ia play

The main memory of my school’s careers advice was an interaction that went something like this:

“You appear to be rather good at science…have you thought about being a scientist? No? How about a science teacher?”

I don’t remember anyone ever suggesting that there were hundreds of thousands of jobs out there that don’t appear in Happy Families.

And the range of generic professions suggested seemed to be based on what subject you were better than your peers at. Enjoyment didn’t come into it.

I was very good at physics and I even found the lessons moderately enjoyable.  But left to my own devices, physics didn’t particularly feature in the way I spent my time (barring a bookish interest in astronomy).

I played with my dog, went swimming, spent a lot of time on the swings, read heaps on books, wrote stories, sketched, painted, cooked, drew maps of fantasy places, drew plans for imaginary buildings and gardens, and made models of buildings and towns.

That stuff made me happy (and it still sounds pretty good today).

Reading that list, it does sound like architecture (the proper kind) would have been a sensible direction. At 15 I did a stint of work experience at an architects practice and I had great fun clambering around building sites and drawing up plans.

The architect got me to draw up a plan for my dream house.  He had a look at how I was getting on and suggested I should be more ambitious because:

“this is the last chance you’ll have to design a house that you actually like”

And that was the end of my career as an architect.

At the heart of his comment was a real problem with careers advice. Even if we can direct children to learn crafts that they will enjoy that doesn’t ensure they will enjoy the day-to-day realities of their work.

One of the things that Haringey Council send us is the Haringey People “Local News” magazine for  Northumberland Park and White Hart Lane.

I largely disinterestedly flicked through the last one, none of the stories particularly catching my attention.

At the back was a nice little map of the area that shed light on my disinterest. This was clearly labelled ”your local map” and helpfully explained ”your local neighbourhood has been highlighted on the map of the borough”.

But I don’t really go places in either of the two wards that Haringey has decided are my local area. My house is there (and my allotment!) but tube/rail stations, doctors, dentist, pubs, restaurants, shops, post office, parks, supermarkets and actual markets, vets, garden centres are all in other wards.  Even my bus stop isn’t technically in *my* ward.

Partly this tells us that these wards are pretty deprived, even by Haringey’s standards. Not just financially but culturally. There’s not a lot of reasons for me to venture deeper into my own ward.

Another part of the problem is the print medium. Online they could have defined local in a circle around my location rather than relying on political boundaries. A circle would have been better but would still have a included a lot of space to the north that I’m not particularly interested in.

Local for me is stretched in a particular shape. That shape is formed by the gravitational pull of transport links into London (i.e to the south), the facilities available in the wealthier west of the borough but also by the cheap shops and restaurants further south.

I actually wanted to read the newsletters from all the six other local areas and not my own. Thanks to the internet I can but the glossy magazine is going to be rather a waste.