What Were Your Ambitions?

[FredPuli43]

Or should I say dreams? Anyway, at 66, I've decided that I'll never ride a Derby winner,play for the Harlem Globetrotters, become a justice of the Supreme Court, or compose my first symphony (be fair, Schumann was over 40 when he wrote his).

What youthful ambitions did you have? And did you get close to achieving any?

[askyourgran]

I wanted to be an artist to carry on from school to art college, but being the eldest of four children in the fifties I had to leave school and find a job. So the occasional artwork that I do is self-taught, although I have sold a couple of commissions.

[seadogg]

Read a book from the library about Edward Whymper and wanted to climb the Matterhorn. Found out when it was achieved that it was only the start.

[FredPuli43]

By the way, for you classical music buffs: I meant Brahms, not Schumann., wrote his first symphony when over 40. Schumann got his first written when he was 31. But nobody notable wrote his at 66.

[seadogg]

Brahms wanted to be Beethoven, Fred and it took him a while to realise he could write his own symphonies and weren't they four smashers!

[FredPuli43]

Yes, seadogg, they were. Not altogether to my immediate taste, but they "grow on you". He was such a perfectionist, and it shows. I always feel that Beethoven just wrote; he instinctively felt what was right and didn't care what anyone else thought; whereas the equally difficult man, Brahms, really worked to achieve a result, and did care.

[craft1948]

I wanted to be a top tennis player. I never achieved that ambition although I did represent my county in another sport............

[snags]

Wrestling?

[FredPuli43]

How about ambitions you never had? I once represented Cambridge at both chess and golf. How about that? But it was not the university, but the city in one case and the county in the other. And, in both instances, the team was a man short and I was the only fit man in the clubhouse at the time.

[Stephen_G]

I wanted to be a Speedway rider. The closest I ever got was watching from the sidelines (The width of a Greyhound track). Now I just watch it on TV...