When I was five years old, I’d channel the inner Ken Dodd (comedian) in me when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up.

“A lollipop man” I’d say in a mischievous and gleeful manner.
“A lollipop man? Why?”
“Because I won’t have to start work until I’m 65!”

I think I lacked serious ambition as a kid. Like many boys in the west of Scotland, and Glasgow in particular, I wanted to be football player, and would practice for hours on end. But when only selected as our primary school team substitute a few years later, I realised a change of goal was in order. (Perhaps if I’d scored a few, things could have been different. 😉 )

I’d look around for inspiration. My dad and grandfather were both in banking. That didn’t impress me much. It sounded rather unexciting. My other grandad had been a professional boxer. And a good one at that, winning championships here in Scotland and also fighting out of New York in the 1920s – I have his New York Stae Boxing Commission Licence from that time.

But that was perhaps a bit too exciting. And while I quite liked the thought of ducking and dancing around the ring, and smacking the other bloke in the face, I myself would have presented a bit of an easy target – I didn’t get the nickname ‘Beaky’ for nothing, you know.

My mum was a teacher. What? And cope with another thirty of me? No thank you!

No – I think I set myself a rather low bar, in the hope I could only impress myself and others with any sort of late-developing aptitude.

I quite fancied being the Village Idiot. The Village Joker. Everybody loves the Village Idiot-Joker. They are harmless souls and make those surrounding them feel they are perhaps not as hopeless as they think. People laugh when they’re around.

Any subsequent achievement in Life is a success, a step up.

I may only have been five years old, but I knew how things worked in this world.

I think I made the right choice.

🙂