Youthful ambitions

When we delivered our children to their universities I was surprised that what I felt was a desperate pang of jealousy. When I left school in the mid 6o's this was not a career choice I could contemplate. Like many others my choices were limited and I did nursing, which I do admit I loved, but it was very much second best. I did a year of a Humanities degree a few years ago, part time, but as with a lot of adult education the funding for this was stopped, so I did get a taste of what I had missed. How life would have been if things had been different I have no idea, except I would be a very different person.

When I was young I loved reading but also writing. I loved to write stories. No prospect of that as a career though. I was quite academic and studied for years. I remember being told after writing my first university essays, 'you're not writing for ladies magazines'! I was mortified at the time.
Well I changed my style, ended up with a doctorate but now, in retirement, I am writing for ladies magazines! The pay isn't great but the satisfaction of seeing my stories in print is incalculable. You really don't know what's round the corner in life.

Jane10 you structure a chord! My thesis was on Dante Gabriel Rosetti and his relationship with the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood. After submitting my first draft, my supervisor told me that I was not writing a romantic novel!

On reflection I would have loved to have been a set designer or source props for films/ plays.

J52 time to turn your thesis into a romantic novel?! Just do it.

Already thinking that way! But with a different theme and time setting.

At 14 I wanted to be Britain's first woman prime minister, but a year or two into the real world after university convinced me that I wasn't devious and 'political' enough.

I had thought of being a journalist, but I was very shy and didn't get involved in the University publishing scene, though I got high praise for a review of a play at the Edinburgh Festival. I thought people were being polite but, with hindsight, I realised they had been right. It was good! Anyway, I wanted to work overseas and thought teaching was a good passport,so after a Dip Ed and two years' probation in Scotland, I went to Kenya, loved the job, the pupils, the country. I enjoyed teaching but, latterly, in Further and Adult Ed, hated the red tape and record keeping. Now I am doing a bit of private tutoring which is lovely and puts a little extra cash in my pocket!

I was a war orphan, my father was killed 6 months before I was born, and as a pension was paid to my mother, later my grandma, towards bringing me up, we had an annual visit from a lady from the RAF pensions department, to check on how I was going on. When one year I said I wanted to be an air hostess, she said "but my dear, you can`t do that until you are 21, whatever will you do in the meantime?" Then the following year I told her I wanted to be a nanny, the reply was "but you`ll just be someone`s servant, do you really want to be a servant?" I toyed with the idea of being a vet, but then realised I wasn`t clever enough to get all the exam passes to get to college or university. I eventually became a GPO telephone operator, I wonder what RAF lady would have said to that?