What do you want to be when you grow up?

This was the question posed to me by my 6 year old grand-daughter at half seven this morning.  Although  bleary eyed I had to chuckle ;-)

At age 52 I thought I may already be grown up but it got me thinking.  Do we ever really grow up?  What do I want to be?   

In her young eyes she obviously thought that I had time to do more ..... then she stopped and thought about it and said but nanny you are a childminder .... so that's my excuse for behaving childishly now and again .... splashing in puddles ........ get excited about snow ...... messing about with glue and glitter  .... watching Disney DVDs .......having a giggle ..... and loads more that I can't get my menobrain to think of at the moment.

Then I thought back to my school days when girls were encouraged to become secretaries or nurses ..... I had chosen to go to college but my dad said I would be better off applying for an office trainee position at Vauxhall Motors ..... that was in the days when it was huge and most of this town was employed there.  His logic was that I would get paid for learning.  I applied to the Bank of England too and can vividly remember aged 15 getting on the train to London on my own and finding my way to Threadneedle Street for an interview.  I sat quietly in the waiting room while everyone else went in and then the receptionist realised it was lunchtime and they had forgotten me.  She quickly arranged for me to have lunch and two very posh blokes took me up to the restaurant and bought lunch .... I sat quietly listening to them talk about their families and they quite obviously lived in a different world to me .... it was all horses, private schools, clubs, golf etc.  I was just the girl from the council estate who went to the local comprehensive.

I was offered the Vauxhall traineeship and a trainee position at the Bank of England and chose the former.  I can't say that I regret the decision but I do wonder where I would have been now if I had gone for the latter.

If I had my time over again I think I would choose college and I would love to be an archaeologist .... I've got the Time Team gene and would love to dig around in the muck to find out about the past.

For now I am quite content being a childminder and granny knit-knit .... I am happy being me.

What do you want to be when you grown up ?????

xx