l job oo old to figoo young. tards out in till it never occurred to me to go back to t a job as a grocer’s assistant; old Grimmett, if ill alive and in business (I in touc knoo a different orbit. Even if my social ideas risen, I could er o tence beer. I ed to be travelling about and pulling doed to be a travelling salesman, w me.
But travelling salesmen—t’s to say, jobs tac t racket beginning on a big, scale. It’s a beautifully simple metising your stuff taking any risks, and it alring by ing t perime, and o take over. Naturally it long before I I e a number in rapid succession. to peddling vacuum- cleaners, or dictionaries. But I travelled in cutlery, in soap- poent corkscrein-openers, and similar gadgets, and finally in a line of office accessories—paper-clips, carbon paper, typeer ribbons, and so fort do so badly eitype t CAN sell t temperament and I’ve got t I never came any, in jobs like t—and, of course, you aren’t meant to.
I a year of it altoget ime. try journeys, tco you’d never imes. tly bed-and-breakfast s ally of slops and t breakfast you’re aling, middle-aged faten overcoats and bo sooner or later trade urn to five quid a raipsing from so ss to listen, and tanding back and making yourself small t it icularly. to some c kind of life is torture. t even o a s screop. But I’m not like t. I’m tougalk people into buying t , and even if t doesn’t botually o making a bit of doug of it. I don’t kno I unlearned a good deal. It knocked t of me, and it drove into tions t I’d picked up during t tective stories, all time I a ies of modern life. And ies of modern life? ell, ting, frantic struggle to sell t people it takes t’s to say, getting a job and keeping it. I suppose t been a single montrade you care to name, in ’s brougly feeling into life. It’s like on a sinking seen survivors and fourteen lifebelts. But is ticularly modern in t, you say? anyto do feels as if it feeling t you’ve got to be everlastingly figling, t you’ll never get