... and I spent it aboard "Lady Anne", sleeping, and drinking, and eating, and reading. Read Alain de Botton's lastest book, "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work", which is an exploration of the joys and perils of the modern workplace, beautifully evoking what other people get up to all day – and night – to make the frenzied contemporary world function. With a philosophical eye and his characteristic combination of wit and wisdom, Alain leads us on a journey around a deliberately eclectic range of occupations, from rocket science to biscuit manufacture, accountancy to art – in search of what make jobs either fulfilling or soul-destroying.
The book amounts to a celebration and investigation of an activity as central to a good life as love – but which we often find remarkably hard to reflect on properly. As Alain points out, most of us are still working at jobs chosen for us by our sixteen-year-old selves. Here is the perfect guide to the vicious anxieties and enticing hopes thrown up by our journey through the working world.
Speaking of which, it also made me reflect on what some people get up to in creating a job for themselves such as Dave, an ex-Bougainville chap, who turned up in Batemans Bay last year to open a franchise of the "Coffee Club" at the local shopping centre. He bought the franchise at the height of our short-lived tourist season and I wonder how he will survive, let alone recover those outrageously high franchise costs, during the long winter months.
The three Greeks who sell the franchise ask for a cool $500,000 in establishment fees plus an going 8% of gross takings. And all that on top of huge shop rents, an equally high wage bill, and other overheads. No wonder a humble cup of coffee costs $5 a pop - it has to pay for the rather 'original' idea by those three Greeks to start a 'Coffee Club'! Now let me see, what sort of a 'Club' can I sell to some not-so-poor sucker?
