Experience

You look at job adverts in magazines and you can bet your bottom dollar that the company involved will be asking for experience. But for a writer, what does that experience involve? Is it simply the experience of having put pen to paper (so to speak) previously? Or is it the greater experience that comes from having a life for the last however many years?

So with that in mind, here's a little something that sprung into my thoughts unbidden.

A number of years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I used to work for a company called Mecca as assistant manager in their bingo clubs. Over a period of two years I moved around a number of clubs in the south west region of England. I became proficient in all kinds of weird tasks - calling the numbers, selling the books, managing the bar, and so forth.

Near the beginning of one posting, the club I was working in wasn't the most up-to-date and had no electronic display for the prize money. This meant that before each game someone had to go up on the stage and post up the prize money by hand. This particular evening the job fell to me and from the very first moment I stepped upon the stage everyone in the club started to laugh. At first I thought nothing of it and assumed that it was something to do with the fact that I was relatively new. When it continued I became a little worried and began to check my flies and looked in the miror to see if I had anything wrong with my face (aside from the regular stuff). I could see nothing.

The end of the evening session came and, exhausted, I made my way to the office to get changed out of the evening jacket I wore. Imagine my surprise when I found that someone had taped a huge L-plate (learner driver) onto the back of my jacket without me even noticing.