Graham

Interviewee: Graham

Interviewer: Archie Cornish

Date of recording: 19 July 2022

Recording location: on-line (Google Meet); interviewer in Sheffield, interviewee in Barnsley

Length of recording: 70.42.

Subjects (key words): Barnsley, Dartford, London, Swansea, graphic design, retail, skills, personal training, teamwork, injury, physical health, self-employed

Abstract

Summary of conversation: Graham lives in Barnsley with his family. He grew up in Dartford, in Kent, near London. His father worked in finance and his childhood was comfortable. His mother was from Barnsley and often the family visited her parents. He was sporty. Her father had worked as a miner. Graham didn’t discuss work with his father much, though his father advised him to do something he enjoyed. Graham went to University in Swansea where he studied graphic design. He specialised there in children’s illustration. He moved home and worked on illustration projects, exploring digital media. His mother encouraged him to get a job and he found one locally at Dixon’s. Since then he’s worked in many retail roles: running the warehouse, tills, management. He also has trained many staff and was headhunted by Macmillan, though this didn’t work out. He relocated to Barnsley to work at PC World. He discusses changes in the retail world, the shift from a requirement of skills and interest in photography (at Dixon’s) to a more unskilled image of the worker. In 2020 Graham’s health meant he had to step back from work. He is now setting up his own business as a personal trainer, and is keen to help people maintain their health. He worries that Britain is losing a previously widespread set of skills that apply to a variety of kinds of work.

Sequential summary:

[02.16 – 14.26] Childhood in Dartford with visits to Barnsley.

[14.26 – 17.27] Memories of his father’s work in finance.

[17.27 – 31.07] Studying graphic design and illustration at Swansea.

[31.07 – 34.24] Reflection on attitudes to university education.

[34.24 – 49.30] Career in retail; training and camaraderie.

[49.30 – 57.00] Setting up a Personal Training business; continuities and differences with the previous career; its effect in the community; using community ties to its advantage.

[57.00 – 1.09.13] Precarity at work in today’s Britain; loss of vocational skill; optimism about the future.

Excerpt

[00.14.42]

GRAHAM:

The one sort of big piece of advice my Dad ever gave me about work was, if you find yourself in a job you don’t enjoy, get out of it – you know, do something you enjoy doing. So I get from that the sense that the sense that he didn’t overly enjoy his job. It was definitely long hours… the sort of distance he travelled wasn’t actually that long in times, but he’d be out the front door at six and he wouldn’t be home till eight. So you’re like, OK, you’re working a fair bit. And so occasionally – this was more sort of when I was at A-Levels, so this was getting close to him starting to wind down – occasionally I’d be in the West End of London, er, bunking off school, and I’d meet up with him on the train home, so if it was a Friday and he got off work early, so we’d meet up on the train home, you know, catch up and what have you, because I didn’t really get to see him a lot during the week, I’d only see him for a few hours.

INTERVIEWER:

Did he know that you’d bunked off school?

GRAHAM:

Oh yeah. Yeah I mean the thing is, the way that the A-Levels worked is, because they were modules, it was… it was the case that my art lessons were actually in a different school, cause they couldn’t handle it at the school I was at, so my art lessons were actually in a school that was about thirty minutes’ walk away, so there were plenty of times I’d turn around and say, you know, I’m not going to go to – Hextable as it was – I’m not going to go there and do an hour’s art lesson and, you know, come back; I’ll go up to the West End of London and, you know, go to a few galleries, do a bit of stuff with sketching so, you know, I’ve got enough that I can justify it. But really what I’m doing is I’m going to the arcades and up Regent Street and what have you. So I could always show my Dad here’s my sketches and here’s what I’ve done.

[00.16.41].