Thirty years have passed since I received the envelope containing my O-level results, but I can still recall the moment my eyes scanned the letter. I got a C in English Literature, a Grade 1 in CSE Drama and failed the rest. I relayed the news to my mother and suggested I embark on a residential Work Experience Programme with a view to learning a trade. She enthusiastically endorsed this plan.
From that moment on I was fixed on a path of downward social mobility and would now be a labourer were it not for two things.
The first one was the Work Experience Programme. The idea was that you tried your hand at various blue-collar professions and earned the same as you would if you were signing on. I now realise it was a cynical government scheme to conceal the true level of youth unemployment, but at the time I took it at face value. Unfortunately, it had the opposite of its intended effect. After peeling potatoes and cleaning lavatories for six months I decided I wasn’t cut out for a life of manual labour, either. Going back to school was a ghastly prospect, but the alternative was even worse.
Did my mother realise the programme would have this effect? I’d like to say it was a cunning plan to bring me to my senses, but she didn’t seem that troubled by my academic failure. As a lifelong socialist, she believed in respecting all workers. If her only son was destined to become a member of the working classes, so be it. She wasn’t about to allow petit-bourgeois prejudice to dictate a last-minute abandonment of her principles.
My father took a different view — and he is the second reason I didn’t end up as a ditch-digger.
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