What talent or skill would you most like to have

Could have been worse. I was walking in the middle of nowhere with no one for miles, went behind a hedge at the top of a mountain [or a very large hill; it was a long time ago] for a 'comfort break' and a troup of scouts appeared over the horizon .

I am holding you all responsible for an embarrassing incident this morning! You were very positive about the joys of singing, so as I was walking along a very remote path here in the Alps, I burst into 'The Happy Wanderer' and I had just got to the 'Val-de-ree' bit, quite loudly, when I rounded a bend and confronted some very startled Swiss walkers.
I also swing along with my Nordic poles to 'Men of Harlech', 'The British Grenadiers' and 'It's a long way to Tipperary' - there really is a good reason for armies to have marching music.

I passed 'O' level art (65% , which was how we were marked in 1956), but I have no idea why. I took figure drawing, using charcoal, free design, and textile design but in my own opinion I was hopeless. I have one daughter who is not at all academic but she paints wonderful landscapes in oil and can also make covers for settees and arm chairs without a pattern. I can just about follow a pattern but now find it is uneconomic to either knit or sew because there are so many cheap clothes shops.
My mother was a seamstress, and she would run me up a new science overall, with lapels and a pocket, before I went to school. For some reason, I was always losing them. It looks as though her talent skipped a generation.

My other daughter finds her creativity in her gardening and now she has the land (in New Zealand) to really let her imagination run riot. I have brown fingers - every plant I have ever owned has withered and died. However, I love enjoying the fruits of her labours. She is also very skilled at interior decorating, whereas I am always in a rush and never do the proper preparation.

My lack of musical ability also affects my competence in foreign languages. I have to speak French because nobody in my village speaks English (or at least they won't admit to it!) but after ten years in France, plus years working in Monaco and Brussels, I still speak French with a Salford accent. I can read and write French without difficulty, but everyone told me that if you immersed yourself totally in French life, you would learn to speak the language fluently, almost by osmosis. Fortunately, I have met with nothing but kindness from my neighbours and they won't correct me even when I ask them to.

Absent and Lucid I feel about drawing the same way others feel about singing. Anyone can do it, all it takes it practice. I am of the school that says if you can write you can draw. It is the same process of using a line to communicate an idea. The problem is the expectation (often engenered in schools) that one should produce detailed, complicated representations of something that is in front of you, instead of simply recording what is important for you. I did a bit of drawing whilst I was in India and Nepal recently and not only enjoyed the process, they are giving me great pleasure now, but I'd never show them to anyone else.
Sorry, this is a bit of a hobby horse of mine.

Saville Row quality tailoring...

Like so many on this thread, I would love to be able to sing (yes, I too was told at a young age to stand at the back and mouth the words). I did however sing to all my children and they all sing just fine, so perhaps I'm not as bad as I have always thought. I would never have the confidence to join a choir though.

I would also like to be able to draw, paint, play a musical instrument, write fiction, do DIY ...

I know it's a cliche - but if I had a £1 for everyone who told me that they cannot sing and then turned out to be just fine at it when given the right chances and encouragement I would be a rich lady!
I could happily shoot teachers who tell children that they cannot sing - if they cannot sing it is because the teacher is doing it all wrong!! It is sad to see these doors closed on people so young and so erroneously.

I'd love to be able to 'make things' which didn't look as if I had tried to make them;
I'd love to be able to paint and draw, without my efforts looking like a 4 year old had been doing them;
I'd love to be able to sew on a button which didn't fall off 2 minutes after I'd finished;
I'd love to be able to paint a window frame or a door without ending up with most of the paint where it shouldn't really be (mostly trickling down my elbows or on the glass);
I'd love to be able to sort out domestic problems, not the OG sort, but the plumbing/electrical sort, without having to resort to phoning a 'little man';
I'd love to be able to perfect my spoken French and to improve on my Spanish (which I've almost totally forgotten);
I'd love to be endowed with self-control - especially where chocolate and red wine are involved;
I'd love to be Arty like Daughter No.3 and to go through life laughing;
I'd love to be able to actually finish something I've started

.........but I suppose we can't all be perfect

My mother in law was brilliant at everything she did (or so she told me) Two of my daughters have inherited her eye for colour, her sewing capabilites and her instinctive cooking skills but I would love to be able to do just one thing arty or crafty without making a real mess of it!

I, too, would love to be able to sing but was told so often by my mother not to, that I wouldn't dare!

I would like to be good at plumbing, I would earn Brownie points with DH and save time and money on waiting for a real one to find a window in his diary.

I would love to be good at speaking foreign languages...ice skating...playing the cello...break-dancing [as this would impress my 22 year old grandson no end!]

glammanana Almost every time I touch them. I was also nearly electrocuted by a power tool that I wasn't strong enough to control, so the cord wrapped itself around the spindle, shorted and threw me across the room. It's just my arms that are pathetic – the rest of me is quite muscly.

I'd love to be strong enough to use a chainsaw!

Why's that *absent have you had a mishap at sometime,*Mr Glamma* will not allow me near a paint brush as one day many yrs ago I painted the kitchen ceiling blue when he was at work

lucid I don't have the biceps for chipping away at marble and, anyway, Mr absent won't let me touch sharp tools.

Me too Absent....maybe we should take up sculpture instead!

I'd love to be able to draw and paint – my mother had the gift, so did my sister and so does my daughter, but it missed me out completely. Somehow, the message from the brain gets lost about halfway down my arm. I can work quite happily in 3D. Give me clay, Plasticine or even marzipan and I'll happily create figures of people and animals, but give me a pencil or a paintbrush and I haven't a clue.

I'd love to be able to paint...I can draw (not brilliantly) but enough to get an O level in Art. But to be able to paint a glorious landscape...... My Uncle is an artist and cartoonist but the talent gene didn't get passed on to me.

effed that up didn't i

Well, there's no law against it missis, so how can it not be a right! [grtin]

I wouldn't call singing a right, I'd call it an ability that humans have evolved. Some do it better than others but, as mishap says, everyone can get enjoyment out of singing.

Yes, you're right Mishap! Singing is a right. Otherwise we wouldn't get the urge to do it when we're happy. Or hum (morosely!) when we are sad. But I still wouldn't inflict mine outside my own family.

I think I would like to be able to 'pot'. Would need to have the wheel in the shed though, or I'd get it over the carpet.

I would love to be able to draw and paint water colours skilfully. I get the paint and pencils out every now and then, but get fed up with myself because I don't go beyond a very basic standard, despite practising for hours on end. I've had a few lessons and understand the principles, but there's something lacking that I haven't quite got to grips with. I have a friend who paints beautiful landscapes and close-ups of plants, and keep urging her to have them framed and displayed on the wall, but she says they are not up to her standard!

I would love to be able to play a musical instrument. I would also like to know something,anything that my husband doesnt know

I would love to be able to use a sewing machine and make soft furnishings and curtains but I don't have the patience for all the fiddley bits I can design and colour co-ordinate everything well and know what I want to do but thats as far as it goes,DD can make anything without pattern's just by eye and she spend's many a night making thing's that would cost a fortune in the craft shops,I just wish I had her expertise.