i was at a car auction in the late 80s or early 90s and a 3 door sierra cosworth went for 4.5k. i could have rounded up the money if i had wanted to.
That reminds me of another.
My Dad sold a car back in the late 80's and gave me the job of taking £4000 in cash down to the bank for him. Next door was the bookies and all the newspapers were talking about that day was the Gold Cup and this wonderhorse, Desert Orchid.
I could have had 3/1 at the time, and 12K winnings if I hadn't bottled it. As a 19 year old that would have been riches beyond compare.
(given i can influence the result of any sporting contest merely by betting on it, the alternate outcome would also be a 'regret of your life' post about how i lost £4K of my Dad's money on a horse)
I also remember being at University sat in the pub one afternoon and one of the lads had been to the front bar and overheard a bloke telling his mate about going to all the bookies in town and placing bets at the same time on this horse - clearly something afoot. Some of the lads cobbled together a few quid each, and went and had a piece, that came in at some daft odds and kept them in beer for most of the term.
Getting in to debt. Nothing major or exciting, just genral bad money management and trying to raise a family on only my salary as with childcare prices etc it was better for my wife to be stay at home mum. General denial about how bad it was getting with loans and credit cards. We ended up moving house and using a big chunk of the equity to clear the debt and then having a smaller deposit for the new house. Now the children are old enough that we can both work and it's a much better situation, but it always feels like we could have so much more money/freedom if we'd been more sensible in the past.
Dropping Biology O'Level as a "girl's subject" meant I was never going to medical school as a first degree - regardless of A'Level grades (which were more than good enough). As it turns out, I would have likely ended up in the same place anyway doing what I do now.
From a career perspective, at the end of my first degree I went on a week-long induction for Officer Training in the RN. I still would have liked to have served as a Navigation Officer for a few years conducting training, but did a PhD instead (which I was always going to do). In the field I studied (Theoretical Physics), time out from study was basically detraining, and you could never get back. And the rest is history.
I also wish I hadn’t caught COVID in April 2020
And this. It's been a long recovery and I am only just getting back to some meaningful training. Strava fitness and freshness says they morning I am at 10% of my previous race peak.
A girl I once knew..
After a night out boozing we ended up back at her flat with some mutual friends, for a standard post night out continuation of the night out/ sleep over type thing that you do when your young, with people crashing out at various phases into the early hours.
At some point we ended up playing computer games when everyone else was crashed. Anyway we all went for a hangover cure breakfast somewhere the next day and at some point she said to me something like 'it was fun playing that game, tell me what game you want to play, i'll get it and you can come over and and we can play 2 player!'
Well stupid me thought she was out of my league and was just being friendly, and I didnt think anymore of it, until several years later. Epic fail.
At 18 I thought about joining the cops, no real reason, just seemed like an interesting career. I applied and was accepted onto a weekend course, you know the sort of thing; aptitude tests, bit of an interview, team games of get everyone over the shark infested custard with this bit of string and an orange...Anyway, they wrote to me and said they'd offer to start me on the fast track. At the same time, I got offered a position in the civil service which was 20mins up the road, and where my then gf lived...
I don't regret it, but I sometimes wonder how my life might have changed.
The thing that I regret in hindsight not doing that had the most profound affect on how my life panned out was bottling making a complaint to the 6th form college management at the end of my first year of A level Maths about our teacher. The 12 of us in the class knew she was not steering us in the right direction-little homework, no practice papers etc.etc but we just assumed it would be OK. Of the 12 , only two of us passed- my E grade and another lad’s D. She had predicted me a B and so I had applied for and had offers from good engineering universities. Not surprisingly I failed to get in even though I had two A’s and a C grade in my other A levels. I subsequently found the department knew she was no good and she left soon afterwards.
Whether I would have enjoyed engineering more that the product design course that I joined through the equivalent of clearing at the time, or the subsequent move into a 30 year teaching career was a good thing is difficult to say, but I regularly think of what might have been.
on the car front, I almost bought an Alfa Romeo Sprint GTA 1600 Stradale in 1986 but couldn’t stretch to the £10k they wanted then ( roughly equivalent of £28k now). My 1600 Junior was worth about £3K so finding £7k was too much. One of the GTA’s recently sold for £250k……
Not having anyone think that something might not be quite right with me when I just stood up and ran out of a big Xmas dinner and was trying to get in my car (almost certainly to go and do something bad) when my dad caught up with me. A brief walk around the block and I was back at the dinner table as if everything was OK... it wasn't for at least another 30 years.
Well stupid me thought she was out of my league and was just being friendly, and I didnt think anymore of it, until several years later. Epic fail.
I agree with the Mark Radcliffe philosophy on this...
"Always talk to the best looking girl in the room..... you never know...."
#punching 😀
A private (money grabbing) dentist talked me into having a front tooth extraction (the tooth was turning slightly black after an abcess) and replacing it with an implant. The procedure went wrong and he was later 'struck off' for varying degrees of 'f' uppedness on other patients.
It's affected my eating, I never smile, my teeth are dreadful and I now have a gagging reflex.
A tiny thing but my mistrust of dentists is huge. This has cost me thousands of pounds to try and put right over the years.
Regret not choosing my best & favourite subject at A level: Latin.
Only found out on the A level results day that my Latin tutor had previously shared my work up to O level with his old college and I would have been a shoe-in for a place had I taken the A level.
He wasn’t allowed to inform/influence my A level choice. Despite having just done 2 years of A levels, I seriously considered redoing the 6th form with Latin as one of the choices.
I would have gone to a different University and had a completely different career.
but then I wouldn’t have met my wife & had the experiences and family I’ve got.
I always wanted to be in the RAF and was pretty serious about it all through school, tailoring my qualifications for it and managing my expectations as I got a bit older- looking at realistic roles I could do rather than just the usual vague schoolboy dream of "I want to be a combat pilot".
It really was not seen as a cool thing to do though in the circles I hung around in and for some reason I was generally discouraged from it by my family too. So I naturally just aimed for going to University, drinking, taking drugs and all that stuff which is of course much more productive.
In some ways it hardly matters as I'm pretty happy now so whatever really, but I'm a lawyer which seems almost as far as you can get from being in the royal air force. I do often feel a pang of regret when I see or hear about those types of things in the media or on TV though.
I also think there's massive chance I'd have immediately failed literally all the aptitude tests but at least I'd have known eh!
Not really a regret as I wouldn't be in the happy little world I now live in....but turning down a job offer to go and work in Bermuda in 1988 was probably a bit daft.
(actually loads and loads, never mind the gishs there's selling a big house in an bit of london that's now up and come, getting hooked by surfing (seriously, life would have been so much simpler had I not) the list goes on...)
Another one for the RAF here. Was in the RAF Cadets (CCF) at school and loved it but then various things conspired - I'd have had to change my 4yr degree as I would have been too old on graduation to go straight in and also my Dad was absolutely dead against it.
I could have changed the degree easily enough.
I've lots of regrets, but I like who/where I am, so really those regrets are just experiences that got me here.
Computer nerd friends at university told me about investing in this new "bitcoin" thing when they were $100 each. I thought it sounded stupid.
Computer nerd friends at university told me about investing in this new “bitcoin” thing when they were $100 each. I thought it sounded stupid.
You'd have just lost them all in the MtGox rugpull of 2014, and then lost whatever was left over in the BitFinex hack of 2015, and then again in all the shenanigans of the last 2 years
Better off this way
The more life-changing regrets are a bit too depressing to type out so I'll go with -
Not going to see Nirvana at Portsmouth Poly when I worked there.
Not going to see the White Stripes in Brighton cos I couldn't be arsed to drive there.
Another debt based issue. At 29 I was in horrendous debt, then promised myself I’d double down on work and financial ethics to clear it and have a decent life. I did, it worked and I’m fortunate to be in a very good place with a wonderful family.
But i fear the reasoning, mistakes and effort and emotional energy have left me with the constant fight or flight paranoia and anxiety I have now making daily life an energy sapping experience for me and people close to me which I can’t seem to switch off.
Loads of mistakes, few regrets - dwelling on them is a waste of time!
Most of my mistakes seem to be quite common....not capitalising fully on the opportunity of education and of course 'regretting' the couple that 'got away'....i don't think i'll ever forget not furthering things with the teacher from Nottingham!! 😂 She still haunts my thoughts every now and again!! Other than that, the mild 'regrets' don't seem to have done me any harm long term, in fact quite the opposite (possibly).
I wish i'd been more courageous in my 20's, but i was full of THC and MDMA for a period! I enjoyed it at the time though. 🙄
+1 not joining the RAF. I actually applied and made through the 18 month recruitment process, acing my psychometric tests and got asked if I thought about becoming a pilot, attending tests at Chicksands and then getting accepted to become an imagery intelligence analyst. A couple of days before I was due to go off and start I phoned them and said I didn’t want to do it, all because I was in love with a girl. Of course we broke up a few months later, funnily enough the RAF didn’t want to know when I called them to ask if I could change my mind.
Stupid dumb 22 year old! I could’ve gone on to work for the intelligence agencies.
bands i should've seen is another thread again. Buzzcocks supported by Joy Division, leeds uni, winter '79 I think. Maths homework or something daft got in the way so gave someone my ticket.
Which reminds me: doing maths A level, a subject I was really shite at, just because I felt I should do maths as a proper subject. And arts/languages were for spare time, despite (because?) of being good at that stuff... Basically, wherever I look I see r
Just a small one - not continuing my contributions to a private pension I started in the 80's.
I'd be nicely retired by now.
Not manning up at 21 and marrying Helen Barlow the love of my life.
All the mistakes and missed opportunities have still led me to a reasonably comfortable life, and two amazing children turning into well rounded young adults, so regrets is the wrong word.
I made sure we haven't pushed them to do things "we" wanted them to do. Encouraged them to follow their strengths and interests and see where it takes them. We were lucky to be able to afford to support them with time as well as money, and it's paid off.
So I learned from my parents mistakes
Two regrets.
1) not cashing out of the dot.com boom when I could have. Had £100k at one point and it went to nothing.
2) not keeping my partners flat in Edinburgh when we moved in together. She sold it for a loss and two years later the Scottish office moved to Leith and prices went crazy.
Getting either of those decisions right would mean we'd be retired now.
The thing that I regret in hindsight not doing that had the most profound affect on how my life panned out was bottling making a complaint to the 6th form college management at the end of my first year of A level Maths about our teacher. The 12 of us in the class knew she was not steering us in the right direction-little homework, no practice papers etc.etc but we just assumed it would be OK
If it helps, I complained about a terrible Economics A level teacher multiple times and the college did sweet FA.
My A levels were shocking and I had to go to a local London uni via clearing, so I did regret missing out on the typical provincial uni experience - wasn't much of a social scene around ours, with London on the doorstep.
Mid 2000’s a mate offered to swap his slightly tatty but sound and roadworthy 1968 Porsche 912 for my 4 year old diesel Audi which would have been worth 7 or 8 grand. I really liked that Audi and kept it for 10 years and 200k miles but goodness me - I wish I’d bought that porsche!
Eating a dodgy bit of chicken when I was 24 which then gave me salmonella poisoning, the next two years in hospital, the loss of my dream job, and then 30 years of medical issues. Still wouldn't swap anything about how my life is today though.
1st regret: Not taking the year out as planned as a summer job fell through and left us rather skint having just got married. We should have just gone and earned as we go - but at the time felt we 'had' to have a few £k in the bank as savings.
Not going into the Police in Cumbria, as would have been my career, and so being able to retire in a couple of years time. 🙁
I have two others, but I am not sharing them publicly.
not getting braces in my early teens.
i now have a mouth of summer teeth.... summer over here, summer over there! (they are all pretty healthy, just a bit wonky!).
I do also wonder if i hadnt kept returning to my toxic ex...... shrugs
Buying a house next to what has become a busy road.
We moved here 20 years ago and the road noise didn't affect me for the first 17 years.
However, since the start of the pandemic and working from home, I now despise it.
We have a lovely house and a lovely garden, but it is blighted by the noise pollution from that horrible road!
I don't really have any regrets, I'm pretty happy with life.
I too was looking into buying bitcoin in 2009, (around 50 cents each IIRC) the Beeb had just ran an article on it and I reasoned that it was likely to hit the mainstream if they were reporting it. Was tempted to chuck a grand at it, but was buying a flat and decided it was too much hassle. Discussed it with my Dad, he was against the idea, still tease him about it.
A dollar was around 60p, so 30p per BTC = 3333 for a grand. Massive "If", but if I'd sold at the peak at around £48,000 then I'd have been worth £159,984,000.
But then probably wouldn't have met my wife / had a kid etc, and am genuinely happy with life and not motivated by money so don't really regret it.
Interesting that there's been a couple of regrets about not joining the police as it was going to be my fall-back option if I failed at art school. If I had done that, I'd be retired and on a full final salary pension now. My neighbour went down the police route and he's about to retire to play golf and ride his bike.
Another regret of mine – not getting tickets to Live Aid. At the time I worked Saturdays (part-time job whilst at art school) but my boss wouldn't let me have the day off. I should have just said 'stuff it' and called in sick or whatever.
We’ll all chip in to develop and build a time machine for you!
That messes with my head.
Imagine having the wisdom of the years at a time when it would have made a difference in so many ways!
Definitely missed a few opportunities with the opposite sex due to completely misreading/not reading the signals.
Same.
I once totally misread the situation in a nightclub (Jilly's Rock World). On the dance floor, dancing near a rather attractive young lady, it became increasingly apparent that she was actually... dancing with me! Then she put her hand on my shoulder, leaned in close and whispered into my ear, "do you have a girlfriend?"
Well, I couldn't believe my luck! I replied, "yes, hang on, I'll go get her for you!" She'd gone when I got back.
At a Machine Head gig at Astoria on NYE in the late 90s they were giving away a golden ticket to go with them on the next 2 legs of their European tour and hang out backstage in Berlin & Amsterdam, they released a load of balloons which a 1000 drunken metalheads tore apart to find the ticket, in the end no one found it.
It wasnt until I was on the train home that I looked at the sticker Id found on the floor and realised it was the winning ticket---- absolutely gutted 16 year old kimbers
My only real regret is a music one: not going to see Queen at Knebworth as "I'm not keen on big concerts and I'll wait until they do a tour of smaller venues." D'oh!
There's 2 things I sometimes wonder about... not regret at all, just wonder about:
- Doing Law instead of Pharmacy at uni... but then I would have been at a different uni and never met my wife
- A very pretty slim blond girl I meet at said uni and we just 100% clicked... so well that I decided I'd better mention my girlfriend (now wife) in the conversation and she then mentioned her boyfriend... but I've always felt we might both have broken up with them and started together, if I'd suggested it.
Oh, and one more thing: not winning the Euromillions yet!
and of course ‘regretting’ the couple that ‘got away’
mormons?
Regret reaching 50 and still not having a career backed up by any useful experience or any notion of what direction to go in next.
I made sure we haven’t pushed them to do things “we” wanted them to do
Errrr... Eldest is a Geologist and the other a pilot. I always wanted to be a pilot (can't get a Class 1 medical due to eyesight) and took Geology instead of Biology, and almost went to Uni to do that instead 😉
My only real regret is a music one: not going to see Queen at Knebworth
Further to my (not going to) Live Aid post at the bottom of the last page, I *DID* go to see Queen at Maine Road the following year. Yes, they were good. Very good.
All the old men on here still thinking about the fit girl who they didn't get to sleep with 20+ years ago. ha ha ha
On the dance floor, dancing near a rather attractive young lady, it became increasingly apparent that she was actually… dancing with me! Then she put her hand on my shoulder, leaned in close and whispered into my ear, “do you have a girlfriend?”
Well, I couldn’t believe my luck! I replied, “yes, hang on, I’ll go get her for you!”
Ha ha, you absolute weapon 🙂
