Answer: it’s bloody hard unless you’re happy with around £8 an hour, whatever your qualifications.

Finding a new job in middle life is about as easy as working out the redeeming qualities of Boris Johnson.

If you are aged 56 or under, the Government says you must work for another 17 years before you are allowed to have a state pension. What the Government doesn’t shed any light on is who will employ people of that age. I mean on a decent salary.

If you are in your 46 or under, you’ll be 68 until a state pension comes your way. That finishing post is likely to move ever further away for those now in their mid 30s.

There are millions of people in their twenties and thirties, doubtless graduates, who are perceived as having newer skills than those whose work experience spans each side of the internet age. But even if you have kept things fresh, ensured you have up-to-date IT qualifications, and can offer a wide range of experience, it seems pretty damn impossible.

I have worked as a journalist, writing and editing for 25 years in the UK and overseas, in schools and am now a mature student. I have hoisted myself off my arse and undertaken various training courses in, among other delights, horticulture, counselling, writing html (at the dawn of the new-fangled tinterweb) and Microsoft Office.

I registered with a temp agency with availability for four months over the summer. I filled in ten – yes, ten pages – of their paperwork and was told I had very good “transferable skills”.

I never heard from them again.

I am instead working part time at just above the minimum wage in a garden centre due to my Royal Horticultural Society qualification. My colleagues are fabulous and I should be grateful for the free core muscle work-out I receive thanks to hose-wrestling sessions.

Perhaps in another 18 months or so, when I have finished a degree, I will be so super qualified it will be different. But I doubt it. I’m not a pessimist, just a realist.

This is a huge area for debate and I’ll come back to it from different angles. There are no easy answers but I think if people share their experiences, it can be useful.