BY THE time I was in the sixth form at school and studying for my A-levels, I’d set my heart on joining a newspaper. I was hoping to go straight from school by gaining a job as a trainee reporter, after having already ruled out any idea of going to university. While I knew that my parents would do their very best to support me, they would have to face the possibility of making a large financial contribution to my university grant. It would have been very tough on them, particularly as none of my siblings had done A-levels, let alone gone to university. Besides, Mum and Dad had never been in the position of having much spare cash.
To help with the family finances, I took a job in ‘Bob’s’, a local greengrocer’s in a little row of shops on the Walcot estate. Every Thursday night I traipsed around Walcot selling lottery tickets for Swindon Town Football Club. I also worked on the giant dish-washing machine in Swindon’s BHS. I paid my parents £3 a week housekeeping. So, with three kids off their hands, they could comfortably afford two holidays a year. It was another reason why I didn’t want my presence at university to prevent my parents from having that second holiday, which I knew meant such a lot to them.
So, armed with my book of cuttings, and some six months before my final school exams were due to start, I drew up a list of a dozen newspapers within a sixty-mile radius of Swindon. But the process of applying for a job proved to be very dispiriting. If I managed to get a reply – I’d even enclosed stamp addressed envelopes with my applications – I had the distinct feeling that the editors were sneering at my efforts. ‘We prefer to interview candidates who have a degree’ was the usual comment.
Eventually, there was only one newspaper left to write to on my list. Home from school during the Christmas holidays, I told Mum I wasn’t going to send off that last letter. ‘I’ve written to eleven papers. And every one of those who’ve bothered to reply have all been really snotty,’ I grumbled, feeling heavily depressed at my
