All Great Men Make Mistakes. Winston Churchill

We called in at Worcester last week on our way back from Wales. Seems a nice little place, Worcester. Plus my wife saw a gorgeous handbag in a shop window, reduced from £4.99 to £3.99, an absolute snip. I don't mind treating her at that price! But just as we we going into the shop I noticed it was a Jaeger shop and they certainly don't give anything away. The revised price was of course £399, some difference! Two silly old geriatric plonkers who probably should not be out unacompanied. There again there is a saying, the man who never made a mistake never made anything.I looked up 'lifes mistakes' on the internet. Evidently there are 35,700,000 references. It seems we are in good company.

I suppose there are not many of us who tried to dry their hands in the toilet by sticking them up the opening of the contraceptive machine. (see blog dated 1st February 2009)

Plus I wince at winding down the motorhome window on a dark and dismal night travelling north from Bath and enquiring of a bystander,'Gloucester?'

'No, Cheltenham' came the puzzled reply. Mind you, I blame the sat-nav. Confusing it's rights and lefts is bad enough. And I swear the thing's dyslexic. So there, it's not our fault!

(A friend of mine, much cleverer than me hired a car in Chesterfield to go to a wedding in Newcastle. Sailing merrily along the M1, it was only when he saw the signs for Luton that he realised he was travelling south not north. And he's got an honours degree. What in I'm not sure!)

The dictionary definition of mistake includes: to recognise or identify incorrectly; based on error; wrong.

Thomas Carlyle said 'Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes.nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self education.' Though I doubt he was in our league when it comes to mistake making.

Life is full of choices, to marry or not to marry for instance. A friend of mine has been married four times. How many mistakes there? One, two, three, surely not four? I would imagine this comes in the category of 'serious mistakes.' Marriage for me has been far from a mistake so I must be doing something right. (I once arrived late at a wedding and sat in the back of the church for fifteen minutes before I realised I was at the wrong wedding. Stupid, yes, but serious, not really.)

Our visit to Wales was in the main enjoyable, marred by ignorant, rude, over zealous parking attendants who issued us with a parking fine for a technicality on a car park in Dolgellau. Perhaps I should not have returned to Wales after an absence of over twenty years. Perhaps it was a mistake; who knows.

Lets give the last word to Oscar Wilde writing in 'Lady Windemere's Fan.'

Dumby: Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.

Cecil Graham: One shouldn't commit any.

Dumby; Life would be very dull without them.

And less expensive Mr Wilde!

Dare you admit some of your mistakes in life, serious or otherwise. Surely I'm no more mistake prone than anyone else out there. Or am I?