When I was about 17 I was the Saturday lad at Victor Value supermarket in Radcliffe. The store manager, seeing that I was good at boning out bacon and ham, and that I was running the cooked meats section efficiently on the busiest day of the week, promised that he would train me to be an assistant store manager, after which the world would be my oyster. Of course, I'd have to leave school more or less there and then... I told my mum and dad that I had chosen that career path. Naturally, they were incensed. Anyway, I went on a two-week school holiday to Italy. When I got back I found that Victor Value was gone and that Tesco had taken over. I never saw that manager again. So my parents were right...