Did you have a childhood fantasy?

We were too poor to have fantasies and trains? We could only dream of trains from our shoe box on the M1.

Actually, my childhood was a happy one, even if a little make do and mend. I thought I would be a tractor driver but, living in the countryside, it was hardly a fantasy. Before health and safety, I would perch on the back of a local farm worker's tractor as he ploughed the fields. Looking back, it was a crazy thing for a young boy but then, so many things were.

Callistemon, I never ever wished to a train driver as many within my wider family worked in the rail industry during the steam era. That was a truly dirty, scruffy dangerous job that I never wanted to engage in.

However, I did always wish to be a truck driver, which I did become and that was a job I loved for many years, despite being viewed as a "traitor" by many in my family.

Like Cunco I have no regrets in regard to anything in my past. However, it has been on three occasions that misfortune has proved to be a major turning point in my life which has then brought forward good fortune.

When I eventually arrive at the pearly gates, I will immediately ask if I can go straight back down and do the whole thing again exactly as before. ??

The M1?

The M1 wasn't built when I was a child and we didn't have a car anyway. We went by train or bus. You could go anywhere by train before the M1.

Oh, the nostalgia of those smuts in the eye !
I still love a ride on a steam train.

I wanted to be a cinema usherette, liked the uniform and standing at the front during the interval with the ice cream tray . Then change of mind, I wanted to be a librarian.

Callistemon OK, the M1 wasn't built when I was a boy either but I thought the Monty Python line wouldn't work without putting it in. Now I look at it, the original '4 Yorkshiremen' sketch didn't mention the M1. [But it did include a performance from Tim Brooke-Taylor with Graham Garden, Marty Feldman and John Cleese, sadly the only one still standing]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUTA4k

That was very sad, wasn't it, Tim Brooke Taylor contracting the virus and dying of it. Such a talent and he always appeared to be a lovely man.

RIP Tim Brooke-Taylor

I was desperate to go to public school (preferably Mallory Towers) when I was a pre-teen. Then I discovered Donny Osmond and fantasised about him constantly.

Well, it didn't seem like a complete fantasy at the time but I suppose that's just what it was.

I was in an amateur dramatic society in my teens and absolutely loved it. I thought I might become an actress but, along with art which was my other love, I had to jettison any such hopes because my Dad said I must do a commercial course. Jobs in the arts were hard to come by, whereas a shorthand typist was always in demand (worse luck).