Dialogue: Don't look at the might-have-been, it'll just get your goat

Don't look over your shoulder. It brings only grief. For behind us lies the land of might-have-been, irrecoverable, receding into the distance as the steamboat of time carries us out into the ocean of non-entity.

The coastline of might-have-been becomes a smudge on the horizon, then fades for ever into the limitless nowhere of the sea of middle-class middle-age. It is profoundly sad.

Such potential we had when we were young. Where did it go? For sure it has gone, faded liked smoke, melded indistinguishably into the bland air, and all our dreams gone with it.

When I look back I see a 7-year-old at a party. That boy was me and back then I knew stuff. I knew that life was a game of sheep and goats and I wanted to be on the side of whichever animal it was that won. On balance I fancied the goats. I still do. They have better horns, better digestive systems and they eat washing. Yes, I wanted to be goat.

The party was thrown by a fat boy to indulge his gluttony, and we all duly trooped along to glut with him and to play pass the parcel. I could glut with the best of them but I was better still at pass the parcel. I cheated.

I seized the parcel from girls before my turn. I hung on to it longer than I should. I tore at its wrappings with my teeth. There was a prize inside that parcel and I meant it to be mine. I was raw goat.

I won, of course. The prize came in a little box. I opened the box and found it empty. The prize was the box. But though the box had nothing inside it, I did. I had greed. I was goat. The goat burst into tears.

I hunted down the fat boy's fat mother and I wailed. She said the box was a nice box and that was that. She went away. I followed her. I followed her like a goat after washing. I wanted a better prize.

Whenever the fat mother turned she tripped over a 7-year-old in tears and Marks and Spencer sandals. With my undissuadable mix of persistence and emotional manipulation, I wore her down. She gave me a different prize. I have forgotten what it was.

But I haven't forgotten the attitude. If only I had retained such tenacity.

But it has gone, all gone. Today, crippled by fear, and an outmoded sense of courtesy and the needs of others and the wish to avoid a scene, I take what I am given. Today I would be more likely to say, "Oh no, don't bother."

Actually, I rather like the empty box. It is, if you like, a sort of metaphor for the hollowness of mere acquisition, a cross between a caveat emptor and a memento mori for the consumer society, don't you think?

Indeed, it is by far the best prize I have ever won. I am thrilled by my empty box. Please don't trouble yourself in the least about finding a substitute prize. I could hardly be closer to ecstasy.

I say, "What wonderful wallpaper. Did you stencil it yourself?" The years have taught me to lie. Back then I was all innocent honesty. Give, I said, and meant it, and stuck with it, barren of rhetoric, devoid of politesse. I was goat, all emphatic, imperative greed, and wholly admirable.

And it worked, of course. Contrary to all the pious nonsense of grandma and other defeated adults, he who asks does get, and he goes on getting and getting until he dies with a houseful of pass-the-parcel prizes in Parnell.

What could I not have done? With that rapacity and single-minded devotion to self, I could have been a chisel-faced banker. I could have cut deals and screwed the opposition, and trodden on fingers and found venture capital and been knighted for services to myself.

I could have animated advertisements for breakfast cereals. I could have talked glibly of quality-driven, client-focused synergy and pocketed the dosh.

I could have gone drinking with Vince Lombardi, and when he said, "Winning isn't everything - it's the only thing," I could have slapped him on the back and ordered another highball.

I could have reaped the harvest of greed and manipulation and all the other virtues that society rewards while it pretends to despise them.

I could have inherited the Earth. Oh, it would have been wonderful. But instead I got meek.

Where did I go wrong? Where is my goat of yesteryear? Gone, long gone. Too late, old boy - the saddest words in the English language.