Leaving Do

It was a colleague's leaving do yesterday - he had a party at a local cafe. We collectively gave him a set of golf lessons and some golf balls since this is something he wants to do in his retirement. Never understood the golf thing - closest I've ever come is that I am addicted to a card game called Golf Solitaire by Jack Griffin that I play on my pda. My handicap is down to 6.4 after getting off on the wrong foot trying to figure out what the game exactly was (internet download didn't come with instructions). I used to be addicted to Dope Wars where I was a very successful drugs dealer able to make millions in a matter of days, (got to wear a great coat in that game).


When I grow up...

At this leaving party I had a conversation with two chaps, one younger (ES), one older (D) than me, about dream jobs. When I was at primary school all the boys had wanted to be firemen - one girl's dad was a fireman and always came on our trips out to museums etc because he worked shifts. He was a hero, especially to the boys - he once gave our class a tour around his firestation. Sure enough, D had wanted to be a fireman when he was a boy, his other alternative was a... you guessed it -- train driver. ES couldn't understand the appeal of train driving (boring stuck in the cabin all day going up and down the same tracks), when he was a boy he had wanted to be an astronaut - which we pointed out was, at the time, the latest dynamic heroic mode of transport. Train drivers, in their time, were sexy in comparison to working in a factory or being a miner (they went at great speed, in a huge machine, steam, blowing the horn etc). And in between train drivers and astronauts were pilots. But it interested me that the dream jobs as youngsters were linked to travel, being able to reach beyond the boundaries of our everyday lives to other places across the world, or out of this world into space. Little people with big dreams.