Will’s World: Dead pigeon takes me to new career height
© Lee Bosworth Photography My primary task one day recently was to clean and unblock a gutter. Nothing remarkable there, you’re probably thinking, but this wasn’t your bog-standard gutter.
No, it was one of those large box gutters that runs along the valley between two adjoining cattle shed roofs.
In this particular instance, the builders, in their infinite wisdom, decided to put the box profile sheets over the channel.
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This meant the only way I could get at said gutter without taking off 300 roof sheets was to contort my hand and wrist through the gaps along the raised part of the box profile at regular intervals and bring out fistfuls of sludge, weeds and dead pigeon, as I crawled along on my already semi-knackered farmer’s knees.
Of course, we’re currently in the midst of the kind of prolonged wet spell that convinced Noah to hastily load up the animals two by two.
Imagine the rows he and Mrs Noah would’ve had during that process. It’s tense enough as a couple trying to move cattle or sheep, let alone tigers or baboons.
Teen dreams
As Welsh rain poured down my neck in icy cold torrents, and I tried in vain to massage some feeling back into my poor freezing, shredded hands, my thoughts drifted back to a warm spring day in 1993, when a fresh-faced 14-year-old daydreamer named Will Evans, with the world at his feet, entered his school “careers adviser’s” office.
The reason for the inverted commas, in case you’re wondering, is because to say that the bloke was stealing a living would be the understatement of the century.
I’ll concede that the years might have distorted my memory somewhat, but I’m pretty sure Mr Jones had both feet propped on the desk, smelled like a Benson & Hedges testing facility, spent a large proportion of his wages on wet-look hair gel, and appeared about as uninterested in his job as the average council pothole mender.
“Ah yes, Evans,” he drawled, leafing absent-mindedly through a stack of papers.
“Your grades aren’t completely terrible, and it says here that if you actually applied yourself and spent less time looking out of windows, they could be half-decent,” he said, accusatorially.
I shrugged apologetically and shyly mumbled something in response.
“So, what do you want to do then? Looks like English and History are your strongest subjects. Put a bit of effort in and you could go to university, lad.”
“Well, er, I think I want to be a farmer, like my dad,” I nervously stammered. “So, I’ll probably just, you know, leave after my exams.”
He studied me for a few seconds, before shaking his head slowly and starting to laugh. “Well, best of luck then. Next!” And with that, I was unceremoniously shown the door.
Last laugh
And thus concluded the sum total of the “careers advice” I received during my early 1990s state secondary education.
I didn’t even realise until a few years later, when I made friends with the odd private school-educated lad at Young Farmers, that you could study subjects like agriculture at university.
In my ignorance, I’d assumed they only taught things like Maths, Science and Geography.
Anyway, as I shuffled along that shed roof considering all this, soaked to the bone, knees screaming in agony and bleeding hands covered in decomposing pigeon, I looked to the sky, shook my fist and yelled out: “Who’s laughing now?”
I think it was Oscar Wilde who said: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Take that, Mr Jones.
