By chance, this evening on my return from visiting a friend, I came across a copy of the Sunday Pictorial dated May 4th, 1924.

I was sorting through some of my many hundreds of spare leaves of paper with ideas of novels scribbled in frantic kohl pencil and eye-liner (most likely whilst travelling on a train and influenced by a potential character sitting opposite me); snippets of song lyrics barely legible - scrawled in spidery biro at an angle (the trademark of a midnight, mid-sleep flash of inspiration) and the unfinished lines of poems which awaited their completion (the curse of a spell of writers block).

I was sifting through these papers when I noticed the coffee coloured pages of an old newspaper. And what a delightful read it was. Before I knew it, I was engrossed. 2009 evaporated; its mist stealthily descending out of the open window into the night air, and instead, 1924 filled the room with the smell of my old gramophone rising from its opened lid mixed in with a little dash of Shalamar (the famous perfume being launched a year later in 1925; albeit a little early for the publication I was reading. But we shall ignore that here for the sake of nostalgia).

I was whisked happily, fondly, and oh-so-abundantly back into my own day and age. And here, for your delight and pleasure, are some of my favourites:

"Open Door to the Stage; The Actors' Association wants to make acting a closed profession. The abuses which it is desired to remove are, in no doubt, real abuses, but this is not the way of removing them. The stage cannot be put on a level with law and medicine. In those callings the unqualified charlatan could do infinite mischief before he was found out. An incompetent actor can do no particular harm, and we can protect ourselves from him by stopping away from his performances."

"Nuts And Wine: Gossip For The After-Dinner Hour."

"The suggestion that titles should be taxed has not been acted upon. From that quarter there will be no Sir-plus."

"A woman in America has shot her Landlady in order to get publicity for a book she has written. This is usually a certain way of getting oneself into the noose."

"I hear that a sixty year old brick layer has just gone in for writing poetry. Isn't he rather old to be starting work?"

And finally, an excerpt from Mary Pickford's article "Why I admire the British girl" which we can all take something from. I particularly took Ms Pickfords words to heart, and I rather liked the context in which she had written them. It is then , with the fervent optimism of which they inspired in your own girlgatsby this warm, summers eve, I present to you the words of Mary Pickford:

"Success, I think, is made up of three things - opportunity, ability, and what I might call 'stick-to-it-iveness', because it expresses more than the stately word perseverance.

Opportunity is rather different.

You can will stick-to-it-iveness. You can develop ability. But you must wait for opportunity. Only don't wait too long. It is like one of your London tube trains. It rushes into the station, and in a few seconds, it is gone. Only, unlike your tube trains, there is not a vital opportunity arriving to time-table every few minutes!

Remember that!

You wait for opportunity, but you must also seize it the instant it appears."

Thank you, Mary. One of those kick-up-the jacksie and 'remember to keep working hard at your goals' speeches.

So. On that note - from me to you - go, each and every one of us, and may we all throw our dreams to the skies and hope they find their wings to fly; and in the course of our lives keep eyes peeled and wide open for that opportunity, whatever it may be and whatever form it may come in; so that we might board that tube train to take us to our next destination in life.