Uncomfortable media attention

Living just round the corner from the Bristol BBC TV studios, you get used to seeing the local news presenters around and it's not unusual to see your street on Points West when there's lots of snow or whatever. But over the past couple of days, I've found my street at the centre of a real news story. Early yesterday morning, the latest suspect in the Jo Yeates murder case was arrested in a flat on my road and since then, that section of the street (the next block) has been cordoned off and swarming with police and news vans.

Oddly, I didn't actually notice it yesterday, because of a big tree blocking my view of that end of the road! But after I'd been told about it, then seen it on the news, today, I seem to have seen nothing but police cars going up and down the road. It's quite difficult to know what to feel about it ... one of my first reactions is to be excited to see my street on the telly, but somehow, that doesn't feel quite appropriate. Similarly, I'm rather tempted to walk to Sainsbury's the wrong way round the block just to go past, but is that just voyeurism? It definitely all feels a bit odd and vaguely uncomfortable.

History repeating

Yesterday, there was a piece on the news about how new university graduates are struggling to find jobs because of the recession, which rather made me think of my own history repeating. I set off for university in 1987, at the height of the 80s boom. Growing up in Kent, I was surrounded at the time by young men in red braces with loadsamoney jobs in the City and, even at the end of my first year, I landed a summer job working in the computer room of a City bank earning what I think was probably more than I've earnt at any time since!

I graduated though in 1990 just as recession was kicking in and the well-paid, graduate job I'd imagined had vanished into thin air. Like many of my peers, my answer to the situation was to change tack and go off and do other things for a few years - in my case teaching English abroad. I suppose in hindsight, I could blame the fact that my career hasn't really followed a very conventional path and that I've managed to reach my 40s without ever having had a 'proper' well-paid job, a pension, a mortgage, etc on the timing of my birth and the economic cycle. But I wouldn't change all the experiences and adventures I've had along the way nor where it's led me to in the end. Perhaps though I wouldn't recommend that new graduates today follow exactly the same path; because when I found the prospects in the UK unappealing, I headed for Greece!