A HOLIDAY detour once took us to Robin Hood’s Bay. Holidays may be an escape from work but, exploring the village, I thought only of work: a café with yellow tulips; a shop selling paperbacks and fossils; a fishing boat rocking on the horizon. Previously I’d thought that work only happened in an airless office, penned in by desks, chairs and wires. I’d no idea you could earn your living among yellow tulips and sea spray.
This book would have been invaluable to me when choosing a career, and should be required reading for every young person being pushed into the rat race, or every older person seeking liberation from it. It’s a book of case studies showing people at work and opens up the huge variety of roles we can adopt in exchange for pay.
The author divides her book into sections, such as Selling, Caring and Thinking. However, some roles lie beneath unexpected headings, such as a rabbi under Repairing and a stay-at-home mother under Leading. This seems provocative and suggests the author would not simply render descriptions of various jobs. Instead, she uses an engaging blend of journalism, social history and politics, plus a flair for dialogue, to tell us what a shoemaker, nurse, prostitute or professor does all day.
When she meets Alan, a Belfast fishmonger, the chapter is filled with the clatter and whiff of St George’s Market, all rendered with the eye of a novelist: “A seagull is standing on top of the van – he knew it would be – and he tosses a fish up. The yellow-beaked bird gulps and it’s gone.”
Dipping into other occupations, we see the mess of flour and paste needed to create a pair of peach satin ballet slippers, and the pain such artisan work creates. And there’s Ina, the sex worker, who arranges baby wipes and mouth wash by the bed and speaks of her job with defiance: “My first day at work, it was the best day ever! I made a thousand pounds.”
And what of Scotland, once the clattering workshop of the world? We’re given a traditional view from Donald, a crofter on Lewis who draws a direct line from Scottish history to the present. A proud crofter, who like his ancestors must juggle several jobs. But here Donald breaks with the past because his other jobs include TV presenting for BBC Alba, a bit of journalism and some app design.
Biggs also shows how too many workers in Britain are exploited and exhausted. The barista will lose his bonus if he doesn’t display “passion”. Carers are given impossible tasks in a 10-minute slot.
Dealing with illness, disputes, unemployment and low pay, we might wonder why Biggs chooses to include privileged occupations such as that of a professor who complains she has no time to dream. These sections lack the vigour of those belonging to the exploited, and she is best when recounting injustice and blending it with polemic to rail against “bullshit jobs”.
Yet her aim was to present a portrait of Britain at work, not a crusade against exploitation, so we must forgive her these more genteel, muted sections.
To underline this point, she devotes a chapter to a clown. Trivial, perhaps? But this brings me back to Robin Hood’s Bay where I saw there were a thousand ways to earn a living.
All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain at Work, by Joanna Biggs; Serpent's Tail, £14.99
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