tagged by fathorse

Thanks fathorse, btw I found your own answers fascinating and illuminating. Hilarious how we "B"s tread similar paths. Luckily you caught me with a slot in my busy schedule so here goes.

4 jobs I've held:

1. My first job was stacking shelves at Sainsburys Supermarket. I started while still at school, working Saturdays and holidays. It was there I met Debbie as we stamped prices on tins of sardines! I was sixteen and hadn’t a clue about anything. However it paid for rivers of booze. My head was in academia and selling food was the last thing that interested me.
2. After school I passed entrance exams to Oxford University but was rejected after three days of interviewing (in French would you believe). So I drifted into Banking and spent thirty years mostly hating it.
3. The best period in my banking career was the early 1980s. I had some superb colleagues in one particular high street branch who could have been successful at anything they chose. However we got pissed every lunchtime and every evening and despite running a tight and efficient office we took banking not at all seriously.
4. After decades of responsible roles like financial consultant, mortgage advisor and manager’s assistant I slid down the greasy pole as the jobs were all dumbed down. Like most of my colleagues I ended up at a shitty call centre taking calls from fools with idiotic queries.

4 places I've lived:

1. Born in Bournemouth on England’s sleepy southern coast. Old retired people live there and complain about the youngsters.
2. My dad was moved with work to Truro in Cornwall during the 1960s. We spent just two years there. I remember watching England win the World Cup and my sister was born.
3. We all moved back to Bournemouth and twenty years I struck out on my own with a new house and a new wife. Our boys were born and soon we moved to Dibden Purlieu in Hampshire some thirty miles away. I believe something once happened there but no one can seem to remember!
4. We lived in two nice houses there but all good things come to an end. I jumped ship in a big and (to my family) unfathomable way. I moved to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada where I have a gorgeous new wife and a whole new life.

4 places I've holidayed:

1. I used to drive my family to the French Alps every summer to stay in deserted skiing village. I can’t imagine being there when it snows.
2. Florida. I didn’t fly in an aircraft until I was forty-five for reasons linked with fear. However straight after 9/11 we jumped on a 747 and proceeded to do the same every year for the next five years, fear of flying duly conquered. Orlando was of course our first destination but thereafter we spent quiet time on the Gulf Coast in a subdivision called Rotonda, holidaying in those gorgeous luxury villas of theirs with a private pool.
3. USA road-trip. In 2005 I spent forteen days driving through Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and back to Georgia and staying in hotels. The variety was amazing and the best bit was staying off the Interstates and using the little county roads. A glimpse of real small town America.
4. Camping with my wife in the wilds of Cape Breton last week right by the Atlantic Ocean. Bears, Moose, wolves and eagles everywhere you turn.

4 favourite foods:

1. Baked beans on toast topped with melted grated cheese.
2. Poached salmon with peas and boiled new potatoes.
3. Tomato soup
4. Pills and a liquid would suit me fine when nutrition can be delivered that way. I am not a food connoisseur.

4 places I'd rather be:

1. Alaska
2. Antarctica
3. England
4. 10,000 miles away from civilisation

I don't have four people to tag so I'll just ask Michelle to join in. http://www.md1979.blogspot.com/