When I was very young – probably around five or six years old – I would regularly keep my Dad company if he went to work at weekends or during school holidays.
My Dad was something called a company director. And from what I could tell his job involved driving round to see people and telling them what to do. He drove a few different cars, but the one I liked the most was called a Jaguar and it had a metal cat sculpture on the front. It also had something called an eight-track cassette player and I loved listening to the songs from Dumbo when my father left me in the car to go to a meeting.
When he went to see people my Dad would wear a suit and often carry a briefcase. And the people he went to see were usually people up ladders who were wearing paint-splattered overalls and painting things with a brush.
At the age of six I decided that when I grew up and went to work I wanted to be the person with the briefcase and not the one up the ladder.
My Dad’s boss was a very rich man. He was called Mr Brown and he was something called a managing director. His office had dark wooden panelling, a huge desk and a leather chair, and on his wall was a picture of the time he met the Queen. He lived in a massive house, drank champagne and whisky, drove a Rolls Royce (which was definitely posher than the Jaguar), smoked big cigars and had a dog called Higgins.
The only job I thought I’d prefer to being a company director like my Dad was being a managing director like Mr Brown.
It’s funny how sensory experiences from childhood stick with you throughout your life. I can vividly remember Mr Brown’s office – the smell of the wood and the whisky and the cigars. And outside his office, in the warehouse, the smell of paint.
What’s also fascinating are the experiences we have as children that shape us as adults. Often it is the most trivial of events which have the most profound effect on what we become.
(As an aside, the title of this post is a slight play on the title of A A Milne’s book “When We Were Very Young”, which first introduced the world to a certain famous bear (No. Not Paddington!) It was exactly 100 years ago today – on 6th November 1924 – that this book was first published.)
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