Gap Year

Mum brought me home after I broke down after three weeks at Surrey University. I was quickly coached into making the most of the year ahead and reapplying to another university the following year. 

I headed out to Newport to visit the job advice centre, and just before I reached it I bumped into my old boss from Somerfields, whom I had a Saturday/holiday job in my school years. We said hello, and it took an enormous amount of courage on the spot, in the moment, to ask if I could have my old job back, and to my amazement she agreed. Life lesson learned. If you don't ask, you don't get! 

I went back to my school to apply to another university for the next academic year. I had to physically go there as the UCAS application (recently moved from paper to an online form) was still anchored to the school's internal systems. Mr Thresher, the head of Year 6, was very helpful and practical. I applied for the course for Environmental Hazards and Disaster Management, which I had previously was given an unconditional offer, but had been put on the first application as 'my interesting choice'. Dad was very supportive of this course, while mum had expressed her reservations about not being very practical for finding jobs. I now realised that even if it was not practical then at least I would enjoy the course, and therefore probably do well, and something might stem from that. Mr Thresher also suggested more options open to me for the gap year, one of which was asking if I wanted to apply for a job as a learning support assistant at the school, as I had occasionally volunteered my time in upper sixth as a classroom assistant. He also introduced me to Camp America, a trip to the USA for several months being a summer camp counsellor, which sounded far too good to be true! I took the information home to study. 

I also applied to the Isle of Wight college to take up some extra studies. I can't remember if it was my idea or mum's encouragement, but the latter sounds more likely. I applied, with difficulty due to the lateness in the academic year, for a distance learning Environmental Science AS level. I was set assignments and I self taught nearly every evening.

I started working at Cowes as an LSA around November time, and only worked there for two months. I focused on positive encouragement and this helped my charge gain confidence. I was praised at the end of term, and told that I had been requested by Osborne Middle School to start as an LSA after Christmas for the rest of the school year. Looking back on it, school contracts seemed very flexible! I had a more challenging student at Osborne, who had dyslexia and behavioural difficulties, apparently he had burned through a lot of assistants. Me being a teenage 'man', it was thought he might respond differently. At first we were away from the classroom and I was private tutoring him. We focused on things he liked, for instance in a task looking at family trees, we drew one up for the Simpsons and cut out picture of them and stuck them in the right places. in the coming months we phased into lessons, and it was a case of two steps forward and one step back.  

I was working from 5.30am to 8am at Somerfield, opening the store and taking the early milk and bread deliveries, with the added task of looking after a DBS man who had severe learning difficulties, and was seemingly unable to retain any memory of the previous day. Then I would jump in my car and drive to school to work a day there, then come home, have dinner with my family, and then did an hour or two's environmental science study in the evening before going to bed and setting the alarm for 5am once again. On Saturdays I worked at Somerfied for most of the morning and on Sunday I played the organ at church - again, very much mum's encouragement there!   

Another push from mum was to join the East Cowes brass band. I didn't know how to play any brass instruments, but a cornet was thrust into my hands and I practised in the car in the garage. I never stopped being a novice. During the Town Hall Christmas festival there we were on Saturday morning, all on stage and dressed in Ulster Constabulary uniforms, ready to start playing. At the back of the hall, two policemen came in and pushed their way through the crowd to the front of the stage. I had an uneasy feeling for some reason. They came up and the band leader Paul W went to greet them. After a few words and glances, Paul indicated over to where I was...! They stomped over... in front of the entire crowd... "where were you at half ten this morning?"

I looked at them, with my green band uniform and holding my cornet, "Here..."  

They told me there were two boys running round town shooting people with a BB gun. Apparently one of the boys had been caught and he gave my name and address as the one who got away! The police had gone to my house on this information, and mum had told them where really I was and what I was doing, which is how they knew to find me! It would have been funny if it hadn't been so embarrassing.       

Mum arranged a skiing trip for us in February to the Italian Alps. Dad wasn't keen or really able to go, and Martin was still in school. It was a welcome break for me as the weeks were rather relentless with the early starts (even on the weekends) and late finishes. I really enjoyed the skiing, though I did slide backwards into a crater around the skilift support. Mum didn't help, but she did laugh and take photos. We went out to the bars for apres ski and happy hour. We even went on a snowmobile trip to some higher up chalets for some hot chocolate. I can't remember the destination but the snowmobiles were very fun!

After the ski trip it was back to work. Week followed week followed week of the cycle of early starts two jobs and home study. The darkness of the winter and spring months made it so much more difficult. This came to a head one morning when I snapped at one of the delivery drivers, who complained to the manager. The manager spoke to me about it and then called home, expressing that she was concerned I was taking on too much. They suggested I just let the DBS man sweep the yard, as he enjoyed doing that, rather than trying to get him to stack shelves. This seemed to help. Luckily there was not long to go before the end of term and the start of my trip to America.    

The Camp America experience was very enlightening. It definitely put me off looking after children for a while. I worked in Pennsylvania near Scranton, and went for three training days at Camp Timbertops. My job was helping kids making and launching model rockets, unfortunately there were no facilities to train for that there. I did meet a girl, Stephanie, and spent a couple of days with her, and again I was far too shy to make any sort of move, despite some of her signals. Then we travelled to Pine Forest Camp which was my intended destination for the next few months. I was a bunk counsellor with two others for fourteen very precocious tweenagers. My best time was when I was off duty and I spent time with the adults, particularly Jess S, the nature counsellor.  My time in the 'rocketry studio' were very bland. It was a basic workshop with tables and benches, and a store full of tiny engines, paint and model rocket kits. Some of the engines were very old, and these rockets exploded on the launchpad in a cloud of acrid black smoke.  Most of the time noone decided to come up. I did have a couple of regulars though, who developed more and more complex rockets as the weeks went by. I made a very tall rocket with 5 engines which went up and didn't seem to come back down, and one of the kids made a two stage rocket which blasted off once, reached altitude, and then the top section blasted off again! He jumped around so excited! I developed a good friendship with Ursula, a polish counsellor who helped with the dinners. Friendship seemed to be as far as most of my relationships go.

After working at the camp we were let loose to do as we please in the land of the free. I got the bus back to New York where I had booked a commercial trek down the east coast to Florida. I made some good friends on the trek. The highlights were clubbing in New Orleans, Disenyland and Universal Studios (we had a blind guest with us who got us 7 assistance passes... which felt more than a bit cheeky) and most interestingly ending the trek early due to Hurricane Francis bearing down on Florida, and we were evacuated to and disbanded at someone's house in Atlanta. I had little cash on me and had no idea how I'd get back to New York. Luckily I my credit card PIN came back to me in a dream that night! So I was able to make my way back via Amtrak to New York, spent the last week kicking around the city and came back home, exhausted and with bleach blonde hair.

I had a couple of weeks rest after that. I slept from 4pm to 10am the first night back. No job to worry about, no early starts, no studies. I had two weeks to unwind and readjust back to British Summer Time. This was a gentle, quiet time with not a lot going on at all. I met up with my friends at the Waterside in Cowes one last time in my gap year.

One memorable afternoon towards the end of my holiday at home, dad and I sat on the patio watching the skies darken ahead of a thunderstorm which rumbled over the mainland. In just a few short days I would be leaving the Island once more, for Kingston Upon Thames, to have one more attempt at university and to jump start my life of independence.

High School

I didn't enjoy the first three years of high school. I was short,  fat, and wore big glasses. Out of the three jumper colours (black, blue and maroon) I was the only one who chose maroon. Dad had also bought me a waxy Barbour coat, and a satchel like an oversized handbag, when all the other children had cool backpacks. I was the epitome of a high school dork and it was a miracle I wasn't picked on daily. 

The walk to and from school was about 2 miles. You would have thought that'd help me lose weight, but I sabotaged myself at the sweet shops en route. My waddling mass couldn't keep up with my friends in the first week or two going to school (especially up the hill in Cowes) but I eventually increased my walking speed. 

My first class was 9C, with Mr Clarke. I sat with my friend James F and reunited with my primary school friends, Andrew H and Charlie C, who didn't go to ABK. I spent time with the people I knew best and I was gregarious enough to make a few new friends, but I was very self conscious, especially because of my fat. One boy, Marcus, who was way down the spectrum, terrorised me through these first years. He followed me all the way home once. That really spooked me. One day when I had been feeling unwell, Dad had written a note to Mr Reynolds excusing me from PE. Unfortunately he had typed it on our brand new Windows 95 desktop computer, and although he had signed it, Mr Reynolds said dryly, "nicely typed", to which Marcus danced around the changing room chanting "Fatty forged a note!" to everyone, and then continued this all the way up to the top field. He may have even continued this in the following days, I can't remember . 

Despite the occasional run ins with Marcus, I was steady in class. I got involved in various things, such as the Newtown Science camp, organised by Dr Freytag and Mr Rana. Among our group were my crushes Christina G, and later Judith F (and later her sister Anna). I also got asked by one of the science teachers Mr Challoner if we in the astronomy club were interested in doing the astronomy GCSE! I got a C (which was the top grade for the foundation level paper).

 

My GCSEs were okay, it was a stressful time for all of us and we were told it would be the most stressful exams we would ever revise for. Perhaps because there was just such a broad range to revise. Mum often made sure we went though Letts revision books, it became overwhelming at times with her incessance in trying to get me to understand the next maths problem. I regarded her as being very much an expert at maths and I felt pressure to rise to her expectations. I got four A's, four B's a C, and a D. The D was for religious studies. I evidently wasn't convincing enough in my arguments. It was enough to get me into Sixth Form to do my A Levels, which was also at Cowes High except you could wear your own clothes!

When I turned 16 mum encouraged me to get a Saturday job. I had a very brief stint at the tea rooms of Osborne House, and then I got a job at Gateways just as it turned into Somerfields. I preferred stacking the shelves than working the tills, I was at too awkward an age to deal with customers! I particularly enjoyed working with my supervisor Ian, a confident middle aged man with a childish sense of humour. I was so excited to get my first payslip, it was only about a hundred pounds but I felt so rich! I also volunteered to work over Christmases and New Years, where I was offered triple pay!

I had a girl with a crush on me, Sam, who sort of went to the year 11 prom with me. She was South African, and was quite lovely. I was so flattered and excited when she asked me to dance after I tried to escape the dance floor when the slowies started, but I was too timid to do talk to her afterwards. I was terrified of girls.

Sixth Form was much more enjoyable. I was finally with a good set of friends, most of the more rough students had left, I had lost weight thanks to mum's summer boot camp and diet of leaves in 2001, and I was studying subjects I enjoyed - maths, geography, physics and english literature. Well, literature was the last on the list out of the choice of that, art or PE. It turned out to be my best subject, in which I got top marks at A Level! I'm apparently good at interpreting poems and soliloquys. Our teacher Mrs  Rooke was pretty fun too, like a loving grandma who shared with us a dry but gentle sense of humour. I didn't actually manage to read many books per se, but I did listen to them on audio cassette so I could at least write about them in the exams and it paid off really well!

On Thursdays I would get the bus with my friend Laurie W into Newport, as I had an organ lesson in the afternoon. We would sometimes get KFC. A small but regular little tradition which is probably worth a mention to remember. I was getting good at the organ by this time, having done concerts every year. In 2001 myself and a girl called Jenna M represented Yamaha Music Schools southeast in a national concert at the Birmingham Symphony Hall in front of three thousand people. We played Fanfare for the Common Man (the Emerson Lake and Palmer version). I was lead trumpet. It terrifying but brilliant!

I developed another crush, this time on Bonnie, one of my friends in sixth form. She was in my geography and literature classes. It started as a slight interest, but over time I became infatuated with her. Over the course of about 18 months I may have told one or two close friends, but everyone seemed to know eventually, so to avoid the rumour doing any damage I had no option but to finally confront my fear of rejection and take her to one side and aske her, heart to heart, if we could be together. She said she couldn't and gave me a big understanding hug. I like to think I took it in my stride. I still think about it 20 years later though.  

I got involved in a school musical, playing the electric piano in a jazzy production called "the Hat Stand", which is basically about a museum like mental asylum and all the hallucinations that the characters face. We rehearsed for months, as well as doing a few jazz numbers for the group itself. I was okay, but I needed a lot of direction and I couldn't improvise as well as the brass players. I felt like a bit of a fraud, but I was popular as I had just passed my driving test and I was able to drive all the girls home!   

I had no idea what I wanted to do after school. Mum usually managed to find faults in my choices. I wanted for a long time to be an airline pilot, but looking back it may have been a mix of the uniform, and the excitement of going on a plane as we went so infrequently anyway. At a school run careers interview which my parents also came along to, we discussed what I might like to look into. It was decided (but half heartedly by me) that I should aim for civil engineering, as "there's a big call for civil engineers". However I was reaching my ceiling in my maths and physics abilities and surging ahead with geography, possibly because of Bonnie's influence. Or more likely because the subject was simply more varied and interesting.

For my 18th birthday mum and dad let me hold a house party at home! They even helped me get in the supplies, and they stayed over at Cowes for most of the night! I had about 30 people round, and everyone was very well behaved. We all got very drunk though. The only thing missing from the house was the tea cosy which Luke W wore home as a hat, but returned it the following week. I woke up still drunk the next day, when I had an organ concert to play in! It didn't go very well... My foot shook all the way through Hymn to the Fallen. It was only after that that the hangover struck! 

I put in hours of revision for my A Levels, did the Letts workbooks, made hundreds of revision cards and got as stressed as anyone else in my year, as well as having a Saturday job. Mum took me round different universities, and they were all very nice but all very different. Not having experience of life off the Island made it difficult to judge which my favourite was. I opted for Cardiff, as it was a high ranking university and had the nicest facilities. Portsmouth was the worst, they had very few labs and the technical drawings on the wall were by students from the university of Brighton! 

I got A, B, D on my A Level exams (Lit, Geography and Maths). This was just little short of my university choice of Cardiff, but I did manage to get a place at the University of Surrey through the clearing system. 

I spent three weeks at Surrey University studying the foundation principles of Civil Engineering. A mix of being homesick and being out of my depth with the new maths and physics meant that I called home after three weeks in tears asking if I could come home. I had never been so ashamed of myself. I thought I had let my family and myself down. I felt I had no future. 

Little did I know that at the age of 18, with supportive parents, friends, and a willingness to do well, many doors can be opened. I consider myself very lucky to have had the opportunities that followed.

The Early Years

I was born at about 11am on the 23rd March 1985 at St Mary's Hospital in Newport on the Isle of Wight. The first thing I did upon my arrival was wee all over the doctor. After I was settled and wrapped in warm cotton blankets my mother held me for the first time, her first child. Dad was there as well, but I was his fifth child, so from day one he was the expert on what I wanted and needed as I developed through my childhood. 

I was taken home in our dark red Talbot Alpine, it was an old 1981 X-reg, and top of the range for it's time. We had that car a good number of years and was taken on all our holidays in it, until the late 90's when we finally gave it to the East Cowes fire brigade to practise cutting open.

The first few years of my life were the same as any other screaming child, being fed, being changed, and being spoilt by relatives. They also used to give me a bottle of cold tea instead of milk on occaision. My parents always new I'd be a little strange, as when I learned to crawl, I could only crawl backwards. It used the same technique to safely descend the staircase. I could go down, but not up. One of the first things I remember is falling back in my high chair and smashing through the glass door, and finding myself lying on the patio outside with shards of glass all around me. There is still a cut on my left index finger which is a tribute to that fall. Otherwise, I had a perfectly normal infancy.

I also have very early memories of my room (currently the 'computer room' or study). The wardrobe was next to the window, a changing table next to that, and my cot along the back wall. I remember the soft toys and clinging on to the bars crying out in the dark at night. I very vividly remember the light coming on and a frazzled mum squinting at me and wondering what the bloody hell is he screaming about now? I do remember mum not being very happy with me for waking her up, and how frightened I felt when she shouted at me. 

When I woke up the mornings I would scamper into my parent's bedroom and squidging my mothers nose until she woke up. 

I grew up an only child as a toddler. I was content playing with my toys, particularly wooden brio train set, which my maternal grandfather had supplemented with his own craftings. I also liked to dig around the garden and eat worms, which my parents quite happily let me get on with. I was quite happy to entertain myself. On Sundays, my mother always took me to church, St David's Parish with our resident priest Father Brian. She tried to bring me up to be Roman Catholic, much to my fathers objections who was a self proclaimed athiest. Until I grew older I didn't resist going, but I later became a bit of a handful. You see, when you take a restless child into a quiet boring church for an hour, you can guarantee that mischievous boys will wander around, especially if mum is praying and not looking up to watch where I am. One time I was wandering round and playing up. Mother was chasing me round the aisles trying to reprimand me, and as she caught me suddenly I bawled out for the whole congregation to hear, "don't hit me again mummy!" For some reason she decided not to take me to church as frequently after this incident.

I enjoyed, most of all, going into town with dad. This was after I greeted mum coming back from night shifts working as an A&E ward nurse by pressing my face and hands against the front door glass when I heard the car coming down the driveway. Mum would go to bed, and I would quietly play with my plastic car track or brio until dad was ready to go. We would walk or drive down to the shops in East Cowes, and then he would involve me by asking me where things in the shop were. If we had any lamb on the list he would announce that we need some 'la-a-a-a-amb' in a sheeps voice which I found very fun as a child, and is something I find myself doing even now. One day we were leaving Gateways (later Somerfield, then Coop) and there were roadworks outside. Dad asked me if I knew what JCB meant on the side of one of the excavators. I thought very hard about it, and after a few seconds I triumphantly said, "Good Big Digger!" After the main shop we would go to the delicatessen where dad would buy a roll for lunch and then he would take me to the 'Geraldine's' sweet shop for one treat. I would usually choose a twix, galaxy or smarties, but my favourite was crème eggs. Dad would put it in the shopping before we got home, then he would let me eat it in the living room where I continued to play with my trains and cars for the rest of the day. Halcyon days indeed.

On the subject of Good Big Diggers, I vividly recall a dream I had, where I was on my plastic red sit on bus, being chased by an excavator down the lane which lead to my school. 

I vaguely remember my first day of school. My closest school was a Roman Catholic school built next to a convent, run by a nun called Sister Marguerite. It meant I could be raised a catholic like my mother, her mother, and her mother before that. The prospect was terrifying for me. There was a stony road leading to the school and I remember falling over and cutting my knee, and this compounded my discomfort. When I got there I was a little nervous of all my other classmates, some of them seemed a little loud and imposing. I was quite shy at first but my confidence grew over a matter of days and I made a good set of friends. One of the first friends I made at the age of four was James, and despite a few moments of very bad history we are still very good friends at the age of 25. I remember our very first lesson at the school, with Mrs Higgins, we were told that the carpet in the story area was a magic carpet, and that the right word would make it fly. I watched all the other children before and after me go up and try their word to make the carpet fly, some of them shouting silly, ridiculous words and thinking it was a great joke. I was oblivious to the irony and really thought that the carpet was genuinely magical! I wondered for a long time after that day what that magic word was...

I was just coming up to my fifth birthday when my brother Martin was born. Mother was very ill during the pregnancy and I remember Dad scolding me aggressively for making noise which was distressing mum, who was extremely ill in bed. I remember going in to see her once and feeling very upset that she wanted to be left alone.

I remember being in class one, upstairs at Holy Cross, when Sr Marguerite the headteacher came to tell me that my baby brother had been born. I remember feeling so proud and excited that I had a new friend, and I felt an enormous sense of ownership. My next memory is like a bit like the needle skipping on a record, but I remember being in the maternity ward with Martin in a big plastic box on a trolley, and I felt upset that I wasn't able to see him properly or play with him straight away!

Martin's arrival did not make me jealous at all, I him more as a source of entertainment. Martin was a massive baby, weighing it at over 11lb, nicknamed by friends of the family as 'Bismark' after a huge German battleship. When he was a little more 'formed' Martin was strapped into a bouncy chair which mum left on the floor for most of the time so I could interact and play with him. I enjoyed the way he laughed and giggled when I springed his bouncy chair, so I springed it harder and harder until it flopped completely over, sending my little newborn brother flat on his face with the chair on top of him. I ran off crying, terrified that I had killed him, but Martin just kept on giggling, mother eventually discovered him and turned him face up again. Another time I exploited my brother was a little while later, mother had taken a chocolate sponge she had baked from the oven on to the counter to cool. Martin was in his bouncy chair gurgling away to himself with a stuffed blue dog. Not long had mother left the room I pulled up a chair and took a large handful of chocolate sponge and pushed it into my mouth. I heard mother descend the stairs so I pushed the chair back under the table and stood innocently in the middle of the room. Mother exclaimed, "Who's been eating the chocolate cake??!" Wide eyed and mouth smothered in chocolate, I pointed at Martin fastened to his bouncy chair and shouted accusingly, "HIM!".

My favourite holidays were visiting my grandparents on the mainland. It was always an adventure going on across on the ferry once a year and drive for hours on the motorway, watching all the cars, lorries and motorbikes overtake us. Mother took us to see my maternal grandparents in St Albans, though they were separated and lived apart, we stayed with Granny. She became known as 'Granny Poorly Arm' due to an incident where she fell and broke her arm and had it in plaster round about the time I was learning to speak. I think it was mother who came up with it as a joke, but it has now stuck like that forever. We often visited my cousins and aunts and uncles who lived nearby. I most of all loved going to see Nanny Iris, my paternal grandmother, in Woking. I loved the smell of second hand smoke in her house, as I always associated it with so many happy memories. She had a cat called Tinky, and although I was allergic to every other cat, Tinky was a long haired cat and I was absolutely fine with her. Iris had a lodger called Frank whom I really enjoyed spending time with. He always used to offer me some of his Rich Tea Biscuits, which I didn't otherwise have, hence they became known to me and soon everyone else as 'Frank's biscuits' wherever we were! We didn't visit my paternal grandfather much, Grandad Ron who lived in Cornwall, but he always came for exactly 10 days every summer and always brought me a styrofoam aeroplane to chase around the garden. I always looked forward to his visits. For Christmas Grandad Ron sent Martin and us a cheque for twenty pounds, as he could never remember birthdays so he sent it all in one go. When Martin was two he managed to get hold of a pen and write two more zeros on the cheque. To give him credit, he has been consistently thrifty ever since! On this occasion though dad had to destroy the cheque and ask for another one!

We had a lovely next door neighbour called Winnie. She was a retired widow who used to come round for a cup of tea and a chat every week, and more often than not we had her round for Sunday dinner. We used to play board games, and my favourite was the Game of Life. I always managed to engineer it so that I got to University and live in a mansion, and mum and Winnie always had a car full of kids, and generally wound up at the mental institute. Winne considered by Martin and myself as a grandmother. She always used to babysit for us. Martin and I used to play games in the living room in our pyjamas while Winnie watched Coronation Street, and we all shared her box of ginger chocolates she accepted as payment for looking after us. She would occasionally let us stay up past our bedtime, but only for about half an hour.

I was mischievous in primary school, often in tandem with James F. I don't necessarily remember exactly what I did, just generally shouting and being over excitable. I do remember sitting on the cold wooden benched outside the staffroom with James ready to be told off by Mr McShane or Sister Marguerite. We eventually got so accustomed to this that we just ended up using this time to swap Thunderbirds cards. My other friends were Charlie C, Andrew H, Matthew S, Joshua, the twins Alex & Daniel, Beth D, Christina G, Victoria F, Lottie O'S, Jo Jo D, Jack and Thomas. We had a school trip to York in 1994 to see the Viking settlements. I remember having a stomach bug on the way back to the hostel and having to run ahead, but getting caught short and having to dive into the bushes, watching crocodile march past as I squatted deep in the trees. I was also guilty at that age of teasing a boy with Down's Syndrome. I didn't understand the disability at the time, and got severely reprimanded from Mr McShane, who firmly poked me in the chest while he shouted at me on the grounds of the hostel. I was absolutely terrified of him, but I remember him apologising to me in school for it the following week, so I suppose he realised I was only young and excitable - and his reaction was over the top. Another teacher I feared was Mrs Short, who was a large, gruff woman who I was certain her only existence was to make my life a misery. One day I had lost a workbook and remember laying in my bed one summer's evening worrying about her reaction, being too afraid to tell dad because I was worried sick that I wouldn't be allowed to go swimming with the class if I couldn't find it. I don't have any specific memories aside from her tortoise, Speedy, which she occasionally brought into school when it wasn't hibernating.

We also went swimming as a school, but the memorable parts weren't the swimming, but the small sweet I used to buy from the vending machine at the end, and the bus ride back to school, and resting my head on the window which used to shake a lot. Quite painful really. There was also the trips to the ice rink where we were all taught to skate. I found the skates painful but I got to a reasonable level and can still skate to a certain degree. Father Brian, the local East Cowes priest who was also associated with Holy Cross used to come along too. He was an expert and often showed off his spins and jumps, it was so funny to watch and seemed so incongruous!  

As soon as we got to Archbishop King Middle School (years 5-8, the Island had a different school system than the rest of the country) I mellowed. I was back to being a small fish in a big pond, and thus became a bit if a teacher's pet, as my teacher Mrs Barber seemed easily impressed by everything I did. My classes were 5B (Mrs Barber), 6K (Mr Brofhoski), 7H (Mr Hodd) and 8W (Mr Wheeler).

I walked from home to the bus stop on Well Road opposite the Spar Shop (which did very well out of us) and caught the single decker bus to school. The rough girls always sat at the back, and we sat in the front, the driver always stopping to shout at us if we pressed the 'stop' bell. The radio on the bus played the top songs in the charts which engrained themselves on me, which is why I have a burning nostalgia for late '90s music. In year 6 I was found to be short sighted and was prescribed spectacles, so I looked even more of a geek. I still had a good circle of friends and we enjoyed playing general practical jokes on each other and chasing the girls, as boys generally do. My friends then were Tom I, Ben W, Stephen K, Harry F, Jonathan S, and of course James F.

In year 6 we had a school residential trip to Holland, it was the first time I'd ever been away from my family for any length of time and it was so exciting! We were taken to tulip farms, a cheese making farm, and saw lots of windmills on the way! The highlight for us was probably a miniature legoland type village which we were taken to at the end of the trip, as well as a water park which had the highest flumes in Europe. I went on this flume and was unware that a good portion of this was a steep vertical drop! I thought I was drowning, before I was propelled round the U-bend and banged my head on the way round! I bought my parents a souvenir, which was a plastic windmill thermometer holder. It was gold and shiny which was what sold it to me!

I enjoyed the hot summer fetes at ABK, putting a penny on a gridded Isle of Wight and winning a glass of glass beads. The music room, where I got my inspiration to play the keyboard and later church organ playing from Mr Nash, who gave us a synthesised rendition of "All Heaven Declares". Mr Brofhoski was a very stern teacher and was very generous in giving out credits, merits and detentions in equal measures. Health and Safety week and Economic Awareness Week were opportunities to get hundreds of credits and merits, play games and generally enjoy time off the normal timetable. I also remember dictation with Mr Brofhoski quite strongly.  Tragedy hit the school mid way through when my classmate Mark Channing fell from a skylight of a disused building and died. He wasn't in my friendship group but it was still a massive shock. Our school held a memorial service.

It was while I was in year 5 (about nine or ten years old) that we nearly lost dad to his failing heart. He had become very ill after three heart attacks in about ten years. He had been on the waiting list for a heart transplant for months, and now he was starting to fade. Mum packed me and my brother off to St Albans to stay with granny over the Easter holiday, so that dad could be properly looked after in the hope that a heart came available, or at the very least (I suspect but never had it confirmed) made him comfortable and let him pass away at home. One morning Granny burst into my room, waking me up, excitedly telling me that dad had had the heart transplant. It felt so unreal, I was relieved and amazed that I had been given my dad back. I was out in the garden looking at the sky, and thinking that everything was amazing. Dad would be okay! 

Also at the age of 10 I expressed an interest in learning a musical instrument. Mum took me along to Yamaha Music School, and I learned to play the organ. Mum had done it with me, but plateaued after around a year, but I continued to go every week for the next eight years.

We also had a family holiday to Cyprus. It was October or November and getting off the plane at night in such unusual heat was so exciting for me and my brother. We shared a room in a self catering apartment mum and dad had booked. They also hired the services of an elderly Greek woman and her mother who looked after Martin and I in their apartment while mum and dad had an evening out. She kept offering us food, telling us to eat up, eat up. I was genuinely frightened that she was fattening us up to eat us. This holiday was also the first time I ever went snorkelling. We went to a local pool to practise, and then spent time in Limassol, feeding the fish with bread (not allowed to do this any more). I also found a handle of an amphora, possibly ancient. Dad took me to the local police station to get permission to bring it home, as it was possible I would be in trouble for removing articles of historical interest from the country. They said it was okay, I reckon they had plenty of bits of old pottery! 

We also got our first home computer in the nineties, I think about 1997. The windows tune, the internet dial up noise, Encarta '95 and a safari CD rom were the height of technology - I used to brag that we were the proud owners of a Pentium II! Our first favourite games were Chip's Challenge, a Skiing game, and a ground breaking flight simulator game TFX (Tactical Fighter Experiment). I used to record the synthesizer soundtrack on a tape cassette (recorded through a small microphone pressed against the tiny tinny computer speakers) and listen to it in the bath!  Many thanks to Martin for reminding me of this. He used to play Microsoft Flight Simulator. Grandad Ron, who used to be a radio operator and navigator in the RAF and later commercial flights, tried to teach him how to fly properly. Martin then took his Boeing 737 and do a barrel roll under the Eiffel Tower. "That's not flying, that's just reflexes!" exclaimed Grandad. Martin laughed so hard.