Choose a job you love...

'Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life'.

Lying awake the other night because of the stormy weather, I thought about this saying - which I've subsequently discovered has been credited to Confucius.

Does anyone actually feel like this?  Even if you really love your job, don't you still get fed up with getting up early, travelling, trying to book holiday at the same time your children are off school, dealing with office politics etc?

Then, still lying awake during the seemingly never-ending storm, I started thinking about what my ideal occupation would be.

As I love writing and music, I think it would probably be a music journalist.

In fact, if I had my time over, that's what I would like to be.

Getting paid to go to gigs, listen to music and review it would be my idea of a dream career.

But before anyone suggests 'it's never too late', bear in mind I generally fall asleep by half-past ten because I'm up at half-past six in the morning - hardly conducive to a rock 'n' roll lifestyle!

Reading Smash Hits when I was a teenager I admired the likes of Sylvia Patterson, Sian Pattenden and Miranda Sawyer - they got to meet all the big stars of the day, and it seemed a very glamorous life, a world away from my own.

I have to say, I really enjoyed the Retro music piece in last week's paper featuring famous musicians from Northamptonshire. 

Here's hoping the Temples album (complete with its picture of the Triangular Lodge) sells well - I thought it was great that they did a gig at HMV in Kettering, their hometown. 

There's a lot going on in the county musically now - so much more than when I was younger. 

Back then if you wanted to see big-named bands you had to go on a bus trip from Co-Op Travel on Newland Street in Kettering (or I think Discovery Records in Corby) to London or Birmingham - at least that's what my brother and I did. 

My first coach-trip concert was a-ha at Wembley Arena, he went to the NEC in Birmingham to see INXS (this was in the 1980s).

Now we've got big music festivals taking place at Boughton House this Summer - Alt-Fest and Greenbelt.

I'm just hoping that nobody gets these two events muddled-up, and turns up to one thinking it's the other - they really are a world apart both musically and culturally...