Non, je ne regrette rien

Life's a lottery, in many senses, including the family you are born into. I hit the jackpot with my Uncle Allan (who I am named after, in case you didn't guess) and Auntie Ann; they are also my godparents, I am glad to say. Uncle Allan was a brilliant brother to my late mother, too, and Ann was in effect the sister my mum never had.

The idea which caused this blog came from dinner last week at my favourite restaurants, Wings, Lincoln Square: what better place to take such special people? Alas, I don't often get to see them, and so I passed round my iPad to show them some pictures of Jane and the children.

Uncle Allan got an iPad for his last birthday and since then has been a veritable silver surfer…never off it, according to Auntie Ann; he therefore knew how to swipe, and proceeded to do so.

'Why have you got this picture on your iPad?', he asked. There then began a tale going back over forty years. My elder brother, John, had a friend, Lance Lomax, who gave John a Swiss Army knife when Lance returned from a holiday in Canada. If I recall, I got a cheap little tinny car- green, I think. For many years, I then wanted my very own Swiss Army Knife. (I now have several, but rarely use them)….then our conversation got onto other things I regret, and I think, I am pleased to say, there are very few of them, and none are important.

I suspect a Thunderbird 2 was one of my chief childhood regrets. I got a Airfix Thunderbird 3, but it did nothing: the metal T2 had cargo doors, and things could be put inside it. (Writing now, I wonder why I didn't save up and buy one or ask Santa for one).

Much later, I wanted a Rolodex. They were de riguer in New York when I worked there in 1993: everyone had them; everyone bar me. When I came back to England, try as I might, I could not find them. It took me many years to eventually find one- I think it was in 1996, when on secondment to London, but it might have been much later . It now sits unused by our hall telephone…by the time I bought it, PDAs were coming in, and now it is truly obsolete.

I can't think of many more regrets (I will blog another time about one concerning a particular book, which has a happy ending). Looking back at the above list, they are all unimportant, and bring to mind one of my favourite songs, Edith Piaf's 'Non, je ne regrette rien'.

I think that that I can say this is pretty good. In fact, being 50 has been pretty good- it has affected me, but in a largely positive way. So far, there have only been two annoyances: the number of spam emails I get for products likely to be of interest to over fifty year olds, and the need to scroll down endlessly when filling in online forms:

Since marketeers know my date of birth from the countless forms I have filled in over the years, and since cookies mean that many sites could smirk 'I know who you are', why can't they go one stage cleverer, so that the pop up box opens in the 1960s? Or, would that overstep the mark in terms of personal intrusion, such as the time a few years ago when Tesco Clubcard sent me a personal selection of vouchers including several for eczema creams and oils: I know that Tesco know what we buy, and whilst dog promotions for Charlie are clever targeting, telling me they know I have eczema felt intrusive.

Now, where are my Swiss Army Knifes?

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