The answer to the question: "Where do you see yourself in five years' time" should be "Five years older" but rarely is.
Remember those interviews where you ask a candidate that very question. The answer expected was usually something like "promoted in a different company" as the interviewers were looking for people with ambition. I always liked the ones that said "working hard for this organisation/school" as it showed an ambition to do well in the post they were applying for.
But back to my initial question. There comes an age when the answer to "what do you see yourself doing in five years time" is "breathing." Because often that's the extent of the ambition left.
You don't look to the future because to use an old cliche "you just take every day as it comes." But you do look back on the past with comments like "50 years ago today I started college" or "20 years ago today I left x".
Writing a daily diary is still as important to me as it was when I started it almost 50 years ago. It helps me remember but it also helps me in a strange way to give some kind of stability to the future.
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And so to those celebrities I mentioned yesterday for living in a retirement home near Twickenham. This was brought on by a photo of Richard O'Sullivan and Mike Yarwood on Facebook.
If you are of a certain age you will remember Yarwood for his BBC shows on Saturday evenings. He was very popular and I remember watching that show as one of the highlights of the TV watching week. Yarwood doing Wilson, Yarwoood doing Bruce Forsyth and a whole range of other characters, always with his best foot forward and dressed in a smart suit with a slightly sickly and patronising and conspiratorial grin.
I listed some of the other celebrities from the retirement home. Who remembers Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson who represented the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest with "Soing Little Birdy"? My my they were more naive days when a song about a chirping bird could be sung by a couple dressed in a suit and chiffon dress. How about Hylda Baker who I remember for some silly accents one of which may or may not have been "be sooooooon" (no idea where that came from.
And how about Charlie Drake "Allo Me Darlings." Charlie was always having pratfalls of many kinds. The usual silly little man acting in a very silly way and that sums up Sir Norman Wisdom as well. Norman was always massive in Albania (oh matron). Apparently under a communist regime in that country the only films that the populous were allowed to watch were Norman Wisdom comedies. That meant most of the population were brought up on them and so he became a national hero.
A few years ago I read a very funny book by Tony Hawks (that's Tony Hawks the comedian and not Tony Hawks the skateboarder). It was called One Hit Wonderland.
Hawks' books usually surround very strange bets like walking round Ireland with a fridge (why I hear you ask) or playing the Moldovan football team at tennis (the idea was Hawk was challenged to find the entire Moldovan squad and beat them all at tennis. I have to point out here that Hawks is a very competent tennis player). The bet in One Hit Wonderland was to write a hit song that made the top 30 in a European Country. Hawks actually had a British hit behind him. He was in a strange band entitled Maurice Major and the Minors which had a number four hit with Stutter Rap.
I won't spoil the plot for you but just say that Hawks enlisted the help of Norman Wisdom and a certain country where Norman is and was a hero.
I mentioned John Hewer - not a household name admittedly - but everyone will remember his character. He was the first Captain Birdseye. How about Kathy Kirby with her ridiculously bright lipstick? I thought Secret Love - her biggest hit - was self penned before I found out it wasn't the original version at all. The original came from the film Calamity Jane of 1953 and was recorded by Doris Day.
Then there was Alan Freeman the DJ who was known as Fluff Freeman because of the fluffy jumpers he wore. Freeman is something of a music hero of mine. How many of us listened in on Sunday afternoons to the Top 20? Nobody has ever presented this show like Fluff. He made it into an art form pop pickers as we waited with anticipation to see what single had made it to the top spot. Alan Freeman was of course brilliantly portrayed by Harry Enfield in the Smashy and Nicey sketches on television. Enfield's character Dave Nice looked like and acted like Fluff. I bet he was chuffed to be called Nice. He did ooze with niceness of course.
Mick McManus. Now there's another one. He was a British wrestler who played Mr Nasty (as opposed to Mr Nice), but of course it was all an act. I remember his slicked back black hair. I used to watch him on Saturday afternoon wrestling on ITV around tea time with Kent Walton. I have written about this in the past. BBC Grandstand had real sport. ITV ended up with ten pin bowling, wellie wanging and wrestling. OK I made the wellie wanging up but you get the idea.
I finish up with Ronnie Ronalde. I only remember the name here and not the person. But he was a big star in his day. He is described as a music hall singer and siffleur. Now that's a new word for me. So I had to look up siffleur and I found out I am one and have been one for many years.
A siffleur is a whistler. Now I think this is an art form but the other threequarters thinks it's me making a noise. I have often said that at all times there is a song going through my head and often this ends up with my whistling it much to her annoyance. I also whistle to birds and dogs (it doesn't make me a bad person). I like whistling. It's like having an instrument without having to learn to play it and Mr Ronalde made a career out of it. So now you know - a siffleur is a whistler and not someone with syphilis.
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A few days ago I enjoyed watching the latest Diamond League athletics meeting in Oslo. This ended with what is described as The Dream Mile. The mile is a distance not usually run nowadays since everything went metric. But it is still the distance that all athletics fans of a certain age hold dear.
We hold it dear because of the marvellous struggle back in the 1950s to run a mile in under four minutes. We all remember that the first man to achieve this was Roger Bannister in May 1954 when he ran it in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. That's just under the four minutes.
What a lot of people don't realise is Bannister's record lasted for just seven weeks before being beaten by Australia's John Landy. The current world record which has been in existence since 1999 is held by Hicham El Guerrouj and stands at three minutes, 43.13 seconds. That's almost 17 seconds faster than Bannister. That equates to something very roughly around 150 yards. Bannister would be nowhere in today's races.
The latest race in Oslo was won in three minutes 46.46 seconds. But we all still remember Bannister's sub four minute because that was ground-breaking.
The same of course goes for that other ground-breaking achievement - climbing Mount Everest. It was in May 1953 that Edmund Hillary conquered the mountain. At the time this was looked upon as the pinnacle of human achievement. Now over 800 people climb it every year!
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On Friday evening, I tuned into the local Look East News on television. The whole programme came from a free beach festival at Lowestoft and they interviewed a performance artist who told us that usually he "wrestles paper" but for the festival he would be upgrading and "wrestling cardboard." Don't you just love nutters?
Final comment today. In an advert for the new series of Top Gear - the motoring show - presenter Paddy McGuinness says "Every young boy wants to drive lorries." I have to say I have, as a young boy or as a man, never had the slightest wish or urge to drive a lorry, although I wouldn't mind sleeping in a lay-by in a luxury cab for the evening as long as it has a television and various other luxuries.