Now a few years into retirement, I felt I wanted to document my working life. It isn’t a thrilling tale, but its level of excitement is not important because it’s more for my benefit than anyone else’s, and I know what’s coming next.

It’s not one long tome, thank goodness, as I’ll split it into sections, and the first one has to be the introduction.

I left school in 1976, halfway through my two-year A-Level courses. That was partly because I was fed up with school and wanted to earn my own money, but also partly because my first year had been completed at a British Families Education Service school in what was then West Germany, but my Civil Servant dad had been posted back to the UK and, try as I might, I couldn’t get him to pull the right strings to allow me to stay in Germany for the second year, even though it would have been possible. My dad’s new posting was in Surrey, but he snagged us a Government-owned house close to Farnborough in Hampshire. The local sixth-form college ran a different A-Level syllabus, which would have required me to start my first year over again. For someone already done with school, I opted for the world of work.

Now is the time for regret. I really really should have completed my A-Levels, then tried for university. Not only would that have opened a lot of doors for me, but university education was free then. But I knew best, and now I really wish I hadn’t.

Back in 1976, the work situation for young people wasn’t as dire as it is today, so I had a fairly broad range of work to choose from, even without A-Levels or a degree. I knew I wanted to work in the public sector somewhere, so that I wasn’t helping to make obscene profits for the Robber Barons – I was a socialist at heart even then. My first disappointment, though, was going to the Job Centre to sign on, only to find that I couldn’t get Unemployment Benefit as I hadn’t paid any contributions, which I suppose was fair. I did, though, browse the jobs on offer and opted to apply for a labouring position while I set to and applied for the Civil Service.

I was at the bottom of the greasy pole that is the world of paid employment.