I Have a Dream

Not so long ago I saw a graph charting an individual's political leanings and dreams/aspirations (x axis) against age (y axis). At the time I vowed never to lose my dreams or, worse, to become conservative - big 'C' or otherwise. Three years on and it's amazing how accurate the graph seems to have been. Dreams do indeed fly out the window when you hit your mid-20's and aspirations slip surely down the pan. Kiddie-fiddlers, taxmen and teenagers, I now agree, should be strung up by the short 'n danglies. Ambition now stretches to having £20 in my pocket.

Or it did...until I saw the guy in the above picture. He's noone else's hero but mine. Every Sunday he tears across our TV screens and I'm the only who points and shouts: "Who is that nut and what the f**ck is he doing with that clock? I want his life. I want to live someplace that's got no highway code; where 2CVs career gaily down country lanes, their drivers raising two fingers to the laws of physics and the land."

Don't laugh. Clockman is cool. If he was Australian that would be a VW Beetle with a surfboard hanging out.

I want to be a peculiar British version of Aussie surf-board guy. I want to show those annoyingly good-looking antipodeans that we too can put impossible objects in ridiculous cars and go for a spin on warm Summer days. So what if we do it in the Dales with the Antiques Roadshow theme music blasting out of the 6x9's. I want to sing with the roof down. Something like this: "da DADADA dada, DADADA dada, doo-doo-doo de-doo-doo doo-de-doo!"

I'm gonna have two flappy-eared dogs hanging out the side windows lapping up the wind, their noses pointed home to a cottage somewhere full of clocks. That, I tell you, is ambition.