Do you have a dream ?

I guess I have several. I dream of owning a Triumph TR7 sports car. I have dreamed of having one since the day I passed my driving test.

DREAM ? I think owning a Triumph TR7 is a fantasy. It could perhaps happen, if it does I would like my car to be yellow.

I always said I wanted a Jaguar, people said that was a fantasy but in truth it was an ambition. Yep, I drive a Jaguar and have done so for several years now.

It never was a fantasy but an ambition which became a reality.

Perhaps I should have an ambition to own a van we can use at our weekly car boot sales instead of the Jag which is not designed for such a task.

It shouldn't be too difficult to turn an ambition to own a van into a reality.

I have a fantasy to own a football club but there is only one football club I would want to own - There's only one Sheffield Wednesday.

Somehow I do not think that will move from being a fantasy to an ambition and never become a reality.

If you could wind back the clock and change something in your life what would that be ?

I would love to turn back the clock and look like this again. Better still to go back to being a teenager like this hot and horny guy

on the right.

But if I were to be able to go back and change something from when I was seventeen years old that would change my life over the next fifty years and where would that leave me standing today, Tuesday 7th August 2018 ?

I don think I would want to change who and what I am today, to give up my life experience, to not have the friends and family I have around me.

What about you ?

That does not mean that I could sing as Edith Piaf has -

Non, Je ne regrette rien

How about you ?

May I suggest that a life with no regrets is a life that has not been lived.

I guess my greatest life regret is investing time, love and faith into people who have let me down. But the scars these people and situations leave add to life experience.

I have two university degrees. One is a piece of paper which is in a box somewhere in my loft. At the top of the paper it

says University of Oxford. (I did not actually go to Oxford University, I went to a teacher training college in Bletchley Park but my certificate was issued by Oxford University).

In September 1971, aged twenty years, we new students were all taken to Oxford for Freshers Day. It was there I first heard the words of a poem - DESIDERATA meaning Desired Things. Those words have remained with me all of my life. Every day they are not far away from me and are an influence on my life.

So many times I have quoted those words to people whose paths have crossed my own. YOU ARE A CHILD OF THE UNIVERSE - NO LESS THAN THE TRESS AND THE FLOWERS YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO BE HERE.

My second degree is not printed on a piece of paper, it was

issued by The University of Life.

In those early days of the 1970's it was impossible to walk anywhere within the college hall of residence without hearing someone playing the Simon and Garfunkel album, particularly the title track.

Since those days I have always tried to live my life like a bridge over troubled water. Those who know me will be very familiar with my belief that this is the greatest piece of music ever written.

Bridge Over Troubled Water will be played at my funeral, it is in my will. It is also in my will that Desiderata will be played.

When I was a teenager I used to have panic attacks about death. I was so frightened of death. I felt I had so much to accomplish in my life I could not possibly die before I had done it all.

Fifty years later I no longer have those panic attacks but worry about how much longer I have.

You know I have not achieved any of the things I wanted to when I was seventeen but I still have a list of things I want to achieve before my time is up. My grandmother lived to be a few weeks short of her 90th birthday, nobody in my family has ever lived for less than ninety years. I guess I have another twenty-five, perhaps thirty years to go before the next song can be played.