As a teenager I had weekend and summer jobs selling suits in a tailors shop, making bricks, then sorting springs in a steelworks.
Don't suppose anyone would call that a true "living" as I barely made enough to take my girlfriend to the pictures.
Looking back, it was more like an investment - 42 years later I'm still married to that same girl.
Took a job with a large electric motor manufacturer and they let me take a part-time degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering.
Great experience too as they put me through every department. Then I thought there may be a future in these new things called microprocessors. My employer didn't agree.
Taught myself just enough to get a job using them to control the electronics for coal mining machinery.
Had many good years there, then our prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, decided Britain would buy coal from other countries instead (she hated coal miners with a vengeance).
Guessing redundancy would soon be on the way, I started on freelance circuit and software design in the evenings with a friend. I divided my garage into 2 - one half for electronic testing, the other half for metalwork plus a spraying booth. We made controls for heating systems, light sensors for textile machinery, drives for optical measuring gear, temperature controls for aquariums, simply anything to still pay our mortgages.
Finally, with enough cash in reserve, we started a full time business with a couple of other guys manufacturing fire control panels.
It grew quite quickly, then got sold when one of the other founders wanted out.
The buyer of the fire business then went and pulled the work away and made just about everyone in manufacturing redundant and threatened to do the same to the design team.
(There was no need for them to do that as it was doing well, expanding and making good money for the owners).
So I got together again with many of the old team, formed another company and did it all over again.
15 years later it too got sold. I'm still on good terms with that last company and do some software design work for them when I'm not outside in the fields.
