Summertime blues

Every year, like clockwork it comes, the traditional concern that the younger generation don’t do summer jobs like they used to. As the school holidays approach a politician is wheeled out to write a nostalgia piece about part-time jobs, and the ‘essential skills’ these offer. Holiday and Saturday jobs, you see, are the foundations of a successful career, with their promise of resilience-building and priority-juggling. Some statistics will be cited about businesses being desperate for applicants with ‘soft skills’, and on cue, media-friendly CEOs are trotted out to support whichever wayward minister has been handed the keys to the Workshy Teenagers wagon.

And so it was that in late July, Esther McVey, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, wrote a comment piece for the Telegraph about the ‘cultural shift’ that has taken place — ‘young people’ are eschewing part-time jobs in favour of studying.

As far as I can remember, it is possible to do both. I gave up my own summer job seven years ago this month and lately, it’s been on my mind.

For three years I worked in a classical sheet-music shop in Lincoln, down a cobbled street near the theatre, about halfway up the high street. Our neighbour was a photographer called John, and he ran a small portrait studio. We took in each other’s post. It was an unusual business, belonging to a passionate woman, apparently retired, and run, I maintain, for the hell of it — not because it was a commercial success. Counterpoint was its name, and it was my safe haven. Nothing bad could happen inside that shop, though it was freezing, all year round, even in the summer. Especially in the summer: it seemed mad to put the storage heater on in July.