Own career trajectory.

Although reasonably settled now in his portfolio career of tour guide, author and librarian, Chris Roberts has done more than his share of quaint and strange jobs over the years. An alphabet of redundant careers is an attempt to stave off the necessity for him to take a full-time job through the exploration of some truly bonkers occupations that an accident of birth spared him from actually having to consider seriously.

In the past, he has sold advertising in Germany without the benefit of speaking the language, and worked as a ‘toast buster’ providing breakfasts for British army officers serving there. This was preceded by various stints in nightclubs as everything from bartender to go go dancer, a position that was mercifully brief, though the owners of the establishment did stress that their bankruptcy hearing had been scheduled prior to his performance. He later took up bingo-calling in a pathetic attempt to compete with his brother who was training to be an accountant at the time, on the basis that they were both working with numbers. A couple of stints in retail, including six months selling sex aids in New York, convinced him that his talents lay elsewhere. Though clearly not in Welsh holiday camps, cooking Mexican cuisine, designing furniture from shop dummies, organising a slumber offsetting programme or as a spokesperson for a nuclear power pressure group.

Unsurprisingly, with hindsight, when he was turned down by MI5,his occupations began to coalesce around London street facilitator, scrivener, bibliographic information distributor or, as he was generously described by one website, ‘general gobshite about town’. He is the author of Heavy words lightly thrown and Cross river traffic, histories of nursery rhymes and London’s bridges respectively as well books on Lost English words and one on Football and Magic. His short stories are dotted about a number of publications and the BBC dramatised a couple on radio 4. One is here. 

He was also editor of and sometime contributor to the 21^st century penny dreadful One Eye Grey, which retells old folktales and ghost stories in a modern context. He is partly responsible for True Blue a musical about the life of Margaret Thatcher and entirely responsible for the online Evening Standard Headline Generator. 

Introduction to the A-Z

You’re doing what? An alphabet of redundant careers

An alphabet of redundant careers is structured like an ordinary A to Z book with twenty-six short chapters, each concentrating on a bizarre occupation that has been lost to us over the past two hundred years. It will examine why they disappeared as well as the sheer absurdity (and indeed depravity and desperation) that gave rise to them in the first place. By furnishing strange facts about the culture in which they were able to flourish, and by making quirky links with twenty-first century life, the book offers an entertaining approach to historical and contemporary jobs, as well as a few insights into society.

The brief chapters make this an ideal book for the commute to work and it certainly provides a delicious distraction for anyone thinking of changing career in that at least the modern job seeker doesn't have any of the following livelihoods to consider:

Chamber-pot boy: Young man required to work in the sanitary engineering sector. Duties are to place, and later remove, a potty from under the skirts of a lady in public situations, enabling her to relieve herself in situ. Indoor work. Gorgeous uniform provided. Position might suit short first jobber with a poor sense of smell.

Flying stationer: Ability to fly not strictly necessary but must be mobile, have excellent communication skills and not be too precise with the truth. This opening in the street-news sales industry requires the ability to compose and give accounts of events – often those that have not yet occurred – in a convincing fashion.

Resurrectionist: Good wages for entrepreneurial type with some strength, strong nerves, a certain flair for negotiating and networking, as well as access to transport. The traditional ‘Burker’ must also be adept with a spade and have rudimentary engineering ability. Story-telling skills considered a bonus, as persuasive ghost tales are necessary to keep folk away from cemeteries of an evening.

Angel maker: Woman required for the expanding infanticide sector within the booming baby farming trade. Ideal opportunity to work from home while juggling other commitments.

Alongside these were ballad mongers, ostrich feather curlers, whimseymen and a whole host of other vocations that have passed from the world and about which no parent will ever again quietly brag: ‘Our Jack? Oh, he’s making a fine living in the coal whipping game and Jenny’s earning a decent wage as fear nought monger’.

All these occupations are instilled with more romance and skill (if not long-term prospects) than the contemporary, fruit-free ‘blackberry technicians’ or short-term ‘sustainability champions’. The book will offer a glimpse of occupations that make the dullest of today’s careers seem interesting, the most dangerous seem safe, the silliest seem mundane and the riskiest seem mainstream. It will not only gently inform the reader about some of the astonishing and amusing jobs of the past, but also offer comparisons with the present.

An alphabet of redundant careers is an ideal, easy-to-digest history of employment in the early modern age and, though it seems terrible to contradict Aristotle, it is still what we do for money that places us within society and not, as the Greek philosopher thought, our leisure time. As we enter another era of great change in the jobs market, it might be useful to examine which skills from the past might be transferable for use today.

Hopefully this blog will appeal to anyone who has ever applied for a job, considered changing career, read a ‘how to write your CV’ guide or even just studied the ‘help wanted’ sections. It provides a novel way of looking at how the economic process works and how modern western societies evolved, and could be the ideal starting point for any college library careers collection.