At a dead end? Try chatting with the boss

As a storeman I was sacked for fighting while playing five-card brag.

My career as a welder lasted two days. I kept melting copper u-bends on radiators, and was thus relegated to the u-bend-making one-armed bandit.

I slotted in 6ft copper tubes and pulled down a lever once every second.

My u-bending was so sensational that I bent a year's supply in a week and was made redundant.

A year as a junior reporter qualified me to inform the editor I could do his job better, and so I graduated to meat haulage.

Week four caught me sound asleep outside Nottingham meat market at 5.30am, missing the vital delivery deadline.

Then, I became a vicar. Thirty-two years later I'm still getting away with it.

Maybe it's the calling' that makes the difference.

After all, God never whispered in my ear you bend copper'.

Not once did he suggest I lug around meat or give a Glasgow cardsharp a black eye.

But he did definitely grab me by the scruff, turn my collar round and rev me up. Perhaps I'd been too busy with me.

"Obsession with self," says God's Word, "is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life." (Romans 8:6).

At a dead end? Try chatting with the boss.