The Frog, the Chair and the Aristocrat

At a recent Chrimbo gathering where the drinks were clinking and the crackers were triple-dipping I found myself being quizzed by an acquaintance vis-a-vis the oddest job I’d ever held. Despite ‘purveyor of quality books’ not being a separate category on the national census form (whereas poultry husbandry is?) I wouldn’t regard my current bookshop job as freakish.















When I was still at university however I managed to put my hand up for a number of employment opportunities that can only be described as offbeat. The first was as an earplug tester (yes, you heard me!) at a squalid inner city office building where my elven ears were given the once over by a pursed-lip assistant before I was shunted into a pitch black, soundproof cupboard and asked to press a red button every time I heard a high pitched squeal.
Before this I don’t think I’d experienced a complete and utter absence of light and sound, and after a few minutes of hallucinating that I was trapped in a Transylvanian coffin with Gary Oldman the only squeals I could hear were my own.
The next job I applied for seemed like a straight forward babysitting gig where all I had to do was watch over a latchkey kid for a few hours every second afternoon, but when I turned up at the appointed time it turned out my task was to escort this mute, underfed toddler to the local police station so her estranged father could enjoy some legally awarded custody time. “Don’t let him out of your sight,” the mother warned and she would slip me an extra twenty to surreptitiously follow the father and child as they visited a playground or stopped at a café for a hot chocolate. “Did he let her eat cake?” the mother would ask with slitted eyes, but my vague reports always fell short of whatever incriminating details she was hoping to add to her dossier.
Around the same time a friend was opening a gift shop and her plan was to sell all manner of mystical candles, supernatural crystals, potions of enchantment and those hideous therapeutic sandals that massage your feet while you walk. (Honey, if I want cheap reflexology I’d rather put gravel in my Reeboks.)
My friend asked me to help out with the grand opening and she offered me a hundred dollars ‘to be part of the magic’. As it turned out my job wasn’t to flog the merchandise but to sit at a small table in the corner and give complimentary tea leaf readings to big spending customers who wanted to know what their future held.
Of course I knew nothing about this Lipton form of divination, but my friend insisted that my ‘gypsy face’ and those brown dregs at the bottom of the cup would be ‘a real conversation starter’. She then gave me a small booklet that contained hundreds of symbolic meanings that might appear during a reading, including ‘The Frog’ (beware of gossips!), ‘The Chair’ (fortune favours the bold!) and ‘The Aristocrat’ (to thy own self be true!).
As it turned out I never had to say much since each person who sat down immediately started telling me their problems while I nodded patiently and watched them sip their tea. By the time they’d finished their cuppa I’d pretty much heard their life story already so it was no big stretch to tell them their year ahead would be ‘full of mountains to climb’ or ‘smooth sailing ahead, captain!’
There was one woman though who was angry that I couldn’t tell her if her husband was cheating on her. ‘Just tell me yes or no!’ she demanded, but when I admitted I could see nothing in her cup she continued a long and voluble rant about men being the scourge of the earth and why they should have their genitals surgically removed if they were caught breaking their marriage vows.
As her voice got louder and the other customers edged out of the shop I suddenly longed to be back in that sensory deprivation chamber where I was earning much better money by shutting my eyes and ears to the low, incessant growl of the world.