Twenty years ago, I was managing a restaurant on Dover Street off Berkley Square in Mayfair. Perhaps “managing” is to put a spin on it. My role was more akin to that of Basil Fawlty.
That was three years after graduating from a Master’s degree. The expectation of my family was that I’d be a few years into a graduate job by then.
Instead, when asked what his youngest son was doing, my father could only refer to the locality of my employment — suggestive that I was an investment banker — and leave it at that.
On occasion, he would travel to London and would suggest meeting up at his Club, also off Berkley Square. More evidence that we occupied completely different social strata. He was at the tail end of a successful career as solicitor, now a priest in training.
And me? A hopeless case, a lost cause, incapable of even securing a proper job. I suppose it’s no wonder I largely consider that first decade of the new millennium lost years. Perhaps that’s why I’m so surprised to find myself in my mid-forties: because I can hardly account for the years.
Having a so-called “proper degree” has been of no help to me whatsoever in life. If anything, it actually hindered me in pursuing what I really wanted to do. Though, of course, what really hindered me was something else entirely. It is only due to the mercy of the One that I have achieved anything at all.
Everyone I once knew has achieved so much more than I have in the realm of employment. But I suppose I have amusing tales to recount as a result of all these experiences. One day I might pen a comedy about that cafe on Dover Street, filled with all of those ridiculous encounters. A best seller, no doubt.
Last modified: 14 August 2023
