Curriculum Vitae

Image © Laurence Winram

It was surprising, or rather it was a surprise to him, that only two years had passed since he put together his last CV, a CV that persuaded a recruitment agency to put him forward for the role of Head of Finance. Following two interviews and a sort of third one, all with the company’s Managing Director, he was offered the job and he accepted. It was to be his final fulltime role before retirement. Although it wasn’t fulltime (it merely took up time), and he didn’t like to use the word retirement.

A successful creative and media agency, interesting work, a great team, but after six months, once the dust had settled, he realised that what the company required was not an accountant with 38 years experience working three days a week and desperate to become an author, but someone not necessarily but probably younger, on call five days a week. His explanation of this was accepted and he was thanked for his honesty, although his reference to a 2012 quote from Dexys Midnight Runners singer, Kevin Rowland - “Whenever I have compromised, those things hurt me so much.” - left the Managing Director bewildered.

As far as he was aware - and he couldn’t be bothered to check (might not even be able to check, had he kept copies of old CVs?) -  that 2-year old CV was the first that didn’t include at the end, a list of hobbies and/or interests. Inclusion of interests used to be standard fare for a CV, a lighthearted humanising touch at the end of all the serious stuff. Something to talk about once the prospective employer had established that you could - or perhaps couldn’t - operate a calculator. Cinema, cycling, cakes, the holy trinity, were his. Not that those would swing you a job anywhere in 2024.

His interests now were, well, thinking about it, reading and writing. In as much he read a lot of books, novels mainly - he’d just finished The Concert by the late Albanian author Ismail Kadare - but anything he could lay his hands on, including the seemingly endless accounts of the Mitford family. And writing was what he was trying to do now that he had knocked accounting on the head, having realised after almost four decades that it wasn’t for him. But reading and writing were just basic functions, not great hobbies. What else?

Walking. He did enjoy walking (although, that too, a basic function). And he liked reading about walks and there was that book about walking in Midlothian he had started to write. But walking, reading and writing? Not a lot to shout about.

Worrying. Now that was a hobby, or certainly something that took up a disproportionate amount of his waking hours (and was a theme not entirely absent from his dreams). Actually, it was far more nuanced that straight up worrying.

It was a nagging feeling that for some time now, every time he picked up his pen he ended up writing about the same subjects: finishing work for the last time, how accounting hadn’t been for him (although in truth he’d done OK out of it), the Alfred Hitchcock films he hadn’t seen, books he hadn’t read, the book he hadn’t written and Dexys Bloody Midnight Runners. It wouldn’t be long before - once again - he trotted out the story about how as a child he had written to author Elizabeth Beresford alerting her to a plot anomaly and some spelling discrepancies in her latest Wombles book.

It was time to move on.