 'Mule Train' played, like Bob 'The Tray' Blackman, who got his break on the TV show, Opportunity Knocks...


...and you thought Britain's Got Talent was some kind of atrocity exhibition peculiar to this generation with it's stupid novelty acts. Mind you, I'd rather watch Bob than another woman dancing with a dog.

I found this game, Careers, by Waddington, in a charity shop the other week. Yes, from the makers of Monopoly (they cornered the market in finance-based boards games, didn't they?), this 1957 fun-for-some-of-the-family concept shows its age wonderfully by offering an opportunity to join a moon expedition. Note that the chance to enter Politics comes with expenses paid, in case you thought that the expenses scandal was something new. The board was sold seperately, but even with that I couldn't have played because the box contained no money - ha-ha - the irony! Yes, that suits my non-career life perfectly.










2 comments:

  1. Of course I LOVE this post for marking so many boxes on my Punk Bingo card :-)

    Career advice at school was crap, wasn't it? I was told, in no uncertain terms, that studying art would be a very unwise choice. It was the best thing anyone could have said to ensure that's just what I did...

    Love that game too, especially the suggestion that the only skill needed to be a politician is a 'great handshaking ability', oh and, as with the others, the ability to entrance (for expenses)... but to entrance whom? (Typically I read it wrongly, derr)

    I also think you do, of course, have many talents - even if dancing with a dog isn't one of them :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Punk Bingo?! Ha-ha (Bingo Master's Breakout?)

      Yes, who in their right minds would recommend Art as a career? My Dad certainly didn't, but despite my natural teenage reactionary attitude I couldn't even be bothered to seriously study for that...

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