I arrive in our capital city, armed only with a degree in English Language and Literature, and the conviction that I will be an overnight theatrical sensation. I work for three months in a pub theatre in Acton, until one day I am told that they won’t be able to pay me that week. Or maybe ever again. Ah, so the streets of London aren’t paved with gold after all.
I go to Office Angels in Holborn to ask about temporary work:
‘Can you type?’ No.
‘Can you use a computer?’ No.
‘You have a degree in English… can you put things in alphabetical order?’ YES!
I am the ideal filing clerk. I start work the next day at the American investment bank Morgan Stanley International, and, without really realising it, stay for nearly two years. I rise up through the ranks, until I am offered the chance to become a full employee, complete with car and a mortgage subsidy. Before properly committing, I go to the training that every person joining the company must attend. After two intense days of learning about international finance, it comes to the bit when we can ask questions. Recent Harvard graduates around me ask about the mortgage backed bond market in Australia. I raise my hand:
‘Yes?’ You’ve described very well how banking works, but why?
‘Are you asking if we serve a useful social function?’ Yes, I suppose I am.
‘We serve no useful social function, but now we exist the world can’t do without us.’ Ah…
That evening, I am introduced to the friend of a friend who is a primary school teacher, and tell her about what has just happened:
‘You should be a teacher.’ No way. I’m not much older than the people I’d be teaching.
‘A primary school teacher. You’d love Nursery and Reception.’
She is absolutely right. I train as an Early Years teacher, and work for six, very happy years in Bristol, before the itch to return to theatre grows too strong. However, what I discover about play, and collaboration, and learning, in my PGCE and through spending so much time with people under the age of five, becomes fundamental to me, and to my work. I return again and again to young people to make plays for them and with them, to be inspired by their imagination and insight, to be reenergised by their company. And, even when engaged in the most adult of projects, there’s a four year old in my head looking at things with bright, questioning eyes.
Theatre to banking to teaching to theatre was not the route I intended to take, but it is how I reached where I am now.