Sports Calendar

Pierre Greenway

Having trained in modelmaking at UCA Rochester, Greenway, 24, joined an architectural practice. He was laid off last November. Since then, he has been working for GIFT, a company that supplies can-shakers to charities. At the moment, Greenway is shaking cans for Great Ormond Street Hospital from 10am to 6pm, 11 days a fortnight, for which he earns £220 a week. “Most days I get up and think, ‘Why am I doing this?’ And I often think about quitting. When I graduated, I was earning a lot of money, say £12.50 an hour, and there was plenty of work. Then, all of a sudden, it stopped. Earning a lot and then earning nothing doesn’t feel amazing. Has it been hard to scale down my lifestyle? Very. Actually, I’m still going out with friends, drinking, and buying stuff I don’t need. I know I should stop it, but I can’t. So I’m just resigned to being overdrawn, by about £2,500.

“Some people I come across on the high street are really nice. But a lot of people say, ‘I’m busy,’ even if you have just been asking them how they are. Plus, in a recession people aren’t going to give much to charity. Most say they can’t afford to give anything. I’m losing money by doing this job, yet I’d rather keep looking for work than admit defeat by signing on. I know the reason I’m not getting work is the economic climate, and I’m not going to blame myself. Am I worried about my career? For sure. I always wanted to own a company. If I had £20,000 I could put everything into what I believed, something like making T-shirts, and make money out of it. But I don’t have that initial capital. You need money to make money. If I’d graduated three years earlier I might have been better off.”

Melanie Wood

Although Wood, 22, studied costume production at the prestigious Rose Bruford College in Sidcup, her skills are used only in making dresses for her friends at £20 a time. She lives in Eltham, where she is working in a bar and waiting to hear whether she has got a job as a fitter in a shoe shop. “Making dresses and bar work are my only income. I’m quite surprised things have turned out this way, since I trained at a revered college. I have applied for about 30 jobs and haven’t had one single interview. Yesterday, I had an interview for a fitter’s job in a shoe shop. I’d love to get that job. It pays about £5.40 an hour, but it’s full-time. I could live off that, quite easily. Would I feel humiliated, kneeling down before people and putting shoes on their feet all day? Not at all.

“I don’t expect a job to define me. I’d like to have one to further my career, but at the end of the day, a job is a job. As long as I quite enjoy it, what it entails shouldn’t really matter. When I was younger I was ambitious, but as I’ve got older I’ve realised nothing comes out as you plan it. As long as I’m healthy, I’ll go with whatever. What’s the point of planning ahead? Its much better to live for the day and take each day as it comes. My expectations aren’t all that high. I’m happy to go round to my friends and watch a DVD for an evening, rather than blow £50 on a night out. I don’t want a job which pays, say £60,000 a year, and would enable me to do everything. I just want a job that might not pay a lot, but which will make me happy. Shoes are one of my main loves and the team seems lovely. That would be good. Working with people I like.”

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