the times | Thursday August 20 2020 1GT 5
times
A young Katie Glass
(right) and friendthen I was addicted to gap years. So
I did it again, and again — meaning
that I had a three-year gap between
school and university. This time
going back to the waitressing job I’d
had in sixth form, at a little bistro in
Bath, which I ended up running.
The kitchen was run by a crew of
waitress-shagging, knife-wielding,
swearing, weed-toking, hot chefs.
I loved all of them. We spent breaks
sitting on the fridge-freezer smoking
joints out of the window and playing
Beastie Boys tapes. One day I took
one of them home and wasted the
next 18 months on a love affair.
It feels embarrassing now,
reminiscing about my gap years. No
one needs old people babbling about
what they did when they were cool.
But now with the A-levels fiasco
forcing many sixth-formers to defer
their university places I want to
encourage them: take a gap year!
Gap years changed my life.
Compared with friends who went
straight to university, taking courses
they had chosen at 17 and later
regretted or dropped out of, by
the time I reached campus I was
desperate to learn. And I did.
I graduated with a first (thank you,
Sussex). Now the circumstances are
far more difficult
and I feel sad
that they can’t
experience
everything I did
because of Covid,
but the chance to
learn to support
yourself, try out
different ways of
living and enjoy
the freedom to
explore who you
are remains
invaluable.We met someone who told us that
their home town was beautiful, so
followed them to a cabin in the snow-
covered mountains. We chatted to
anyone — in Spanglish — blindly
following any tip they gave us.
As our money ran out we bought
a tent. Once, lying outside it, we saw
some boys wander by carrying a
plant, which they told us they would
boil to make tea. We keenly joined
in. That was how I found myself
tripping on a beach in Chile high on
peyote, wondering why the boys had
suddenly turned into flying midgets,
sparkling in the sky. And also why
my Spanish was suddenly so good.
Eventually, having travelled
through Argentina and Chile, we
headed for the airport and slept by
the check-in for three days until they
put us on a flight to New Zealand.
That was different again. I took
a ferry to Waiheke Island and stayed
for six months. I became a lesbian!
I dyed my hair red, took Ecstasy and
developed a terrible taste in dance
music. I went drinking with people
I had just met, heading off to parties
on beaches that lasted for days.
I worked in hostels, bars, a pie shop
and a sex shop (what a CV). Finally,
I landed a gig doing
telesales, which
allowed me to travel
around the country
trying adrenaline
sports. I stayed in
New Zealand until
my visa expired,
flying back 3st
lighter and four
shades darker
without a clue what
I’d do next. But byapplied to my career — quite the
opposite. I had to take what I had
learnt from yoga and apply it to my
career, and that’s the virtuous circle I
want to live by.”
Eager to make yoga as accessible as
possible, she began leading workshops
explaining self-practice. Students flew
in from all over the world. Meanwhile,
she continued climbing the corporate
ladder, a path she had decided on
pretty much in her first week at
Nottingham University, when she met
her future husband, Nick.
“I’m deeply impatient, I knew I
wanted a family, so I decided I would
make the most of my twenties at work
to be in the position where I could
live the life I wanted in my thirties,”
Anderton-Davies says. “It seemed
like the most efficient use of time,
and to be frank I was right — it was
a fantastic way to do it.”
In her first graduate job as a
foreign-exchange and currency trader
Anderton-Davies fitted the Gordon
Gekko “greed is good” template. “I had
my two phones and it was all, ‘Buy!
Buy! Sell! Sell! I need a price for that in
a billion euros.’ I was starting work at
5am, even on Christmas Day, as it was
my job to write an email that went out
daily at 6.45am.” This was just after
the 2008 financial crash. “It was really
hard, the industry was learning a lot
of lessons, a lot of people were losing
their jobs. It certainly wasn’t Wolf of
Wall Street boom time.”
The diligence paid off, and five years
ago Anderton-Davies was promoted to
her dream role of managing director
in charge of senior client relationships.
“The fact I could be promoted while
doing the yoga is a huge credit to the
industry. It just wouldn’t have been
possible ten years ago, but things have
changed like night and day between
now and then.”
The hours aren’t quite so crazy now.
“But it’s investment banking, it’s
intense, you need to keep up and
perform.” Her husband, whom she
married aged 24, is the director of a
think tank. “He’s the good one and
I make money,” she says, jokingly. “I
love to let young women know that
I can do this job and the yoga and
write a book and have a kid and be
promoted, so not only is this stuff
possible, but it can help you build a
wonderful life.”
Such achievements wouldn’t have
been possible without her daily sun
salutations. “Work have generally
been very supportive, but if anyone
there was ever uncomfortable with my
yoga, I’ve made it very clear that my
practice has completely empowered
me and 100 per cent made me better
at my job. I wouldn’t have made MD
without it,” Anderton-Davies says.
“Yoga has made me far happier and
more connected with who I am as a
person; better at taking feedback,
calmer at dealing with all the trials
and tribulations that are thrown
at me, both as a mother and in
my job. Before, I took work
all too seriously, I was too
attached, too highly
strung about it all.”
Yet the banker side
of Anderton-Davies is
still very much in the
ascendant. “I will forever
be pushing things and
thinking about the next thing,”
she says with her endearing
candour. “If it’s not broken I don’t
want to change it.”
The Book of Yoga Self-Practice is
published today (Yellow Kite, £20)My gap year changed my life. I’m sad
today’s kids can’t do the same Katie Glass
I
took a gap year for all the right
reasons. Having half-failed my
A-levels, with no chance of getting
into a decent university, I decided
my best course of action was to
mess around for a year and wait. My
plan was to retake my A-levels or, if
I waited long enough, apply for
university as a mature student when
it would be easier to get in.
In hindsight it’s petrifying how
ill-formed my plans were. I had
limited money and zero experience,
just a best friend as enthusiastic and
invincible-feeling as me.
First, having finished our A-levels,
we moved to Brighton to save up.
Between waitressing and joining the
local casino, we doubled our tips
playing roulette. Next we bought two
round-the-world plane tickets and
working visas for New Zealand. Our
intention was to travel around South
America until our money ran out,
then head to New Zealand to work.
With some image of ourselves
inspired by On the Road, we refused
to take a guide book, a map or make
any plans. We would roam free! The
moment we landed in Buenos Aires
it became clear how idiotic this was.
For a start, we didn’t speak Spanish.
We mimed our way to a bus, then
a hotel, waking up the next day with
no clue what to do next.
We started going to bus stations,
buying tickets to anywhere that
sounded fun and finding ourselves
on 18-hour journeys to pretty beach
resorts or nowhere towns, or
realising we were crossing the Andes.
We chose hotels solely on which
looked prettiest — which is how
once we ended up checking into
a brothel, realising this only after
wondering at how glamorous the
other female guests were and why
so many sweaty men were leaving.Rebecca Anderton-
Davies, and below
What you can still do on your gap year now
Travel
UK-based travel companies and
overseas volunteering programmes
with organisations such as Raleigh are
operating and offering more flexible
packages than normal, so you can get
a full refund if your destination ends
up on the do-not-visit list. Oyster,
for example, whose projects include
wildlife conservation in South Africa,
is offering a full refund of deposits or
free date changes for travel in 2021.
Milly Whitehead, the director of the
gap-year travel company the Leap, is
running free online consultations to
discuss the “three Ws”: where you can
go, when you can go, and what admin
you need to do to prepare.
STA Travel lets you book a flexible,
multi-stop airline ticket for travel in
2021 before flight schedules have
been confirmed; you can then make
changes nearer the time. It has also
introduced some new European,
socially distanced, organised trips,
such as fjord-trekking in Norway.Paid work
Opportunities are still down on what
was available pre-lockdown, but thisBread Ahead bakery, or ravioli-making
via YouTube with the Pasta Grannies.
Edx.org offers free short courses
from universities including Harvard
and Oxford. Code Academy and
General Assembly offer free online
workshops on learning to code. And
Tefl has adapted its courses so you can
get your qualification to teach English
as a foreign language online.Volunteering
The coronavirus crisis has opened up
many new volunteering opportunities.
You could help at a food bank with
the Trussell Trust or deliver food
packages with Food Cycle. Do-it.org
and reachvolunteering.org.uk list
volunteering positions including
befriending services. The Coronavirus
Tutoring Initiative was set up in
March to match students with young
people who need free tutoring so they
don’t fall behind on schoolwork as a
result of missing classes. If you want to
get fit, save money, meet new people
and help others, try Good Gym,
a group of runners who do physical
work to help local communities.
Laura Whateleymonth there have been 126,000 job
postings, the highest number since the
crisis began, according to data from
the Recruitment and Employment
Confederation, with a particular
trend in adverts for gardeners, debt
collectors and construction workers.
More people shopping online means
that if you have a driving licence and
a car, there is demand for multi-drop
delivery drivers and bicycle couriers.
And from now until mid-September is
the busiest period for back-to-school
childcare, after-school babysitting and
online tutoring. The website Yoopies
connects students with part-time,
full-time or one-off jobs in childcare,
housekeeping, pet-sitting and elderly
care. During lockdown it created
“school support”, where tutors can
help busy parents with children’s
schoolwork via video call.New skills
Social media has been flooded with
out-of-work experts offering their
services for no charge. Try ballet from
Tiler Peck, the principal dancer with
NYC Ballet (@tilerpeck), tutorials on
Chelsea buns and biscotti with theCOVER AND THIS PAGE: MICHAEL LECKIE FOR THE
TIMES. HAIR AND MAKE-UP: LUCIE PEMBERTON