When a Job and a Passion Collide

After graduating from uni with an honours degree I really didn’t know what I wanted to do for a job. Although I’d majored in Law I’d already decided it wasn’t a career I wanted to pursue. Having learned to touch type at college I was in a good position to apply for administrative jobs in London where employers appreciate graduates and don’t dismiss them as being over qualified as they seemed to do locally at that time. I felt it would be a good experience to work in a busy city office while I worked out what I eventually wanted to do. Journalism was something I had considered but it’s very difficult to get into without any background in the field. My typing speed was around 85 words per minute at that time and most offices had moved over from traditional typewriters to word processors so it was easier to maintain that speed. I went to an employment agency and had six interviews in one day. I was offered all six positions in a variety of settings and eventually decided on a publishing company. I have always been an avid reader and I basically just love books! There’s not much money in publishing but the salary wasn’t bad and I loved my time there. It was a very laidback environment and they all took me under their wing as, at 21, I was the baby of the team. However they were a fun-loving bunch mostly in their late twenties to thirties. My job was PA to the Director of one of several divisions which all had a specialism. Macdonald & Co was part of the Daily Mirror Group which was owned by British media proprietor, suspected spy and fraudster Robert Maxwell. He died two years after I started working there after falling overboard from his luxury yacht. Despite his humble beginnings as one of only a handful of Holocaust survivors in his immediate family, he was not known for his humility or kindness.

In a very short space of time we moved offices from Shoe Lane, then New Fetter Lane and eventually to the large and busy Mirror office building in High Holborn. I never saw or met Maxwell but we often heard his helicopter landing on the roof of the building! In contrast to her brother’s lavish and decadent existence his sister Sylvia was a modest and unpretentious lady who worked in the same company. She was saved by the Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg, who rescued her from a Budapest station as she was about to be sent to Auschwitz. He gave her Swedish citizenship and she later came to England. She was, amongst other roles, chiefly responsible for editing the ‘Noddy’ collection of books.

As first ‘proper’ jobs go, it was very interesting, learning about the commissioning of authors, the role of editors, graphic designers and the printing process. The division I worked for was called ‘Queen Anne Press’ specialising in sports books and autobiographies/human interest stories. While I was there we published a book about David Lopez who became known as ‘The Boy David’. He was a Peruvian boy born with severe facial deformity and abandoned as an infant and became the subject of a documentary which captivated viewers across the country. During my time working there I met a handful of celebrities such as Paula Yates, racing commentator Julian Wilson and various sports personalities. I also occasionally spoke to authors or sports people on the telephone such as Catherine Cookson, Peter Shilton and Kenny Dalglish. There were lots of others but not being an avid sports fan at the time I can’t remember most of them!

One of my roles was to edit ‘The Rothmans Football Year Book’ 1990 edition. The book contains statistical information on the previous season in English football, including all results, appearances, goalscorers and transfers for the various leagues, as well as selected historical records for each club and all major competitions. Definitely a book for die-hard football fans, otherwise deadly boring if I’m honest! My job involved contacting all the football clubs and editing photo captions, names etc to ensure their accuracy. My name was included in the credits which I was very excited about! Small things and all that….

As much as I loved the job, the daily commute was gruelling. I left the house at 5.30 am every day and didn’t get home til at least 8.00 pm most evenings. It was exhausting. The Hastings to Charing Cross line is so slow and, at that time, the carriages were the old style where you had to open the window to get to the handle and you couldn’t move between carriages. It always made me nervous as the carriages emptied out and there might only be one other person in that section. After Tunbridge Wells it was all the little rural stops and went from people standing due to a lack of seating to very quiet and a bit spooky! My mind used to launch into overdrive, like the time I was alone in a carriage with a heavily tattooed man, who looked like someone you wouldn’t mess with and had a huge holdall which, in my overactive imagination, contained knives and a chainsaw! Poor man, it could have contained his Sunday best suit for all I knew!

In the mornings I used to snooze most of the way up to London and I always feared waking up to find I’d been leaning on a stranger’s shoulder if I fell into a deep sleep! For those who are old enough to remember, I had a Sony ‘Walkman’ that could turn over the cassette when it ended (very posh I thought at the time!). I used to record a lot of albums onto blank cassettes with a different album each side. My music taste has always been eclectic so there was often quite a diverse range of music on the tapes. Also some albums seemed to record at different volume levels so one could be at a gentle level whereas others would be very loud. One time I was listening to Supertramp’s album ‘Breakfast in America’, an easy listening, chilled out choice and when it ended there was a few minutes’ gap of silence before it turned over. Imagine my horror when Black Uhuru blasting out it’s Jamaican Reggae beat caused me to jump and kick the poor man seated across from me! Mortified! I also used to listen to a lot of Pink Floyd, in particular my favourite album ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’. Parts of it have some quite spooky sounds on it and bits of talking, shouting, laughing and babies crying! I remember walking home from Bexhill train station in the dark with my headphones on getting paranoid and constantly checking if there was anyone walking too close behind me! What an album though!

One of the perks of working at the publishers was an entitlement to order six free new paperbacks a month and a copy of the Daily Mirror newspaper each day. On my journeys home I barely looked up from a book and lost count of how many I got through. I read some of the best books I’ve ever read – ‘Wild Swans’, by Jung Chang, ‘Angela’s Ashes’ by Frank McCourt and ‘Beloved’ by Toni Morrison, to name a few. Although I hated that tiring commute I do actually miss having the opportunity to just retreat into my reading adventures for a couple of hours every day.

One of the most frustrating things about working so far from home was the restrictions to my social life. The only way I could go out with my colleagues was to sofa surf or get a very late train. The former was far more preferable and I did crash at different people’s pads here and there. The times I did get the train back I would generally leave London around 9.30 pm which tends to be a very quiet time on the underground and somehow feels less safe than the hustle and bustle of bar closing times when there are more people using the tube. At the same time I had very few opportunities to socialise locally. I’d moved to Bexhill straight after university and had started work in London shortly after so I only knew a handful of people in my home town. It was ok for a while but the commuting eventually got the better of me and I left to work closer to home. It was fun while it lasted and I gained some valuable skills but, just as importantly, I have great memories and a full bookshelf!

“Books are the plane and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” – Anna Quindlen.