The FT
The twenty-somethings who gravitate towards lifeguarding often take winter jobs to tide them over until the following season. Some might head off to Bali or Australia to monetise their skills in what amounts to an endless summer. Others might do shifts in a pub. Simon Green returns to a very different type of Bar. The 61-year-old is a barrister, with a 35-year legal career under his belt.
He first enrolled with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s lifeguarding service in the summer of 2024, to the bewilderment of his legal contemporaries, working full-time from May to October. He was craving contrast. “I spend a lot of time with slightly grumpy middle-aged lawyers in court, arguing and never seeing the light of day. The court I’m normally in literally has no windows,” he says.
A shout-out, there, for Truro Crown Court, in Cornwall, where Green specialises in child protection cases. He enjoyed it so much that he’s now returning for a third summer and working the RNLI’s full, extended season, from Easter to early November.
Having started out on £12.30 an hour, this year his pay could reach the heights of £15.15 — an increase, one can assume, that he won’t be relying upon to nudge him above the breadline. This unlikeliest of hybrid careers makes more sense when you dig into Green’s background.
A keen triathlete and surfer, he already had the fitness and ocean awareness. When he relocated from London to the far west of Cornwall in 2012, he had the proximity to the coast. And there was a family link too — his daughter Edith, a student at the University of Exeter, had already done three seasons as a lifeguard by the time he signed up.
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