Ambitions 2

Today's blog continues in the theme of my life's ambitions. Ambitions come in many guises and are subject to change as life progresses. As a girl, it was my ambition when I grew up to become either a nun or a ballerina. I envisaged hovering serenely round the abbey gardens collecting honey. sporting my monochrome garb most elegantly. Or dancing the light fantastic clad with feathers and sequins and being whisked into the air by a strong and handsome male lead.
At the age of twelve, acne rearing its purulent head on my adolescent skin, I looked in the bedroom mirror during one of my 'wondering what I'd look like as Mother Theresa' episodes and realised that my makeshift whimple, a white bath towel pinned at the nape with a bulldog clip, was simply not becoming garb; and with that realisation the knowledge that I could never make it as a nun. In my taut towelling whimple I resembled Eamonn Andrews more than I did Julie Andrews, I couldn't sing, and what's more I hadn't been to church since the age of 8. And to this day the prospect of spending a day without lipstick is unthinkable!
But still the prospect of becoming a ballerina remained a distinct possibility...except for the fact that I'd left Betty Blackmore's Ballet School at the age of 6 after one lesson, disgusted at having to wear navy blue school pants with a pink tutu leotard. And quite right too. I resolved to alter my game plan a little, retain the aspirations to feathers and glitter but aim instead towards a career as a Magician's Assistant.

It was at the age of forty, having long ago left behind this wistful ambition that my dream so nearly came true. Having volunteered to help out at the children's school fair I almost fell over with delight when asked to assist the magician on that Saturday afternoon. Oh joy of joys! But my joy was to be short lived; I turned up, keen to don my ostrich feather headdress, only to find out that my role was not to prance precariously in pink stilettoes, but to show 5-year-olds to the toilet with the minimum of fuss so the show could go on uninterrupted.
Hey ho! And so it is that here I sit, at the age of 43, still wondering whatI might be when I am grown. Time will surely tell.