Regrets? Too few, now that you mention it

From the ridge

then and has remained a classic.

The sentiment is a good one, but I doubt if there has been a human who could honestly say that they have no regrets.

I’m fortunate in that I don’t have any major ones.

I nearly went off to Durham University to study archaeology but chickened out and travelled the well-trodden path to Lincoln College. Lincoln was great, I had a fun time and made friends and contacts that have lasted me a lifetime.

Better still, met a young lady in Christchurch who turned out to be a terrific wife, friend and mother.

But I doubt I would have been any worse a farmer than I was in my first couple of years with an archaeological degree instead of agriculture.

Maybe in a parallel universe somewhere, eh?

I was hitchhiking around New England in the United States in the early 1980s and ended up staying with a charming family in Boston. Therese, the mother, had just graduated from Harvard as an adult student and as John, her husband, was unable to attend as her guest, she kindly asked me to her graduation.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, later Saint Teresa, was to deliver the Commencement Address. At a Harvard graduation!

Then her young son Sean asked if I’d like to go with him and play Space Invaders at the arcade. Hey, I was only 21! Naïve and callow.

I’ve since read that address and it is too deeply religious for my taste.

But still there is nagging regret