My first day of work was 30^th September 1974.  I remember it vividly.

Wearing flares on the platform en route to London of Balham station was a mistake,  The wind, generated by the oncoming Tube trains, created a Marilyn Monroe-type effect of nearly lifting me off the platform.   Because of the copious amount of trouser material, if it wasn’t for a particularly attentive guard suggesting I get them away from the doors, I could have been half naked by the time we got to Stockwell.

Safely arriving at Embankment, I had a short walk to my office in Adam Street.  I was to be a clerical assistant with the DHSS.  The boss I had put the SS into DHSS. 

I really wanted, like my dad, to go into advertising but, armed only with a couple of O-levels which enabled me to quote bits of King Lear and name the participants in the Russian Revolution of 1917, a clerical life was to be my world.

I was given a clocking-in card to check I’d done my allotted hours; lengthy school summer holidays were a thing of the past; there was playtime. I couldn’t go home for lunch; everyone was Mr, Mrs or Miss (Ms had yet to be created); they counted the paperclips on your desk.  It was a miserable existence until, six-months later, I started a career in advertising.

The only saving grace, for a 17-year-old boy, was the messengers who worked in the building had a magazine library which made the copies of Health & Efficiency I’d see at the barber’s seem very, very tame.