Teaching

 If you can't do anything else, don't despair: there's always teaching.

I did. Twice. I registered as a PhD student at Cambridge (UK) in 1975. My thesis was rejected on first submission but I was allowed to rewrite, which I did … and it was failed again!

Life went on. I put academic stuff in the bottom drawer and bummed around - mostly in the south of Spain - for a few years. I turned my hand to various things - I was a jobbing gardener for a while, ran a little stall at fairs, played a bit of music (on street corners if I couldn’t get anything better), did a few translation and interpreting jobs … but in the end teaching was the only thing that could bring me a steady income.