Summons

We all hate it when our friends become successful as butlers.

Behind the pats on the back and the congratulationses and the happy-for-you smiles, the resentment is clear.

We say: "Well done!"

We mean: "It could have been me."

It's a cliché that all young boys aspire to be butlers. It's just one of those jobs that boys are aware of. It's simple and it's exciting. Fireman, policeman, builder, butler. They're just jobs that men do. It's ingrained in us with every butler book we read and every plastic Fisher Price champagne bucket we pretend to fill with ice.

It's not that there's a glamour to butlering, exactly. It's something more elemental than that. It's a job that is so obviously necessary, it almost seems like a genetic imperative. Food must be found. Shelter must be built. Doors need answering. Water is wet. Fire is hot.

I don't remember a point where I "decided" to become a butler. It seemed like the impulse had always been there. It was second nature.

It all seems very sexist when I write it like that. I'm sure there are women who wanted be butlers too. If my daughter told me that she wanted to become a butler, I'd support her wholeheartedly. The primacy of male butlers isn't something we have to go along with. As a society, we can choose a different path.

But, as a child, I didn't know any girls who wanted to be butlers. Whereas all the boys wanted to be butlers. We used to play butler-based games in the playground. The girls would watch us as though we were insane. And maybe we were.

All of the boys want to be butlers at that age. Maybe from around seven to twelve, butlering is one of those default ambitions. These ambitions are encoded in us, to provide an aspirational safety net for those with no imagination. If you haven't got the drive to become something interesting and original, you'll still have that as-standard urge to be a butler. Or a footballer. Or an explorer.

But mainly a butler.

After twelve, this tends to dissipate. Children become more individual. They're all taking in a wide variety of influences and experiences, and engaging in the complex emotional-chemical reaction that will eventually produce a person; each as unique as a snowflake.

The boys who only months previously had all been miming ironing or tidying away a broadsheet, might now be miming karate or optometry or abseiling into a volcano. When puberty begins, butlering loses some of its appeal for a lot of us. We become interested in girls (or boys), and start thinking about driving and electric guitars. It's not that we dislike the idea of being a butler. It's not even that being a butler has become uncool. It's just that it falls down our list of priorities. We don't even notice it. It might be our parents who are the ones to finally realise that we haven't polished the silverware for weeks.

Most boys don't become butlers.

But some do.

There are butlers. They exist. There's a butler in most households of a certain stature.

And when we see these butlers, we can tell that, somehow, they've won. They don't gloat or anything. There's no sneer or smug raised eyebrow. But there's an energy to them. There's a vitality. There's a sense - and it's unspoken; possibly subconscious - that they've been able to hold onto something. Something most of us lost long ago.

Two of my classmates from school are butlers. I wasn't close friends with them, and I still only see them occasionally. When I do, they're perfectly civil. They don't even bring up their work unless I do it first (of course, I always do).

My job involves working in an office, with computers and spreadsheets. I didn't dream of this when I was a boy. I didn't spend hours in the garden fantasising about database maintenance. Nobody does.

I was a child. I wasn't interested in admin. There was no part of me that strived for it. I didn't strive for anything really. Children don't have the foresight to strive. All they want is to reach tentatively into a world of magic. And I, like the majority of boys my age, did this by strolling around the garden, chastising imaginary kitchen staff for their tatty aprons.

I dreamed of being a butler. I was a butler at ten. In my own head, I was. It was important, it was right, and it was essential. But somewhere along the way, it began to disappear. And like all dreams, I began to forget it.

I don't want to be a butler. I know I don't. It's a silly, impractical idea. But when I see my butler friends, it... makes me sad.

I'm sad for what I've lost. They've managed to bottle some of that childhood magic. They're still able to see their imaginary friends. They still know that their toys are real and alive. They are able to see past the artifice of the adult world. They realise that - despite the notion contradicting everything we're told as adults - children are the ones who have the right priorities.

What's important isn't having a family and buying a house and making money and buying a car and a satellite dish and holidaying in Kephalonia. It's not. of course it's not.

What's important is to wear a smart suit, and to perform vital personal assistance to a rich person who doesn't know your first name.

They're butlers, dammit!

And I'm not a butler.

I said I don't want to be a butler. I stand by that. I don't. When I look at my successful butler friends, what I feel isn't envy. I don't wish to be in their place. I wouldn't enjoy butlering as a profession. I'd find it boring and stressful. I don't have the discipline for it. I wouldn't like the dress code, or the pay, or the hours.

I don't want to be a butler.

It's just that when I see the people they've become - the people they've always been - there's a kind of emptiness. It's not a yearning. It's a gap.

I don't want to be a butler.

What I want is to want to be a butler.