First Job

Now now, at this rate I'll be getting into bad habits.  It's after midnight before I've even started this one, although seeing as it's about employment you can hardly blame me for putting it off...

Ah.  My first job.  What even was it?  I haven't exactly been blessed with a lot of employment... No, let me rephrase that, I haven't been blessed with a lot of long-term employment.  Much better.  Funnily enough of all the things in the world, I actually consider being part of a church choir a job!  I'm quite old-fashioned in that view, and perhaps rather out-dated, but out of all the Choral Scholar groups that I've been part of (two years at Mancroft and two years at Truro), I've certainly taken it the most seriously, and more an end of itself rather than a means.  More on that story later in a post I'm still working on in the times that I still feel like writing once the daily blog has been done.  As I'm sure to repeat myself in this future blog (ooh am I whetting your appetite, am I), I always saw this as a job as I get paid for a service - in this case, singing.  The Master/Director of Music is my boss, and the rest of the team (Songmen, Scholars, Lay-Vicars alongside the choristers) are my colleagues.  We work together (as a choir) in our services, rehearsals and concerts (assignments, call-outs, tasks...whatever) and then we get paid for doing so.  I was always paid as a chorister as well, not hugely by any mistake (be under no illusion), but it was my money that I earned by myself.  My time at Derby is formally over, and I got myself taken off the Dep list before I started at Truro.  SOB.

Other than that, paid employment sees fit to escape me.  I volunteered at the Oxfam shop in Belper off and on for a long time actually, about three years all told, where I scored an impressive collection of records including my 3 Vinyl set of Handel's Messiah (don't ask who it is because I don't have it here with me, but suffice to say it's pretty old).  I learned some core skills at Oxfam, such as (but not limited to):

! Damp hurts vinyl, like, real bad
£ If it's electric, they couldn't sell it
$ Alphabetising music scores is really something I'm good at
% Take pricing with a pinch of salt (BUT know that Oxfam run a pricing book now so the prices are the same the land over)

I eventually made the book shed my base of operations as far as Oxfam was concerned.  As I traipsed through my degree, I neither applied for nor found paid work except for, of course, my Choral Scholarship to the Church of the Parish of St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich.  While the pay for such a position is less that stratospheric, it allowed me to pay off my share of a winter heating bill I still quote to this day.  Seriously.  It's not an exciting story by any respect though.

During my third year, however, I volunteered (or was I volunteered for me?) to be the Choir Librarian for the University's main choir, made up of Music Students (although not for much longer eh eh eh), any other student who successfully auditioned, and members of the general public (formerly not auditioned but then auditioned in my...third year?  Anybody reading who can remember that?) and learned ever more interesting things:

& If there is no key holder on site IT IS ILLEGAL TO HAVE THIS MANY PEOPLE IN THIS ROOM
() There will always be hundreds of sopranos in the first rehearsal, which then falls by at least half over the course of the first half term
{} The same 20 Tenors and Basses will be all the Tenors and Basses you will ever have ever
[] There will always be first years who do not return scores.  There's always one.  No question.
@ People generally have no manners, and will attempt to grab a score and run regardless of almost anything else

This unpaid yet, uh, 'rewarding' position still sits there, merrily taking its place on the voluntary section of my Curriculum Vitae.  I have utilised the skills I learned during my time as Librarian in other, similar circumstances, such as the COME AND SING (everything but the Credo) MOZART'S CORONATION MASS in Truro Cathedral in April.  There's nothing like ticking names off, handing out scores...and then realising that unless you actually see every last person you gave a score to you have no way of guaranteeing that all the scores come back, incurring shame on your family for generations and ponderous library fines. 

As I ended my degree, my thoughts turned first to escape the insanity that led to the hand in of my dissertation, one of the best things I ever wrote (as long as we're not including this HAH), and thus a trip to Exeter was both hatched and executed!  Once I came back to Norwich, to my flat (my friends, my family), I sat about considering my lot, and where best to look for my next move: ah yes!  My old-yet-never-really-finished job as a Choral Scholar!  That, and that alone sent me on the path to Truro.  I almost went to St. David's, in Pembrokeshire (being familiar with the Cathedral and the surrounding...hamlet after going there on holiday with a previous girlfriend), but due to one or two things that I may or may not have mentioned before, I was appointed very swiftly.  And very happily!  But once again, this sort of thing doesn't pay excessively well, and since then I have been trying to find work to...complement this appointment (as I like to say in my covering letters).

I've worked in offices, schools, the Cathedral restaurant... and now I'm looking for work again.  I'm basically doing the same as always, handing out CV's...but this time I'm giving out a covering letter as well, handwritten to save time of typing, saving and printing. 

I think, and indeed, I feel that unless I ever give up on it, being a part of a Cathedral Choir will always be my first job: even now as I sink to the bottom of my overdraft it's still my priority, reflected in how I behave, think and talk about it.  Hopefully, I can find work that doesn't mean quite so much (emotionally, professionally, educationally) to me, but can pay a great deal more so I don't have to worry quite so much.

That's all.  For now.