My working career Part One
July 13th 2008 09:39
Officially, this should have appeared in WorkReport.net, but circumstances mean it's appearing here instead.
I’ve done a number of jobs in my time, but being a barman pressing bar faucets isn’t one of them. (Check out my other blog for my feelings about the word, faucet)
I was into the current vogue for changing my career every so many years
long before it was as fashionable as it is now.
My first job was helping my uncle in his little dairy. He could add the price of items up in his head (and remember the prices in the first place). I had to write them down on paper and add them up. I was not a great success in this job.
I worked during the pre-Christmas period at one of the larger department stores the year before I left school. My friend, whose idea it was to get a job there, went upstairs as an assistant salesman. I was relegated to the stores section, with the grumpy storeman. While I did get to push a trolley around the shop a lot and see different people, I was also informed that I had no idea how to sweep up with a broom, something that may well have been true.
I had ideas of basing a play on this experience, but never quite figured out how to set it all in the storeroom. (At that time, plays usually had to have one permanent set, in order to be staged at all.)
Half way through the following year I got sick of school, applied for a job one afternoon, and started within a couple of days. (Had my second day off as a sick day because I was so overwhelmed with the first day.) It was in an insurance company.
I worked there for some five years and then, seemingly out of the blue, was offered a job as a repetiteur with the NZ Opera Company. A repetiteur is a fancy name for a rehearsal pianist, but repetiteurs often do some conducting as well (indeed, it’s a stepping stone to conducting in an opera house in many cases). I’d already been doing this job unpaid, as a hobby, for some time, so it was an easy transition.
I toured the country as the ‘orchestra’ of a Piano Tour of La Boheme - without chorus, and with some singers doubling parts, as well as setting up the scenery in each town.
From there I went to Auckland to be repetiteur for a production of Albert Herring, and then toured the country’s main centres with a full-scale production of Die Fledermaus, playing the celeste in the orchestra - and the triangle.
Back to Auckland and a seemingly chance meeting in the street (it turned out it wasn’t chance) led me to yet another countrywide tour, this time as the pianist for the Opera Quartet, who spent their days whipping from one secondary school to another, performing a three-quarters of an hour concert for school children. This tour visited every town under the New Zealand sun, and hopped from the North Island to the South and back again in a most disorderly fashion.
Suddenly the repetiteur work ran out, and I was jobless. Became a postie for a while during the Christmas rush (in the days when mail actually increased over the Christmas period) and worked alongside a poet called Brent Southgate - he''s brother to the William Southgate, who later became a well-known conductor.
A brief stint in an office again, working with a grumpy manager (I attract them) and two young ladies who seldom gave me the time of day.
More of my illustrious career in the next post.
I’ve done a number of jobs in my time, but being a barman pressing bar faucets isn’t one of them. (Check out my other blog for my feelings about the word, faucet)
I was into the current vogue for changing my career every so many years
Barman, by Antonio Seprano
My first job was helping my uncle in his little dairy. He could add the price of items up in his head (and remember the prices in the first place). I had to write them down on paper and add them up. I was not a great success in this job.
I worked during the pre-Christmas period at one of the larger department stores the year before I left school. My friend, whose idea it was to get a job there, went upstairs as an assistant salesman. I was relegated to the stores section, with the grumpy storeman. While I did get to push a trolley around the shop a lot and see different people, I was also informed that I had no idea how to sweep up with a broom, something that may well have been true.
I had ideas of basing a play on this experience, but never quite figured out how to set it all in the storeroom. (At that time, plays usually had to have one permanent set, in order to be staged at all.)
Half way through the following year I got sick of school, applied for a job one afternoon, and started within a couple of days. (Had my second day off as a sick day because I was so overwhelmed with the first day.) It was in an insurance company.
I worked there for some five years and then, seemingly out of the blue, was offered a job as a repetiteur with the NZ Opera Company. A repetiteur is a fancy name for a rehearsal pianist, but repetiteurs often do some conducting as well (indeed, it’s a stepping stone to conducting in an opera house in many cases). I’d already been doing this job unpaid, as a hobby, for some time, so it was an easy transition.
I toured the country as the ‘orchestra’ of a Piano Tour of La Boheme - without chorus, and with some singers doubling parts, as well as setting up the scenery in each town.
From there I went to Auckland to be repetiteur for a production of Albert Herring, and then toured the country’s main centres with a full-scale production of Die Fledermaus, playing the celeste in the orchestra - and the triangle.
Back to Auckland and a seemingly chance meeting in the street (it turned out it wasn’t chance) led me to yet another countrywide tour, this time as the pianist for the Opera Quartet, who spent their days whipping from one secondary school to another, performing a three-quarters of an hour concert for school children. This tour visited every town under the New Zealand sun, and hopped from the North Island to the South and back again in a most disorderly fashion.
Suddenly the repetiteur work ran out, and I was jobless. Became a postie for a while during the Christmas rush (in the days when mail actually increased over the Christmas period) and worked alongside a poet called Brent Southgate - he''s brother to the William Southgate, who later became a well-known conductor.
A brief stint in an office again, working with a grumpy manager (I attract them) and two young ladies who seldom gave me the time of day.
More of my illustrious career in the next post.
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