My Early Years

I was born in London on 7th April 1954 at 07:30. I don’t remember anything about living in north London. When I was four my family and I moved to Solihull, West Midlands where I lived through all my school years till I was 17½.

I remember when I was a kid enjoying playing with meccano, electric trains, car racing tracks and bicycles which I used to build from bits I would find.

There are a few memorable things about my school years – well after I went to Big Boys School at 13 anyway. I went on two school educational cruises to the Mediterranean, visited places including Malta, Alexandria, Cairo & the Pyramids, Jerusalem, Dead Sea, Venice, Athens, Rome, Genoa, Dubrovnik, Antalya. I went on a school trip to Austria by train for a week’s skiing.

With a club I have forgotten the name of I went sailing on the Norfolk Broads for at least two separate holidays. I joined the school mountain-walking club and went on many day trips to north Wales to hike to the top of one of the mountains there.
I joined the school cadet force for monday afternoon every week and became a navy sea cadet. This taught me a bit about the navy and took me to the Portsmouth naval dockyard where we spent some time on board warships and a couple of times went to sea for a few days.

I joined the school sailing club and with the cadet force learnt dinghy sailing to a reasonably good standard. I did reasonably well at Maths, Engineering Drawing, Physics and Handicraft. Also studied English, Economics & Biology.

Outside school I used to go horse riding, cycling, and to the boy scouts. Out cycling with my school pals if I saw some woods or farmyards we used to go exploring and I would be keen to take my clothes off and get my school mates to do the same. And while away with the scouts at camp and other things I was always up for removing my clothes. I have no idea why this happened but it was fun to find places to take my clothes off and not get caught. By this age I was old enough to be left at home alone when my parents went out. As soon as they went out of the door I would get naked. Again I found it fun to do this and not get caught, there was always time to get dressed between hearing them arrive home in the car and when they entered the house. I never was caught.

After my GCSE's I went on to do “A” levels in Physics and Maths (although looking back I think I should have taken a year back to retake some of my GCSE’s again). Anyway it didn’t matter – a year into my “A” levels my dad suggested we go to the navy careers office to get a few brochures on what they have to offer. Well, I ended up having a preliminary interview and a few days later a full interview when I signed up. I never really thought about if I wanted this as a career.  For seven months till I was 18 I had the option to leave if I didn’t like it so I thought “try it and see how I get on”. A few weeks later I was off to Plymouth to start my navy apprenticeship. This was September 1971.