The Idler

On Not Having A Career

BY JOAN BAKEWELL

“And what would you like to be when you grow up?” I asked my 5 year old grand-daughter. Blythly she came back with a show-stopper of an answer: “A butterfly.” she said with all the serious intent of her years. We have to take such aspirations calmly. They indicate a wish for a colourful life, wafted gently on summer breezes from fragrant flower to fragrant flower, preferably somewhere within a golden expanse of English countryside. You could do worse. Indeed, apart from certain problems concerning species, her vision of the future has the essence of an idyll many of us would recognize. So how come we’re caught on the 8.10am to Euston most mornings, or locked in a traffic jam on the M62? We’re having a career, that’s the reason. And we never reckoned it would involve so much unpleasantness.

I come from a generation many of whom didn’t give much thought to a career until we were well into our third year at university. Those were the days of education for its own sake, and being a student was to be enjoyed simply for itself. Some were training to be architects and doctors, but many of those km,\taking humanities course, allowed things to drift. There had been no career advice at school, and no thought taken for the morrow. (The church still had a strong hold and such Christian aphorisms still clung) That’s how I came to have a shot at a series of jobs that might, had I persisted, have made me a Charles Saatchi, or a Heather Brigstock, the former and formidable High Mistress of St Paul’s Girls’ School.

But first I had had an epiphany moment. In the mid 50s I travelled regularly on the underground into central London to a BBC job at which I was not very good. If you’re no good at something, you’re not happy and I was looking for change.

Suddenly it struck me. Carriages of people crammed together, sweaty body to sweaty body. Stern of countenance, sour of demeanour, day after day. I totted up what a lifetime of such journeys might mean if I stayed with such a routine. It was far too much time. I wanted to spend every moment enjoying life to the full, not enduring such discomfort for the time-being in the hope of pleasures to come. I had recently seen Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis, and I pictured myself all too clearly as one of its anonymous figures, faceless and characterless, plodding their way through an urban nightmare.. I decided then and there I would deliberately seek work whose routine did not conform to the daily grind.

I tried teaching. There many things to commend teaching. A post can usually be found close to home, which means walking or cycling to work. The hours differ from that of office slaves, the work is personal and engaging, caught up in human relationships and children’s development. It had all this going for it. Unhappily, there was not much going for me. I was no good. I couldn’t keep order, I was terrorised by the children. Only briefly did I enjoy that magical moment when I caught their attention and held it, and we both enjoyed what we were learning together. But the strain was too great. I lacked the presence and the strength to see it through. Being unhappy, I gave up.

I gave advertising a good shot. I became a copywriter and quite enjoyed it. This, regrettably, did involve the dreaded routine journey to work. But I made the best of it. I took a bus from the Hampstead terminal, cornered a window seat at the front and read my way to work. Once there, I enjoyed the upbeat and witty company of lively people conspiring to create clever advertising campaigns together. This can be exhilarating. We had fun and success. And perhaps if I’d stuck with it I could by now be a millionaire advertising guru with a gallery full of modern pictures to prove it. But no. Wouldn’t I have to climb the ladder, become top dog, sweet-talk banks, set up companies, employ and - worse - sack others. No thanks. Sounds too much like a career for me.

By now I was beginning to formulate what exactly I wanted from life. Not from a job or even a career. But from life itself. And I discovered that the ingredients actually lay all around. They just needed to be combined in the right formula to meet my own temperament and abilities. They are not obscure and elusive. They are the very things most of us want: a happy family life focused around good relationships; congenial surroundings both at home and at work, that make life pleasant. I am not talking some ambitious make-over nonsense here. Think instead of being able to watch a particular tree round the seasons, coming into bud, flowering, turning to golden leaf and then fronting the winter with stark, dramatic branches. That seems to be a good ambition to have. Then there are friendships; bosom pals for intimacies and advice; working colleagues for sustaining each other with laughter and encouragement; acquaintances met at odd moments, introduced by others, casual encountered at the school gate. All these friendships settle and regroup over the years, some coming to the fore, others lapsing with time. Yes, the encouragement of friendship seems a worthwhile way of spending time. Finally there is the work itself. My own needs are for variety of tasks within and possibly at the limit of my capabilities,, periods of heavy effort interspersed with more reflective times; intellectual engagement with ideas, and a sense of something worthwhile being achieved.

I was to find a way of life that combined all these criteria. What would have tipped the whole thing out of balance would have been having a high-powered career. What happened was this. I had noticed in my first unhappy foray into the BBC that there were people called broadcasters who came and went at odd hours, undertook either major creative enterprises, radio drama, for example, or modest, brief talks, say, on Woman’s Hour. Each of them had creative freedom, the collaboration of amiable staff, and went away with a cheque. It’s called being a freelance. It was the life for me.

I made my way slowly, and always have. Once it became clear to enough people that I could handle an interview, there were numerous opportunities. I travelled the country to make the most of them, because in those days ITV consisted of some 12 companies. I’ve worked in my day for Granada, for Anglia, for ATV, for Westward, for Harlech and for Southern. It was at the latter, on a regular afternoon programme for women called “Home at 4.30″ that I really cut my teeth. We recorded 3 programmes on a single day: quick turnaround, lively ideas, interviews you researched and planned for yourself. Yes, this combined all the criteria I had so consciously enumerated for myself. And as a bonus the return journey to London involved afternoon cream teas in the cushioned and wood-panelled Pullman that was once the glory of the railways.

I had found what I enjoyed doing. Making television programmes. And I was to go on doing it. For over thirty years I have enjoyed as much variety and interest as I longed for. I have never become a producer, a director, a manager of any sort. I have thus avoided responsibility, worry, ambition, jealousy and back-biting. I have also avoided promotion, grand titles and the higher executive earnings. I have turned down what I didn’t fancy, and accepted with wholehearted commitment what I enjoy. I have simple gone on doing the same thing, and I still do. Not having a career has been a great career choice.