Do you have any job skills that are now obsolete?

[Emrys]

345. Yeah, I'm sure that's the same type of pencil

Those blueprints were VAST - way larger than modern AO size - and very cumbersome to handle. There was a specially designed cabinet where old ones were archived, and I occasionally used to have to hunt one out and wrestle with it if the firm wanted to have a new bromide made.

I hated working for that firm - the office atmosphere and politics were horrendous - but it did give me an entry on my CV that got me a foothold in publishing eventually. I got made redundant at a point where I was on the verge of quitting anyway. They offered me the chance to go freelance with a generous for the time guaranteed income, solely working on those modem bromides for their main source of business, a multinational which had been impressed with my work (it wasn't exactly brain science, but I apparently had a knack for it). I was so sick of the whole setup - and the fact I'd been working on parts listing the Tornado aircraft during the era when the UK went very jingoistic after the Falklands War - that I declined and got a job working for a landscape gardening and forestry firm for a pittance per week. That firm was also a nightmare, but at least I was outdoors getting my hands dirty (and calloused and ripped to shreds by brambles) and getting extremely fit rather than having to deal with that nonsense daily.