I have been reflecting of late, my younger years, owing to child # 2 coming along shortly to keep me busier than a busy thing and I thought about what I might have done differently in my first 40 years. I decided on the whole things worked out well,but I would have loved to do a couple of seasons consecutively snowboarding and maybe seen a bit more of the world when I was young and beautiful, taking advantage of exotic girls, and consuming strange local fare.
What do folks of this parish secretly (or not) like to have done given their time again.
Adenda : please do not be a smug git and post replies that trivialise others replies, everybody has different desires,deal with it!

Play rugby more seriously. thats my biggest regret.

bugger wrong forum too. D’oh!

I should have pestered my Dad to join me up to a Rugby club when I was younger, I was better than just playing for the school team.

Wish I had never changed those price labels!

I have no regrets.

Not taking the opportunity to spend the summer of ’90 working for Ian Hamilton Finlay

To have been more aware of the finite nature of youth. And more appreciative of the freedoms and lifestyle (and excuses for being an idiot) it affords you.

Uh oh, I’m coming over all deep and melancholy 😳

On the contrary chela i think that it’s uncommon not to harbour such thoughts. i’d hate to recount obviously wrong decisions I made as a cautious youth.

LOL @ Rich!

You are today the result of the experiences of growing up so if anything had been different you wouldn’t be what you are now.

Me, I wish I’d paid more attention to learning languages. I’d love to be multi-lingual.

Wish I’d played rugby too – went to school in Liverpool where football rules, no one plays rugby. Was a half decent footballer, but would have been a lot better at rugby league. Wish my Dad had taken me out to woolyback land to learn their customs.

What do folks of this parish secretly (or not) like to have done given their time again

Invented the mountain bike.

I am still quite young (27) and almost died recently of ulcerative colitis. Having had my life saved with a 5 hour operation to remove my large intestine i left hospital feeling quite humbled and am currently living it up with as much alcohol/riding/travelling as possible, and the occasional class A drugs 😉

that’s more like it.sister is going through the same scenario having just had tumours removed from her spine, hopefully she’ll stop dating dickwads too. (not implying that you date dickwads here B-man)

Played professional rugby for a couple of years when I left school and also spent 3 seasons snowboarding, so soz lads. If it makes you all feel better, I soon discovered it’s much more fun to turn up and have a laugh with your mates on a saturday than have to worry about win bonuses, sponsors, etc.

However, I regret not taking more foreign surf trips. The missus won’t surf anything but sandy beach breaks, so I’ll never get to go to Indo.
I also wish I’d learned to wheelie when I was a lad.

Hope your sister makes a full recovery slim. I’m looking for a girlfriend at the moment you should hook me up 😆

although i did slip on some sprite on saturday night landing face first and breaking my nose. maybe i’m not the best candidate!

go for it mate but I think the flight to NZ might make you re-consider you level of keen ness. She’s a good chick but its along way to come to find out that it’s ‘just not happening for either of you’ after a week. 😕

Hey man, one look at me and you’ll need a crowbar to get her off!

go for it mate but I think the flight to NZ might make you re-consider you level of keen ness. She’s a good chick but its along way to come to find out that it’s ‘just not happening for either of you’ after a week. 😕

I wish I’d carried on with my road rallying when I was 20. I was pretty handy on the Welsh Road Rally schene and wanted to take up stage rallying, but my girlfriiend thought I was going to get myself killed.

She was cute, blonde and I caved in to her wishes . . . only for her to leave me and marry my local MP a few years later!

dbl post oops

Spent much much less on cars and recreational drugs!!!

Nothing. I’ve had a great time, and enjoyed every minute, pleasure pain and all. I’ve never really hard a hard time, and I often wonder what I’ve done to deserve such a easy life.

I know this to be true when I see the desperate situation that some people find them selves in through no fault of their own.

Not much I’d change but I’d give anything to be 17 again & do it all once more 🙂

This is depressing as ****. Me? I wish could go back to being 19.

On the plus side though I’m getting a new shed/man cave deliverd today so that’s a wee bit of excitement.

I started thinking I had no regrets. Had 2 careers carpenter – nurse. But my regret is not visiting my grandfather more whilst he was in a nursing home and at home before he went in. I didnt know then how loneley he must have been.

I wouldn’t have got into a career where I support people/things. If I were young again I’d want to swallow my morals and take a ruthless, big money earning job where I march over people and earn enough to retire by the time I’m 45. Being tied to a demanding job is my biggest and possibly only real regret.

I’d also not take up skateboarding in my late thirties.

i’m ‘only’ 26 but still look back and kick myself at times.

i was a good kid at school. top classes for almost everything (bar french and religion). i done ok but could have done better. i went onto college for A-levels and ended up sitting for two years round the back in the old ampitheatre stoned.

i left with one half decent A-level, geography grade C.

my motto was, and i think still is, ‘i can swim it, why try harder?’ feel bad. my little sister always had top effort marks but sadly poor grades. my was always the opposite, (almost) top grades but louzy effort marks.

i could have excelled but was a dickhead (still am in truth).

i have no regrets about not going to uni. i went travelling and met my GF of now 7(!) years.

i’ve learnt a new language (german) and emigrated (germany).

gladly chucked in my job (carpentry) due to the way the germans work and ‘re-trained’ (hate that phrase) as an english teacher.

my decision not to go to uni has kinda hit me here. it would seem that to be someone here in germany that you have to have a piece of paper from a uni or school – even as a salesman or waiter.

still glad i don’t have massive debts over my head. i’ve got my paper from cambridge for the teaching. just have to be a little more proactive with finding work instead of sitting around surfing the net watching silly vids, smoking weed and tinkering with the bikes…

really skint at the moment, but it’s ok. my bikes almost finished (me).

would like to go back and right some of my wrongs. people who i prehaps didn’t do right by and didn’t deserve to be hurt (assuming they were). i’d also like to go back to the beach in Oz with those two blonde ozzie girls who were drunk and stoned. would have been one to remember (were i also not so drunk and stoned).

Might have ridden my bike more and gone to nightclubs less in my 20s.

Also wish I’d had less of a conscience that night Katy Brown asked me to stay over.

It all went wrong for me when me & my brother I spent an hour with the Wynn sisters in their shed back in 1976.
It was downhill from then.

Seriously though, what happened in our pasts has shaped who we are now.
I guess its down to how happy you are with you…?
Me, I think I’ve turned out a decent enough chap.

When I was about 20 I thought computers were “interesting”. I realise now, they are not… so I wish I hadn’t steered my career in that direction… which would’ve changed things a hell of a lot.
That’s all I’m prepared to say on here!

Wish someone had told me what my options actually were as a youth – then I wouldn’t have spent about 8 consecutive entire summer holidays lying on the sofa watching Robinson Crusoe and The Flashing Blade reruns in preparation for a job in middle management a Ford Sierra and a semi-detached estate house (though in the spirit of the first post, I’m sure all of those things (that I haven’t got) have their merits).

I wasted a year too long in school, and when I had the sense to jack it in (Which I NEVER regretted) I wish I’d have realised/been told that I could just clear off and travel the world, not get a job………

Making up for lost time now, mind
🙂

My main regret was the effort I put into Rugby training as a teenager, by my early 20’s I realised I’m just not big enough to be a forward or fast enough to be back. Later I discovered with my genetically low heart rate endurance sports should have been my strong point – in the 70’s there wasn’t much recognition of bikes as a sport (certainly not in my village) and no praise at school for being a good x-country runner etc….

Sadly this discovery came after many hedonistic years smoking and raving.

Other than that not too much – I’ve gradually learnt from my mistakes (I hope).

rightplacerighttime wrote:

The Flashing Blade

I used to love that program – I can still remember the theme song!!!

I dunno. The last 20 years haven’t been much fun most of the time, but I’m going to be 40 next year and finally feel like I am getting there and turning a corner. So who knows ay, maybe if things do go my way, then it’s better to be happier late in life and feel sorted, rather than the other way around? Obviously it would have been nice to have a life where you are happy every decade mind.

Nostalgia ‘R’ us

No serious regrets except where I ended up hurting others in the growing up process (still away to go).

Agree with psling about languages though. Growing up in Derbyshire French & German were purely intellectual exercises that I wasn’t much into. Learnt much more on all the European climbing holidays (stretching the term) I took since leaving school although still pretty poor.

I wouldn’t choose graphic design as a career again.

The last two or three years of my life have certainly not gone ‘to plan’, and I’m not where I planned/wanted to be before that, but I have few regrets.

Sometimes things just happen, if you can say to yourself that you did what you thought was best at the time, and can learn from things that, with hindsight, turn out to have been mistakes, then that’s the most that you can ask of yourself.