BBC Video Nation : work

Gareth : forester

I've always wanted...I've always wanted to leave my mark on the landscape. Originally I wanted to be an architect. Er, but that fell through when I failed my A levels and so I had to rethink what I was going to do and I discovered forestry and  it's allowed me to leave my mark on the landscape. What I do changes the way the landscape looks and hopefully in years to come when I've left or retired people will say that y'know that's a good thing...that landscape looks good. And that's what I strive to do.

An average starts with usually coming to the office for about half past seven. It could be anything from being in the office for the day, I could be out for the day, checking on sites that are up and live and running, looking at contractors. I could be involved in finding out some new information about some area of forest working with say archaeologists from the National Park Authority or ecologists from English Nature.

It can be hard, yeah. We have long days. We don't walk on paths or tracks that people use, we clamber through the trees,
we just go where we need to go and that can be tough work and you do fall over that's a...that's a  sort of occupational hazard is falling over

It's jus...I can't believe sometimes I get paid to look after such a wonderful landscape and I hope y'know that I pass that on to our succeeding generations and they enjoy it too.

Listen again here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/articles/c/cumbria_forester.shtml

Annis Tonkinson : small holder

You know a lot of the things I'm showing you are probably totally boring to some people.
But to me it's all part of my life. They're things that I love and I like.
Obviously every day there are routine things that have to be done.

A good deal of my life is routine. And I suppose some people think it's much of a muchness. But quite honestly you see something different every day...something changes
Everything changes really during the year. But it's a gradual change
But then this is what I like about living here, living in Britain... and living on a small holding in the country. That's my life.

Listen again here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/articles/u/uk_farmer.shtml

Liz : factory worker

I work in a factory and sometimes when people know you work in a factory, they look down their nose at you….’Oh, factory worker.’

I've worked as a care assistant in an old people's home and I've been a cleaner when the kids were little and I much prefer factory work.

Because of the company. I like to be with people. I've never been one for being on my own. And we have a laugh. Like when it's somebody's birthday we all buy enough sweets for them to be passed round and everybody has a sweet and they take a sweet and wish you a happy birthday. Not long ago it was mine and Roger's twenty fifth wedding anniversary. And the girls all sent me a card with little notes on and I didn't know they did that as I was sitting in the factory at the time and I didn't even see the card going round but they did.

Me personally, I wouldn't swap my place for an office worker any time.

Ooh legs! Wooh, wooh!
Legs!
I'm surprised he heard us...

He had quite a nice pair of legs, he did!

Listen again here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/articles/l/leicester_factory.shtml

Market trader

Market trading's all about buying and selling really
Sometimes you get it right; sometimes you get it wrong
And just before Christmas, I think we got it wrong.

‘Cause what you can see here, here, here, and there, are all books.
We don't sell books but we thought it would be a good idea to buy some to sell. Wrong.
Four thousand books, we bought. Four thousand books.
We sold about three hundred. We really thought they'd sell. They hadn't.

Are we to blame? Should you pass any blame? Problem is, instead of having money sat in my bank account, it's sat in this storeroom. And that's no good, especially when the job is on its backside.

So the moral of this little tale is, stick to what you know.
If you sell pop, stick with pop. If you sell crisps, stick with crisps.
Don't go buy books.
Here endeth the lesson

Listen again here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/articles/m/manchester_abadbuy.shtml