Karen Koren: What Katy did next is just the job

I’VE just had a lovely weekend in the south of France with my daughter Katy, who has managed to get her first full time job in London since leaving university with a good degree.

I am the proud mum! Good jobs are hard to come by and since Katy wanted to stay in London, I was worried that she was going to be living from hand to mouth for a while.

She, of course, worked for next to nothing to gain experience in various places, including Time Out London, who only paid her £2 a day for lunch. What a joke! The bus fares alone were more than that. Anyway, she worked hard and eventually found her dream job at D&AD.

They are the Design and Advertising Awards, which is the Oscars of the design and advertising world – the Yellow Pencil Awards as they are better known.

Katy is now a design assistant, which means that she has to go through all the various categories and entries and collate them and see if they are eligible or not and much more besides. Sounds a bit boring, but not when they have to hire Olympia in London and lay out all the entries for the judges to review.

Katy was uber excited when David Bailey came to give them a talk. “Mum, have you heard of David Bailey?” I had. She hadn’t until he came and talked to them, she was impressed.

The best of the award winners go on to win a Black Pencil Award, which is the best award you can get.

It’s another world that few of us are privy to, but Katy understands it and enjoys every minute. She has been known to exclaim on twitter ‘I love my job’ from time to time. It is very heart warming that things can work out for our kids. It is kind of what we want out of our lives - a bit of peace, success and happy children. It can’t really get better than that.