Talking to Squirrels

After having spent most of this morning hiding from the grey skies outside and trying to play the intro from A Message to You, Rudy on the harmonica, I decided to try and make myself useful and do a few things around the house. Unfortunately, this also started me thinking (as many things do). Specifically, about how useful I might be. A brief approximation of my skill set follows:

• Intelligent, in a bookish sort of way
• Can be quite resourceful, when needs be
• Happy outdoors and in the company of small animals
  
• A decent vocabulary
  
• Basic ability with a number of musical instruments
• Relative physical fitness (if the point of comparison is Chris Moyles)
• Ability to bake rather good bread
• Fondness, if not aptitude, for handicrafts
• Capable of getting up (quite) early in the morning
• Good listener
  
• Fairly disease resistant
  
• Soft hair & decent beard

I like to think that all of these things have an intrinsic value of some sort or another, but I've been struggling to think of quite how I'd market them and myself as "useful" in any significant way. There aren't a huge number of jobs that call for such talents. The only one I could think of was that of Twee Woodsman. Essentially this would be someone who spends their days talking to squirrels and fashioning jewellery out of acorns. Unfortunately I don't think there are many career openings of this kind around at the moment.

Do let me know if you hear of anything though, dear reader. In the meantime I'm going to do the washing up (a skill which may well feature heavily in my future working life).