Picture us at the end of 1971. Me, 25, recently graduated with a three-year arts degree. Qualified as a teacher — but only to pay for the degree. Heather, 24, dropped out from a nursing career. The two of us and our little boy Stephen with, as we used to say, another bun in the oven.

But what to do with our lives? I suppose ours was the first generation to unmoor ourselves so completely from our parents’ class, occupation, gender roles, cultural norms, even how far apart we lived. The first that could become so unmoored.

But most of us kept on keeping on just the same. Started a career. A profession or a trade. Lawyer, accountant, doctor. Plumber, carpenter, electrician, nurse. Academic. Drain layer. Home maker. Turned on, tuned in and dropped out, but only at weekends.

What Heather and I lacked was that sense of career. Not aimless, just disconnected.

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Bob Jones, one of New Zealand’s most successful businessmen, talked about the desire of perhaps a third of the population to be self-employed above all else, which does sound more like us. He had little time for the professions, and said he employed only history or classics graduates because “by dint of their choice they demonstrate curiosity and independence in not running with the mob, and are therefore easy to teach.”¹