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Too old to be a ballerina? Then just buy the accessories

Kathryn Hughes

If it's too late for adults to take up their dream jobs, they can still buy the accessories.

ACCORDING TO research by the U.K. rail union Aslef, professional people are queueing up to become train drivers.

According to Aslef's study, the next time you take a train it is likely to be driven by a former research chemist, journalist or teacher. If pressed, these people would probably mumble something about high rates of pay or the luxury of being able to clock off at the end of your shift and not think about it again until the next one begins.

But there must be something else going on. Why train driving rather than, say, plumbing or dry cleaning? Whatever their rational reasons for giving up a white collar in exchange for a blue polyester combo, these people must be responding to the atavistic tug of childhood ambition. For how could running a research lab or getting the whole of year six through Sats compare with the chance to hang out with Mavis and gossip about the Fat Controller?

Would-be train drivers are lucky, though. Most jobs we dream of at five are pretty much closed to us by the age of 16. Thus it is too late for me to become a ballet dancer or a showjumper. The one thing I could probably get into — nursing — is the one occupation whose status has plummeted since the time when I dreamed of bustling round in a starched white apron healing people with nothing more than a gentle smile.

But if it is too late to do many of the dream jobs of childhood, it's not too late to surround yourself with their accessories. In a world full of complication, danger and disappointment, retraining as an engine driver or wearing a pink bow in your hair is a way of connecting to a time when, no matter how bad things got, there was always someone tall in the background ready to make it better.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

(Kathryn Hughes is the author of The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton.)

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