Fantasy careers

© 2007 by David Cowles

A short distraction that's taken up far too much time, I've been tagged again by Always Double Back (held to a wall with a gun pointed at my head more like). This time, it's to list five fantasy careers I might choose. So, here goes...

1. Singer-songwriter

in the John Hartford mould, where your first release is so mega-selling that it pays enough to keep you free to do whatever you want to do for the rest of your life.

Obviously, I have this career plan plotted out already with the pinnacle being playing the million people anti-racism festival in Central Park organised by President Angelina Jolie, where my versions of Toots and the Maytal's Funky Kingston and Justin Timberlake's The Whole World's Turning Spanish (soon to be recorded) go down a storm.

2. Bubble man on Santa Monica beach

This job exists, or rather it's been invented, see here. This guy is my hero (until I read the court reports).

It's a bit like being a Punch and Judy man on Brighton beach, which is a job I also used to fancy, although setting up a small portable theatre to tell crowds of children stories about an anti-hero who beats up his wife and runs away from the police seems to be frowned upon these days. Cannot imagine why.

Anyway, I'd rather be somewhere warm.

3. Barman (in England)

This is obviously well within my grasp, although unfortunately doesn't pay enough.

It would have to be in the UK, because American bar staff need to know far too many cocktails and strange drinks, and have to do that polite thing no matter their mood. In England, you get to keep your own emotions (not that they're always worth keeping). It would be in a nice bar with a youthful clientele and a boss who tolerated my 'individuality'. That kind of cuts down the options. Also, it would have to be after July 1st when smoking in public spaces is outlawed.

I might own my own bar although that sounds like less fun - full of delivery schedules, stock control and tax returns. But I was never happier than when I was working behind the bar at the Lion in Crouch End and got to choose the musical soundtrack for the slightly drunk but appreciative regulars.

4. Radio DJ

Just imposing my musical tastes on anyone who cared to listen is attractive. In fact, I do it anyway. But I also really like the physical act of playing records on a deck, cueing them up, pushing those faders etc. "Where it's at! Two turntables and a microphone..."

I've been a club DJ twice - once at my friend Will's political benefit night in a small upstairs room in a pub in Hackney, and once at a friend's party when the hired DJ decided he had to go down the pub to meet some friends. I loved it both times.

I was also briefly a DJ on my college radio station, and my friend Craig had the tape to prove it. I am reasonably sure that nobody actually tuned in, because we kept holding more and more outlandish competitions to entice people to phone in, but they never did. Nowadays they have a webcam and web radio, but I bet it's broadcast out of the same pokey little room with the egg carton walls.

5. Director of a small arts charity

A small grant of money, being paid to help people, no pressure, in charge of your own little team and space... It could be anything really, but that has to be an ideal.

Either that, or being paid professionally to tell other people to F*ck off. Perhaps being a character actor that specialises in someone with Tourette's Syndrome who swears a lot, having a small but critical role in a mega-popular TV sit com, always present but never needed for much apart from random and hilarious swearing! Yes, that's my dream job defined right there!

There are just so many possibilities.... I just never
seem to get to pick the right ones. Is early retirement a
respectable ambition?

• Toots and the Maytals - Funky Kingston mp3

• X-Ray Spex - Oh Bondage, Up Yours! mp3

And I'll try to pass the baton on to two random flickr contacts, just to test the possibility of randomness on the web. So, come in Tamelyn Feinstein who doesn't
actually have a blog that I know of, but her comments make me laugh anyway and I reckon she'd be game, and Billy Law who does have a blog and possibly has an ideal job.

Your task is to give the world five dream jobs of your choice, blogged with text, added as a comment to this entry or illustrated by photographs on flickr - doesn't matter which. And then pass the task to someone else, as "You've been tagged" -

Obviously if you ignore this request you will spend eternity in hell

(or possibly Stafford, if you're really unlucky).