Bernard or Byron?

It's the final week of freedom (for a while) before I start work, so I'm away from Syders and up to the East Coast at the beautiful resort of Byron Bay.

It's something of a relief to escape the city for a while, to be frank. Byron is a renowned idyllic retreat, popular with backpackers, older holidaymakers and locals. The beach is stunning and there are plenty of shops, restaurants and bars to entertain without it ever giving the feel of being busy.

I am staying at the Arts Factory Lodge - http://www.artsfactory.com.au/ - which I guess you could describe as typically untypical. Facilities include a buddha garden, recording studios, hot tubs, spas and a cinema. Accommodation includes anything from dorms to tepees, indeed I am staying in a tent on an island in the middle of a lake. Although this sounds primitive and, er, it is I suppose, I still have my own double bed and basic enough facilities to make this very comfortable. The perfect chill out retreat.

Most of the crowd staying here are young British travellers. You just can't escape them! Well, you can, but they just seem to have this habit of visiting the best places to go...

The sight of so many early 20s backpackers, many of whom on a gap year after finishing uni, makes me think back to when I had the opportunity to do the same thing, but ended up working opposite a turkey slaughter house. You did just read that correctly.

Wind back to the summer of 1999, and when I graduated with a 2:1 in History and Politics from the University of London. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do next. None whatsoever. I had applied for a graduate management position with a Felixstowe haulage company, but only because it involved periods of living in Holland and Italy.

The desire to spend time abroad was with me back then. It would have been the perfect excuse to use some savings I had (gained through inheritance payments) to see the world. Unfortunately I wasn't that well travelled, I certainly hadn't been abroad alone, and I was just too daunted . Nobody I knew was heading off backpacking - well, at least nobody I wanted to travel with anyway. I just didn't have the resolve to do it. Plus, what if the mighty City won promotion to the Premier League and I missed it? (That was a serious consideration. No joke)

I was also hacked off with being skint. By the end of my final year, I had to borrow money so I could put petrol in my car and drive my stuff back up home. All my friends who had jobs wore better clothes - I hadn't bought a new shirt for months and looked like a skank. They would snap up the latest albums released, whilst I had to make do with the same CDs I'd been listening to for years.

All I wanted was enough money for a night out. I just couldn't handle scrounging off family and friends for a minute longer. The first thing I did therefore was to switch this scrounging to the state, and sign on. My parents were distinctly unimpressed with me during this period. Part of it was down to the fact I didn't want to be back living with them - they used to shout about the way I stacked the fucking dishwasher - but part of it was down to the fact I wasn't really doing anything. Things reached a particularly low point when I spent an entire week's dole money in one afternoon on the piss in Norwich. It didn't help that when I turned up at Mum's work to get a lift home, I was passed out on the floor next to her car.

The problem was not that I was naturally a benefit scrounging alcoholic, it was that I did not know what I wanted to do career wise. I put off making the decision whilst at uni, consoling myself that I'd work it out at some point, by which time I'd have a degree and everything would be fine.

I quickly discovered that an arts degree on its own is practically worthless. It has to be backed up with some kind of experience in the field you are looking to enter, whether that be additional qualifications, unpaid work experience and so on. I had spent my summers between uni terms mainly working for my Dad, who would pay me a fiver an hour to strip old fire extinguishers of stickers and sand them down. It was a piss easy job - and life. He was never in the workshop. I would get up at 9.30 every day, drive to North Walsham, do about three hours' work (claiming for five), listen to Radio One and eat sandwiches whilst 'working', and then drive home again. By the end of the week I had more than enough money, but ultimately nothing that would benefit me in the long-term.

My first job after uni was temping for Norfolk County Council. It was dull, but I was taking home roughly 200 quid a week and not paying any rent, so I was better off than I had ever been. Having cash to go out, eat in restaurants (something I only ever did previously on special occasions), buy clothes and watch lots of Norwich games seemed to vindicate my feeling at the time that all I needed was a fairly well paid job, and everything else would follow from that.

For some reason, I certainly can't remember why, I decided originally on Marketing as my chosen career path. I don't think I even really understood what it entailed. That might go some way to explaining why, when I wrote off to every marketing company in Norfolk asking for at the very least some work experience, nobody offered me anything. Helps if you can market yourself if you want to get into marketing.

Meanwhile, I was busy applying for any other job that would pay me in the region of 20K a year. I thank God none of these 'opportunities' ever came to fruition and I cringe about what could have been. Jobs I was interviewed for included a recruitment consultant position based in Slough, and a place on a car rental firm's graduate management scheme. In Newmarket.

However the piece de resistance of crap jobs and narrow misses has to be my experience working for the king of the turkey farms - Bernard Matthews. I enquired - and this is fucking difficult to type, trust me - about the possibility of a position within the company's Marketing department. Yes. I asked if I could help spread the word of the turkey twizzler worldwide. Unfortunately (!), there were no jobs available, and instead I was offered a temporary job working in their purchasing department.

The job basically involved buying equipment from suppliers needed to maintain all the turkey farms Bernie owned, supposedly at the best price. I wasn't very good at it. I don't know if it was my lack of motivation, or the fact I regularly used to go out clubbing in the evenings and crawl in after about three hours' sleep, but I never took to this role. One of the farms I bought equipment for was Holton, where there was an outbreak of bird flu a few weeks ago. It would be somewhat ironic if the virus spread because of dodgy insulation caused by me buying the wrong equipment eight years ago...

Eventually I decided on journalism as my career path. I had been put off the idea because of the low wages new entrants 'enjoy' in this profession, and because I would have to return to college for around six months to gain a specialist qualification. All of this was preferable to life with fat Bernie the turkey man.

Eventually I resigned from BM, even though I didn't have another job to go to. It was when I pulled people in clubs and had to answer the 'where do you work?' question that I had to jack this little number in. People would actually laugh.

By September 2000 and the time of my departure to Sheffield to undertake a journalism course, I was desperate to get away. It had been an awful year work wise, a combination of data input for the council and looking out the window at the sight of a turkey getting its throat slit. I also performed the whole 'coming out' gig during this time to friends and family, so it had not been without its emotional difficulties either.

If you are still reading this, you may be wondering why I've just taken this trip down memory lane. The reason is that I am debating with myself whether I would have sorted out my career direction and personal life had I spent the year travelling. I know from my time in Australia that it is very easy to dodge the difficult stuff when you are in this kind of environment. Why torture yourself with boring stuff when there's beer to drink, a sea to swim in and a good book to read?

As I have said, sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better. Who knows? Maybe Bernard was better for me all those years ago than Byron Bay would have been...

I've just realised what I said. You are a twat, Matt...