I wrote earlier that I had been born into a family experiencing very much reduced circumstances due to the demise of my father’s business some eight months previously. My brother, some five years older than I, started school rather late due to what I understand was a problem with his legs. Since he had missed so much schooling my mum decided that he should attend the local grammar school as a fee-paying day boy. This must have been a considerable strain upon the family budget, so much so that it seemed imperative that I pass the entrance examination for a scholarship if I were to gain access and receive a decent education.
Although I was considered to be a bright boy, the youngest in each year at junior school and also a year ahead, there was certainly not much stimulation educationally in the home and to make matters worse I was also dubbed as being somewhat educationally lazy, probably because I was under-stimulated. Riding my bicycle occupied most of my spare time. I was quite small for my age, but I could outstrip any of my peers on my old, second-hand, Alldays and Onions manufactured push-bike. I had spent quite a large sum of money out of my savings to have it stripped down, completely rebuilt and the frame re-sprayed black; it was my pride and joy.
I was duly entered for the local grammar school entrance examination at 10 years of age and on the morning of the examination, just before leaving the house, my mum decided that we should pray, presumably for success. We knelt and mum prayed. I don’t remember what or how she prayed. I remember that I was not too happy about this, not because I had not worked hard, or because I had been coached by an uncle who was a senior master at one of the country’s top grammar schools, but because I considered it too simplistic. Yes, I did believe in God, very much so, but if He did answer all our prayer requests then why bother to work hard at anything, or even work at all for that matter, just ask! The concept did not make sense to me at all. It was many years later that I learned about a ‘Prosperity Gospel’, a concept which I still reject but now, on what I believe are Biblical grounds.
Well, you have probably guessed it, I failed. The general thinking at the time was that there was a quota system in operation and being so young I could always resit the exam the following year. In the event, rather than stay on at junior school and move up to the top class, I went on to one of the first Secondary Modern schools to be set up in the country. The school was a new purpose-built one and had been open for some two or three years.
My time at senior school was OK I suppose. I didn’t excel at anything, actually I don’t think there was particularly anything to excel at. I was the youngest in my year and in the ‘A’ stream, but apart from that I have no recollection of learning much at all. I can remember woodwork classes, physical education (probably because of the cold showers) and playing the violin in the school orchestra. It was when I was due to enter my final year that I realised I was soon to leave school without any recognisable qualification. There were none on offer and jobs were in short supply, more especially so as I was the last in my whole year at day school to leave. In fact, in the last couple of months I was the only one attending and became, de facto, Head Boy. So, I enrolled during my final day school year at a Technical College in a town some six miles away from home. I attended for five evenings each week gaining five distinctions in Royal Society of Arts examinations, the equivalence, I believe, of matriculation.
Later, I also, through contacts of my mother, obtained an apprenticeship with a local engineering contracting company. My Friend in the photograph was about three years younger that I and when he stood up straight, we were both about as tall as each other. My first day at work was spent in a basement working on a new compressor system. The pipework was 2 and a 1/2-inch diameter steel steam piping. I was so small that I could hardly pick up the stocks and dies, let alone use them to cut threads on the pipework. I did however have an amateur boxer who was some three years older than I who looked after me and helped me out, other than that I was expected to ‘pull my weight’ and I was determined to do so. However, I did have one advantage in that my smallness allowed me to access places that no one else could so I became a valuable member of the ‘Team’. Nevertheless, I enjoyed working and studying for an Ordinary National Certificate in Electrical Engineering and subsequently for a Higher National Certificate. I also developed some hobbies experimenting with radio, building my own crystal set and eventually one and two-valve radios. I made friends with a TV repair technician and together we experimented in radio transmission, quite illegally I might add, and at a frequency just below that of the local police. The rationale was that we were less likely to be discovered that way. Much later I picked up the hobby while in Papua New Guinea obtaining an Amateur Radio Licence while in the USA, a reciprocal licence in PNG and finally an advanced licence when returning to the UK – call sign M0GGT .
I persuaded my parents to allow me to remove the town gas installation from our house and replace it with a modern electrical system. I also took on a few electrical contracts of my own. I was becoming quite entrepreneurial until it was almost found out what I was doing when a company representative for submersible pumps tracked me down. I was working at the time on an underground gasification research project way out in the countryside, so my meeting, fortunately, went by almost unnoticed. Questions were asked but I managed to deflect them seemingly successfully. This personal project was to be my first major contract which involved sinking a bore hole for a farmer friend and installing a submersible pump some 100 or so feet below ground. I would be about eighteen at the time.
I was fortunate with my apprenticeship in that the company I started with, the principal was a fuel technologist, was engaged in specialist contracts rather than run-of-the-mill stuff. However, within twelve months of starting with them, they secured a contract for the whole of a housing estate in a city quite some distance from home. The whole of the company personnel were to be engaged on this project and move into lodging but as I was considered too young, not to mention that my studies would be seriously interrupted, I was transferred to the local area Electricity Board to continue my apprenticeship. Looking back, I believe this was of the Lord’s providence too in that rather than finding myself potentially locked into domestic wiring installations I completed my apprenticeship on a wide variety of electrical installations. I was also able to continue my studies for the more academic national certificates on day release rather than those, if any, normally taken by craft apprentices.
At this time, I was attending, with my mother, a brethren assembly. Some of my radio activities would have been frowned upon if known since listening to the radio was regarded as being ‘worldly’, but Mum, while devout, was also wise and did not discourage me. As I would often fall asleep at night wearing headphones while listening to broadcasts on my ‘home brew’ radio equipment she would gently remove them and place them carefully among a mass of components of various sorts.