Stayed at school till I was 18 - took A levels but no idea what I wanted to do except I didn't want to go to university (not "uni" - in those days - horrible Australianism). All my mates were bus conductors so I joined them. B****y good money compared to most other jobs, and good fun too. Like the bloke who jumped on and said to me: "Cases". I ignored him and rang the bell. Got to his stop and he said "Where are my cases?" "On the pavement at the bus stop where you left them, mate"
Went from job to job, easy then. Always arguing with the boss, getting the sack and moving on. I've never been any good at taking orders. A couple of years down the line, same story as many others - I had a mate who was a window cleaner. He worked for a London firm doing all the schools and he took me with him one day.
What a revelation!! Freedom! Constant adrenaline rush from the exercise and the fact that we didn't use ladders, just climbed out onto the sill, even 4 floors up!! Dolly bird teachers covering their eyes in shock at the site of us leaping about on outside window sills 40 feet up in the air
And we raced: Most of the schools had Georgian squares as windows (we called them "stamps"). We ragged our way round each floor in turn, starting at the top - first do all the insides (standing on the desks while the poor kids were trying to work) then pull the upper sash down level with the bottom one, climb up on the sash and hang onto the fanlight glazing bar - polish the inside of the fanlight then duck under the bar and do the outside of the fanlight. Drop down on the sill and do the outside of the upper sash, then pull up the bottom sash enough to do most of the outside of it, push the top sash up again and hang onto the channel that the sash ran in while doing the rest of the lower sash, then climb back inside again. All this with just a scrim, and nothing between us and certain death if we slipped!!
And no cheating - we had to rub like mad to get the glass clean and we would check each others work to make sure there was no 'knocking' (leaving the odd pane if we thought we could get away with it)
I did that for about 3-4 years, working in the winter and having a ball in the summer odd jobbing around the boatyard where I lived.
Then I got married for the first time, shifted to domestic work which was an absolute doddle after the schools.
As the old saying goes.......the rest is history