It's never too late to learn. NIGEL JARRETT talks to three achievers who decided to have a go at something they'd always postponed . . . or thought was long beyond their reach.

JOHN LEWIS was the only candidate without a mother in tow when he turned up to take his first music exam. But then, he was in his early fifties.

Undaunted, he has progressed enough as a jazz player to have performed with his teacher in public.

The former Newport-based area bank manager had decided that learning to play the piano was something he would like to do on early retirement when he was working on a two-year secondment as a trust administrator with Gwent Police.

But at the YMCA examination centre in the city around 40 years after he'd last applied himself to music -- as a tentative teenage violinist -- he was a lone adult among a clutch of young hopefuls.

"I believe they thought I was a senior examiner when I walked in," said Mr Lewis, aged 58. "I'd gone there straight from the office wearing a suit.

"I was suddenly confronted with a grand piano and two young people marking me."

Mr Lewis had found a Newport teacher in Yellow Pages -- the much-respected Paul Green who, with his wife Christine, had been nuturing musical talent for many years.

Mr Lewis liked jazz and Mr Green was offering tuition in that branch of music, in which the academies examination board offers the chance to qualify. Of the five grades, Mr Lewis has so far passed four.

"I could read a treble clef -- one line of notes -- but I found it difficult having to use the left hand as well," he said. "I think if we were meant to read music vertically we would have been born with one eye below the other, not at the same level.

"We started with simple nursery rhymes, but because time is finite when you are retired I was playing two or three hours a day, learning scales again and making progress."

At Cardiff's Jazz Caf, he was persuaded by Mr Green to accompany him in a duet. Apart from the exam successes -- when having to improvise is like 'an abyss opening up before a skier' -- it was the biggest boost to his confidence so far.

"I really felt that I had achieved something," he said. "As well as the physical dexterity involved, you also have to concentrate and this is good for the brain.

"An old dog can learn new tricks even if he forgets a few of the old ones."

COMING from a sporting family, 59-year-old Annie Dibble has a fair chance of passing her driving test through sheer determination alone.

Her ex-husband Alan played soccer, her son is goalkeeper Andrew Dibble, currently with Wrexham, and her partner is former rugby player Brian Rowland.

She's had a provisional licence for about 30 years but has only begun learning to drive in earnest for the past two years.

Mrs Dibble, from Old Cwmbran, has worked all her life as an office secretary until three years ago when the firm she was with -- only her second employer in 28 years -- went into liquidation.

"I applied everywhere for jobs after that," she said. "I got one for 16 hours a week at Wilkinson's but I am suffering with osteo-arthritis in the knee. I think the difficulty of finding work is to do with your age. I've tried everywhere."

With time on her hands, she helps out with the rest of the family, like many over-50s. But she also wants to get around more quickly and more often, and the ability to drive is the obvious solution.

She's taking lessons with Cwmbran Driving Centre and since Brian bought her a car, she goes driving with him on weekends.

She has five grandchildren, two of them Andrew's children, who live away and whom she sees less regularly than the six-year-old twins and older child of her daughter Paula, who is busy running a bridal and evening wear business in nearby Victoria Street.

"What with looking after the children, getting the house tidy and cooking meals, I'm knackered at the end of the day," she joked. "When I go shopping with my trolley I feel like an old codger!

"But I love taking the children out and going shopping. I don't get out much in the week because most of my friends are working

"When I started taking lessons I used to panic. I hated changing gear. At Christmas I was panicking because of the amount of traffic on the road.

"But to go out driving on my own is my dream and ambition. I see all these cars passing outside and there's my car parked in front.

"I've never taken a test but it won't be long. I'm growing in confidence all the time."

ANNE HAWKINS is a busy woman but she's found time after retirement to try making her name as a writer.

Mrs Hawkins, 61, from Magor, worked all her life for the Civil Service before doing what all retired people do -- lead seemingly busier lives than they did while employed.

She researches family history, leads walks for her local Ramblers group and is county secretary for the Scouts.

During the last two years she's also written an 82,000-word novel, Sea Chemistry, based on her colourful family history.

It's been returned by the first publisher she sent it to (the fate of most first-time novelists) but it came with an apology and a note of encouragement.

"I've written on and off all my life but only seriously for the past four or five years," she said. "A couple of years ago I sent a few stories to a women's agency for a critique. It cost about £10. They came back, though if they'd been suitable they would have been sent on to the national women's magazines.

"The critique was positive, considering that I hadn't been writing long and didn't really know how to set out stories properly."

But her first success has come with publication in the excellent Welsh short-story magazine Cambrensis, and it's spurred her on. She's now started a sequel to the novel.

The first, which contains what she calls some 'very gentle raunchiness', is based on the life of her middle-class great-grandmother, who was descended from a naval commander at the time of Lord Nelson.

Her father was the local pharmacist -- hence the 'chemistry' of the title -- but she married a man who was the illegitimate son of a prostitute.

"In the book I try to fictionalise what this meant and what possessed her to marry a man aeons beneath her in Victorian terms," she said.

It's a question of fitting in everything else she does -- including attendance at two writers' groups -- with getting things down on paper.

"But I'm not conscious of the pressure of the time left to me," she said. "I feel I'm going to live forever!

"Of course, if someone published the novel I'd have the sense of something under my belt because they would probably want another couple from me."