I may regret this...

Beth Orton once sang 'What are regrets? They're just lessons we haven't learned yet'. This line never made much sense to me until recently. I interpreted this literally, my understanding being that regrets were just things we hadn't got round to yet, which I knew wasn't true. I've regretted lots of things i've done in the past that couldn't be undone.

And these things are all pretty stupid and trivial.

I regretted sulking my way around a Tunisian castle as a kid only to realise when I got home that Life of Brian had been filmed in the very castle i'd been ignoring.

Whilst playing in the school band in the Efteling theme park, Holland, to a non-existant audience, I regretted saying (very loudly) 'If I was in a theme park I wouldn't be watching us', which lead to me getting evils from everyone else in the band.

On the same trip, when fronting our sixth form band I regretted singing something like 'I don't speak Hollish' and getting the finger from all the Dutch people in the crowd.

I regretted not taking socks out of my jeans before I throw them on the floor. This lead to me walking around Tescos a few weeks ago with a sock hanging out the rear of my jeans, like I had a smelly cotton tail.

I regretted getting smashed on Somerset Cider at Glastonbury 2003, making the Radiohead headline slot I'd been looking forward to for a year a complete blur. I regretted that the only memory I have of the gig was chastising someone who'd never heard a b-side they decided to play.

Amazingly the Radiohead thing actually really hurt me and I could never bring myself to watch the BBC footage and enjoy it. This was a band that i'd been obsessed with since their first (admittedly dodgy) album. 8 years later I had the chance to see them for the first time, at a once in a lifetime gig and I inexplicably got pissed and deleted the whole thing from my brain.

Anyway, enough embarrassment. I've only recently realised what Orton was harping on about, I'd simply not managed parse the the grammer properly. To paraphrase; If you're still regretting something, you probably haven't learnt your lesson yet. The thing you regret was a lesson in itself, and if that thing didn't happen, you wouldn't be the person you are today.

All of these silly regrets are generally quite funny, and everyone has done similar things. When I was telling some friends about the sock incident Jen and I were in tears, struggling to breathe through the laughter. Laughing that much and that hard has to be a high point in life and this would never of happened if my underwear hadn't been on display during the weekly shop.

So I don't really regret anything, mainly because I think it's all pretty funny and I have learnt my lesson - Stop being stroppy, engage brain before talking, consider that saying something you think is funny might be offensive to someone else, take your socks out of your jeans before throwing them on the floor and finally, live for the moment. Even if you don't remember the moment once it's passed.