Two new surveys this week made depressing reading. One, by You Gov, said that two thirds of British workers are unhappy with their jobs and wished they'd done something else.

While another for recruitment agency Pertemps said that four out of five workers are not doing the jobs they wanted to do as school leavers.

Well OK, there's probably a limited a number of openings for Premiership footballers, top models and astronauts. But still...

Meanwhile, Tim Martin, founder and chairman of the JD Wetherspoon pub chain has decided to take six months off, just like that. Rumour has it that far from living the high life he'll be bumming round Cornwall doing not very much.

Well, yes, it's OK for him. If he never works again he's probably not in much danger of getting the bailiffs in. The rest of us have bills to pay, families to feed and a lot less money to do it on.

But, there comes a time when it's worth a risk.

Like the friend of mine who put a small chunk of her pay each month into a bank account she labelled her "Stuff the BBC Fund". And one day, when the bureaucracy of the Beeb got too much for her, she chucked the job, cashed in her savings and got herself work as a deck hand, while she sorted out what she really wanted to

OK, she was young and single. And yet....

The biggest rise in "gap year" travellers has been the over 50s - who realise after a lifetime of work that there's a lot more to life than the security of a pay cheque. They are risking large chunks of their future financial security for the sake of an adventure and some decent memories.

And there's another, even more interesting statistic. In among all the hoo-hah about universities and their low standards and their drop out rates, we've missed one of our generation's biggest success stories.

More and more people are getting a second chance at education. In their twenties, thirties, forties or older, they are enrolling in universities and changing their lives.

The ex-polys are particularly welcoming here. And, yes, a lot of people drop out. They find that keeping up the day job while studying, or finding time for essays in the middle of the chaos of family life, is just too much. Hence the apparently depressing drop out statistics.

But it's not all bad news, because a lot of people succeed. They work hard, they struggle, they make sacrifices. And maybe their families make sacrifices too. But in the end they succeed, change their lives and fulfil their dreams.

Half of today's successful actors spent large parts of their lives living on baked beans and hope while they refused to give up on their dreams. Meanwhile, others who found fame quickly and easily like Brooke Shields or Jerry Hall are going back to college to catch up on what they missed out on first time round.

We all have unfinished business, plans that spent so long on the back burner that they nearly went up in smoke. But there have never been so many opportunities for people prepared to work hard or risk everything to give their dreams a go.

So what are you waiting for?

Great to see so many scouts at the Confido gathering at Rainton Gate at the weekend. Particularly good that the weekend was a great mix of tough physical challenges and dance music. It's the modern face of scouting and shows that it's still at the top of the game when it comes to knowing what youngsters want - and need.

Walk tall - the good news courtesy of Oxford Brookes University - is that wearing high heels does your knees no harm at all and might even do them good.

But not - as once happened to me - when your 4ins stiletto gets stuck in an Austrian tram track at rush hour.

I wriggled out of the stuck shoe and then stood in bare feet, holding one black stiletto in my hands, while watching the other being run over by one of those double trams containing around 100 passengers.

It might not have hurt my knees - but it nearly broke my heart.

There used to be a popular chaos theory that went something on the lines of a butterfly beating its wings in a South American jungle would cause a tidal wave in Japan. How silly, we thought.

But then at the weekend, a tree touching a power line in Switzerland apparently managed to plunge most of Italy into darkness and chaos.

Or maybe, of course, it was that blessed butterfly again.

So Dirty Den's back. With those two words "Hello Princess" he could set EastEnders soaring again.

Coronation Street, meanwhile, in a bid for the ratings, is going for a gay kiss. Too little, too late - everyone else has been there, done that.

What they need now is a shadowy glimpse of a tightly buttoned coat, a tightly gripped handbag and a hairnet.

"A half of milk stout and no messing".

Now that would really send shivers up the spine.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/news/griffiths.html

Published: ??/??/2003