Career Change -From Accountant to Gigolo By Andrew Wood

Something a little out of the box for you today. The first chapter of my new novel. Enjoy, and please leave your comments below.

Chapter One

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

It was a typical Friday, one of the two days I take the train South from my Midlands home to London. Make a brief appearance at the office, and bolt back to Brum before the mass weekend exodus from the city to the Cotswold's. It's a complete waste of time; we never get anything done on a Friday. Most of my?colleagues?have already adopted the four-day week. The one we were all promised we would get decades ago as the machines were supposed to make our lives easier.?

As fate would have it, I would leave home for the office today, utterly unaware of the life-changing calamities that were about to occur to me. Everything was perfectly normal, but that's the time calamities always use as cover before they strike. On my journey south, as the beautiful English countryside whizzed by at 80 mph, I read the newspaper, The Times, from cover to cover. I'm old school; I still like reading the paper version of this bastion of English, conservative thought. I had always voted for the Conservative party, even with the last two chumps at the helm. I had managed to complete all but two of the crossword puzzles questions. Far better than my usual effort, and I was feeling quite pleased with myself as the train pulled into London's Euston station, on time for once.?

They say no good deed goes unpunished, but I've never believed that, at least not until now. I get off the train on platform 13; maybe that should have been a sign? Immediately I get pulled down the platform along with the usual rush of humanity. People who obviously should have taken the 6.30 train instead of the 7.30 to get to where they were going on time. For having taken just over an hour to get here from Birmingham New Street, they could easily be looking at another hour to get across town to their final destination, and?they are scrambling like rats from a sinking ship to do so.?

I am in no such rush to get to my desk; while I can take the tube from here to my office on nice days, I choose to walk two or three stops down the line before going underground just to get some exercise. So, as it's a beautiful day, I saunter over to a delightful smelling kiosk and grab an impressive-looking?bacon?sandwich and a large cup of coffee.

I take the first satisfying sip of the dark black liquid. Then, I inhale the bitter scent of the?Jamaican?mountain roast as I leave the warmth of the station and walk into the chilly shade of the plaza of shops beyond. Looking up from my steaming paper cup, the first thing I see is a dog looking right at me with large, sad brown eyes. He or she, I could not tell from the way it was sitting, was a skinny, sandy-colored mutt part Labrador part who knows what? It was sitting next to a grubby middle-aged woman, who had obviously slept there,?dressed in dirty pink leggings, a green trench coat, and a pair of beat-up Doc Martin's.

I ask if it's ok to give the dog a small piece of bacon. She nods slowly without speaking, and I tear off a part of the sandwich, which the dog eagerly but gently takes from my hand. The woman looks at the sandwich with equally longing eyes. Obviously, she is hungry so without hesitation, I give her the rest, having not taken a bite myself, along with the coffee and a couple of pound coins I have in my pocket.?

Well, I think to myself smugly as I walk towards the busy street. Despite my relatively meager efforts at spreading joy to the world, that ought to set my Karma up nicely for the rest of the day. This just goes to show you how staggeringly wrong you can be!

It's amazing the way real-life turns out stranger than fiction. My wife and I were forty-eight years young, that's what you say now, isn't it? "Years young," like changing "old" for "young," somehow decreases the slow onslaught to decrepitness. The kids had left home, left university, and even had jobs. The stock market had been doing well, and I had intended to cut work back to three days a week and take advantage of cheap airfares to visit the great cities of Europe with my wife. Rome, Florence, Venice, Paris, Prague, Copenhagen, Bruges, and Bled. You know, enjoy our middle age, explore, perhaps learn another language, make new friends. As the Captain Kirk of my youth used to say, "Seek out new civilizations and boldly go where few middle-aged couples from Birmingham would ever go!"

That was the plan anyway, but life doesn't always work out the way you planned it, does it??

To say it was a bad day would be the understatement of the century or at least my half-century. When I finally get to my office in Cannery?Warf?almost an hour later, I discovered that a prominent American firm had secretly bought out my company. So naturally, they immediately offered generous exit packages to everyone over 45, or at least that's the way it looked to me. Not hungry enough, I suppose?

There is no office stuff to clean out as we rotate desks based on whoever is in. It's an awkward handshake with the few colleagues?I know who happen to be in on Friday, and I am out the door by 11 am. So instead of the three days a week I had planned on cutting back to, I am suddenly at zero. I took it since there wasn't an option, and the compensation package was good. I certainly wasn't devastated, but I wasn't happy either that my carefully laid plans had been blown to bits in a matter of minutes. I was pretty sure I could get some side work quickly and top up my pension fund without joining the rat race again, but I was still miffed it was not on my own terms and all so sudden.?

I take the tube to Hyde Park in that semi-irritated state of mind. Where I have a lengthy lunch at the Café on the boat pond. Despite being busy and often noisy, I find it a great place to reflect. But, of course, I do so without coming to any meaningful conclusions. Still miffed, I head back to the station to catch the 3 o'clock train from Euston to Birmingham New Street and beat the usual weekend exodus. I grab the free copy of the evening paper they handed out to everyone on the way into the station, and I get another shock. An even more significant and nastier surprise than getting fired.?

Screaming at me from the front page, the pension fund with all of my retirement savings has announced it is insolvent and is closing immediately. According to the headline, investors could expect to get back twenty percent or less of their investment.?

I sit on the train in shock, staring out the window, wondering just how I would break the joyous news of these two life-changing events. Both of which descend upon me in less than four hours to my wife. But, I need never have worried because when I get home, I get blindsided for the third time that day. They say things come in threes, don't they??

She had left me!?

There was no build-up, no fights, nothing really. My wife simply left a note, no real explanation, just that she was sorry, wished me the best, and said it would be a no-hassle divorce. She told me to just sell the house and split the proceeds, as most of our other assets were already divided equally in our own names.?

She signed it;

"You only live once."?

Take care,?

Love Julie xox.

I was stunned, shocked, wounded. I loved my wife; we were high school sweethearts. Sure, we saw other people at college as we were located at opposite ends of the country. Still, we hooked up again for good, or so I thought right after we graduated.?

The marriage had been good, of course, we had the usual arguments but didn't every couple? About where stuff should go, I liked to put things in their proper place she didn't. What should be fixed or not fixed around the house, and when? Which invitations to parties, dinners, and weddings to accept, and which to make up the usual excuses for not attending. Where should we venture on our summer holidays, and of course, where should we go for dinner? There were only three viable options in the immediate area, but we could never agree on any given night. Just the usual petty bickering that soon infests every marriage.?

However, we had many things in common; we both liked to hike, read historical fiction, play golf and tennis. Drink wine, and binge-watch an excellent mini-series. We liked the same 80's bands, both enjoyed fine food, and were eager to explore new places.?

I'll admit our love life was pretty dull. The regular weekly bonk on a Sunday morning as long as neither had any other commitments. Pretty vanilla, suburban, missionary position stuff without much experimentation or passion. In fact, to be honest, my wife said I was never much good at sex, which is probably why she ran off with an Italian shoe salesman from Guilford. A guy she met just once on a girls' shopping trip to London two weeks before I was fired.?

That's what makes it so funny that I changed careers. I used to be a run-of-the-mill conservative accountant taking the train to work from my Staffordshire home, three days a week to Birmingham, two days to London. Grey pinstripe suit, overcoat, and umbrella dealing with line work, union strikes, and staff shortages at Watford junction. (Why do they insist on hiring pigmies?)

But now I'm a?Gigolo in the South of France. I know, crazy, right?

I always remember that line in the Natural, the baseball movie with Robert Redford set in the Great Depression. He becomes a rookie sensation from nowhere in his mid-forties. Then, one day after yet another fantastic performance, the giant?mustache?attached to Wilfried Brimley, who played the coach, catches up with him in the lobby of an old hotel. He can’t believe that a player this good was never discovered in his twenties or thirties "Hey kid, where have you been all these years?" he asks incredulously.

Redford turns to the camera with that amazingly handsome face and says,

"Life just never turned out the way I thought it would!"

So, I am in good company at least…