Track Changes

Everyone has a fantasy job. A job they dream about when they’re at their actual job. One of mine is being a private investigator (but only if I could be Jonathan Ames in Bored to Death). I blend into the background easily, I’m quiet, and I take pretty decent photos. I don’t think I could handle all the sitting around though. Plus, I’ve never been a policeman. So I’d get all the worst jobs.

Another job I dream about is being a carpenter. This is a pretty standard tech fantasy job. “I want to work with my hands” I say in my head. Even though my hands are soft and moisturised. I bought a carpentry kit in lockdown but all I accomplished was filling our kitchen with sawdust and slicing off the top of my thumb. Still, at least I have an expensive Japanese saw I don’t use anymore.

A third fantasy job, and a close cousin of the second, is being a surfboard shaper. I’ve never done this before in my life. As I say, it’s a fantasy. And it’s rooted in one very specific moment in time when I went to Morocco with my friend James. We stayed in Taghazout, about an hour north of Agadir. Taghazout sits on a big bend on the western Atlantic coast of Morocco. It’s surrounded by long lengths of golden sand and rugged headlands that jut out into the ocean. James had been there the previous winter and I had always wanted to learn how to surf. We stayed in a three-storey surf house in the middle of the village with a kid from Manchester called Leon. Leon had been in Taghazout for a month. Leon had a lot of weed. I didn’t learn to surf that week.

Below our house was a garage, door blown open in the wind and a kid of 19 or 20 spent all day shaping surfboards. It looked idyllic. He started early, I’d hear the hum of his sanding machine before the call to morning prayer. He worked quickly and diligently, filling the space with dust, his hair wild and swept back with dust. He was done by mid-morning. Time for a quick coffee from the stall at the end of the street (whose owner also supplied the surf houses with thick, brown weed) and then into the ocean for a morning of surfing. As I say, this was a fantasy. I can’t surf or shake boards. Still, I think of that kid not infrequently. He’s probably married with a kid in Surrey now.