Did you have a childhood fantasy?

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).

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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. ??

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.

I thought all little boys wanted to be train drivers?

You didn’t have any fantasies as a child about what you where going to do when you grew up?

Callistemon You tell me to behave and then show me the path to destruction! ?

To be serious, I don't think I've had many fantasies about the future or, for that matter, regrets about the past. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, there are things that one could, and sometimes should, have done better. Maybe, my limited abilities and imagination have been fully engaged in making the best of the here-and now. That sounds a bit pompous but it's the best I can do without getting into trouble. ?

I had just one fantasy and it began very early (pre-school) and continued until it actually came about.

I wanted to get out of Bradford.

In the late 40's and onward, Bradford wasn't the cleaned up, 'heritage' city it is now. It neither knew nor cared about heritage, it was just filthy and run down and I loathed it.

I also had only one reply to the oft-repeated question, 'What do you want to be when you grow up?'
'A farmer's wife.'

There was also Sophia Loren that was also a fantasy of mine. I always did have "a thing" about a big cleavage. ??

I had an early youth fantasy, she was the Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida, cuoooool. ?

She could have had me if she had played her cards right. ??

Billy Wright married Joy Beverley of the Beverley Sisters.

Behave Cunco !

Not even as a teenager?

I don't think I had a childhood fantasy; but I've had a few since.

When I was in my early teens I was football mad and used to fantasise that Billy Wright, the Wolves player, would ask me out.

My fantasy was going to the Royal Ballet School as a boarder. Any stage school would have been acceptable as a second best, bu5 the Royal Ballet School was the dream. I think I knew deep down I wasn’t good enough, but that didn’t stop the fantasy.

Another earlier fantasy was living in a pretty but poor cottage in the wilds of Ireland, eating ‘stirabout’. I assumed this was a kind of porridge. I had come across it in the novels of Patricia Lynch. I think I imagined myself with a shawl round my head and shoulders, and bare feet. Why I should have found this desirable I have no idea!

Bewitched for me Norstat; I spent hours trying to get my nose to twitch, convinced that when I could actually do it, I'd have the power!

I wanted to be Samantha from Bewitched.
Obviously, I would use my witchly powers to give Sindy dolls with many varied outfits to my friends and myself. Of course, there would be no toys for the girls I didn’t like and especially none for my older sister!
But mostly I wanted long, blonde, flicked-up hair like Samantha’s and to wear trendy dresses with chain belts!

(I had enough common sense even as a small child, not to want Samantha’s useless husband, Darren).

I wanted to be a mountain climber.
And at the moment i`m climbing the b..ddy walls.

I always wanted to be a hairdresser until I worked as a Saturday girl in my dad’s cousins salon in Sunderland. It was hell! I had the job of washing hair and sweeping up at first and then I was shown how to trim hair. Well at the age of 15 I thought I knew everything and I decided to “trim” my friend’s hair. It all went badly wrong and my mam went mad! She had to get her to a hairdressers quick and get it sorted before her parents saw it. The girl Never spoke to me again and my mam had to pay the bill. I decided to pack in the Saturday job and served fuel at a garage instead. Less stressful but that dream was shattered. I also dreamt of being a great saxophonist but that never happened. When this virus has gone I plan to try and learn the instrument though.

Thanks to the Flying Doctor service, she will be right mate

I’ve actually really enjoyed reliving that fantasy I had as a child - and now that my DD is about to qualify as a nurse who knows what down under direction I’ll nudge her in...

Oh I love the sound of your squirrels game Eglantine

Actually I love the word squirrels .