Holidays are missed, kids grow up, people die...

When I was a kid, my school reports often referred to me as a dreamer, meaning I spent an inordinate amount of my time not learning, but looking out of the window. I’m not sure what I might have been daydreaming about, but thinking back, it was probably, certainly in the summer months, the prospect of a holiday on the south coast of England and all it might entail: trips to what was then called Perdido’s (it’s now the Lobster Pot, a beachfront cafe); swimming in the sea; playing with a toy yacht (Star Yachts of Birkenhead, proper sailing boats); and building sandcastles on the beach and trying to hold back the tide.

As a young kid I also used to fantasise about owning enough land to run a small railway, one of those small-scale locomotives found in amusement parks, and this later morphed into owning my very own ghost train that all visitors would have to use to reach me inside. This particular fantasy involved me waiting for my guests in the living room and them arriving through two wooden saloon bar doors on one side of an imposing marble fireplace.

I’ve dreamed about owning a house on the beach, I’ve fantasised about ordering, collecting and then riding a Harley Davidson 883 Hugger with buckhorn bars, being a rock star and impressing everybody with electric live performances, the list of dreams is almost endless and I’m sure that over the course of writing this short article, I’ll think of more, all of which have been dashed on the rocks of reality.

I’ve even had dreams about work. I remember once making a terrible mistake and leaving a job that I quite enjoyed. The job in question involved a fair amount of foreign travel, which I loved, but I Ieft in order to earn more money and found myself in a boozy environment, drinking too much and going nowhere. Eventually, the job dried up and I found myself in a precarious situation around about the time that my dear old dad passed away. Once ensconced in the new job, which just so happened to be located on the Heathrow flight path, I found myself dreaming about my old boss pleading for me to come back and my first task on returning being a trip to Portland, Oregon, USA, to attend a conference. I used to work through the entire conversation, playing both parts (me and my former boss) but it never materialised and in many ways, in retrospect, I’m glad it didn’t, because who knows where I’d be today? I’m a firm believer in fate and destiny and what will be, will be.

Other dreams involved buying and learning how to play the bass guitar, a long-held fantasy of mine dating back to childhood. I remember watching the Beatles on the television as a young kid of around six years old and wanting to own a bass guitar, probably after watching Paul McCartney playing bass on Top of the Pops. It didn’t matter how many times I asked my mum and dad to buy me one, they never did, and for a while the fantasy (the dream) left me, but returned to haunt me a few years ago when I lacked the the funds to buy myself a Fender Precision bass. I remember spending an inordinate amount of time in music shops, picking up bass guitars and ‘playing’ them. The inverted commas are there because I can’t play bass, I just figure that having played the violin at school I could easily pick up another four-stringed instrument. But it doesn’t matter, I never bought one because there’s always something else to spend the money on.

Another major day dream of mine, of course, is to write a novel and have it published. This one kind of came true, but not really. I did write a novel, Suki & the Christmas Treasure Trove, which I self-published online. Self-publishing doesn’t really count, I know, but at least I wrote and completed the story and have since found my way through writing a couple of others, one of which is half-way completed and the other at an embryonic stage. In fact, I would say that being a published author is the fantasy that would trump all the others. I can’t think of anything better than living off the success of a novel, seeing it made into a movie and not having to worry too much about where my income was coming from. I’d move to that house on the south coast and spend my days walking on the beach and writing early in the morning, occasionally making speeches in bookshops and travelling abroad to promote my latest book.

Ultimately, however, none of the fantasies above have become reality and they all remain dreams. This, of course, is a shame, and I’m always secretly ashamed of myself for not being able to turn anything I’d really like to do into reality. Put simply, life gets in the way. I don’t have time to sit down and complete the half-finished novels, and if I made an attempt to buy and then learn the bass guitar I’d be branded as selfish for not spending the money on something needed, like a new door for the living room.

Knowing that dreams or fantasies can’t always be realised is depressing enough, but when I think back, it’s a lot to do with determination - or a lack of it - that brings me to this sorry conclusion. I simply lack the resolve to push my own agenda, which, in itself, sounds selfish, but isn’t really. I just needed to be a little more motivated, a little more tenacious and driven, but instead I gave up and focused on the mundane. I worried too much about work and started to define myself by my job rather than by my private life, which has taken a back seat to the various jobs I’ve had.

Life is short. The seasons come and go. Holidays are missed. Kids grow up. People die.