Even though he’s not a child any more, Child A is not sure what he wants to do when he grows up. Child B, who is on the verge of adulthood, is very sure. He wants to run a private militia. I’m relaxed about Child A’s lack of direction. I’m not relaxed at all about the militia.
“Look what happened to Prigozhin though,” I say, showing him an interview with Yevgeny’s poor old mum. “She’s still waiting to find out why the plane crashed.”
“But I’m going to have one of the ethically sound private militias,” he says, with an entirely straight face. “I’ll only help the good guys.”
This is what happens when you don’t insist all your children do history GCSE, but it does rather raise the question: what on earth do kids do these days? Anything involving words, numbers and white collars will now be done by the robots, so you can forget law, journalism, banking, coding and whatever they do at Deloitte. Data entry and call centres — the only way I ate in my early twenties — are gone too. Which leaves? Plumbing and building. Good money. Choose your own hours. Feel superior to the husband of the person who called you. Perfect. Sadly it is impossible for anyone in our family to build or plumb. It’s a genetic thing.
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Last weekend I followed a Transit van into Asda. I wasn’t doing this because of bad career choices. Even people who love their jobs follow vans into Asda. The point is this one had the words “Unexploded ordnance disposal” printed across its rear doors. It wasn’t a military truck. I don’t think it was even a private military truck. The driver and his mate weren’t wearing fatigues. They looked like plasterers and so my mind started to boggle. Is there a lot of demand for private bomb disposal in Kent? And is it safe to follow these chaps into a supermarket?
During our one brief meeting in 1991, my school careers adviser never mentioned the possibility of unexploded ordnance disposal. If he had, I might have pointed out that the word “unexploded” was superfluous as no one cares about ordnance that has already exploded. Alas, he didn’t. The only thing I recall him saying was a very rehearsed: “Don’t, whatever you do, become a careers adviser. Ha!” Still, it would have been nice to know about the ordnance disposal industry.
The internet says that several companies offer unexploded ordnance disposal services in the home counties. I suspect the training would be stressful and the health and safety would be extensive but think of the job satisfaction. Most of the time you’d sit around doing killer sudokus and then boom (or, ideally, not boom), the phone would ring and you’d be off.
“Don’t worry, lady,” you’d say with your reassuringly rugged smile to the distressed allotment owner who had just found something ticking under her compost. “Unexploded ordnance disposal is here.” Then you’d get your pliers out of your van and cut the red wire. Then you’d drive to Asda.
Most of the men I know are retraining to be psychotherapists, but they’re middle-aged, so it doesn’t count. By the time my kids are middle-aged the therapists will have gone the way of the lawyers. Instead, the next generation of workers will have to think outside the Nvidia-powered box. I know someone who does marine insurance, which doesn’t sound future-proofed until he explains that it involves deep-sea diving for some reason. I also know a professional acrobat, but running away to join the circus feels too 1970s.
When I ask AI to suggest careers that won’t be ruined by AI, it suggests choreography, firefighting and landscape gardening. When pushed it adds train driver — I can’t tell if it’s being sarcastic. It is at least possible that long after every single other aspect of society has been automated, Aslef will still be insisting that trains can’t drive themselves.
“Have you thought about choreography?” I ask Child B. “It doesn’t pay as well as having your own militia but the worst that can happen is blisters.”
He is not keen so I tell him about the van I followed. I mention the rugged smile and the killer sudoku. He says he has maths homework to do. I don’t tell him there’s no point. Who knows, after all, if you need trigonometry to dispose of a bomb?