WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE? - A "LET'S BLOG OFF" POST

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "What did you want to be when you grew up?"

In my life, I've wanted to be many things and I have achieved a few of them.  But the first career desire I remember expressing was to be a hairdresser, probably because I liked the word.  Making people feel good about their appearance still seems to me a worthy occupation and a survey conducted in Britain a few years ago found that hairdressers were among the happiest inhabitants of my native isle.

With my Sicilian hairdresser, Raffaele

Like most little girls, I went to dancing classes and for a while I wanted to be a dancer:

Then we all wanted to be pop singers like the teenage star Helen Shapiro.  My friends and I worked at lowering our voices long before a certain Margaret Hilda Thatcher thought of it.

Later I wanted to be a doctor, like the character Audrey Blake in the television series Emergency - Ward 10 but unfortunately I was hopeless at the sciences at school and soon discovered my linguistic bent.  And that rather sealed my fate for in those days the only career that anyone suggested to a female linguist was teaching.

I did actually want to teach by then, though and entered the profession willingly rather than drifting into it.  And despite several attempts to escape from the educational sphere, I have always ended up back in it.

In one of my many classrooms, c.1976

Another thing I wanted to be was a wife and mother but that destiny has eluded me.  In my youth, pregnant women sat around in smocks in cosy front rooms and were cosseted and I've always thought that that would be rather nice.  George Eliot said that it is never too late to be what you might have been and for some women science has made very late motherhood a possibility.  I do not wish to pass judgement on their decisions here but that path is not for me.  I have not, however, given up on the hope that one day I will meet someone who really loves me enough, for, like most people, I would like to be "first" with someone.

If I had not become a teacher I like to imagine that I would have become a journalist and in recent years I have been a columnist and been paid for it.  My remaining ambition is to become an author but if any self-publishing companies out there are thinking of spamming me with their details, please don't.  I'll do it "my way."

So there is still something I would like to achieve.... when I grow up.

Now for some nostalgia:


Emergency - Ward 10

Helen Shapiro - Walking Back to Happiness




Here is the complete list of bloggers participating in this round of the Blog Off: