Arriving
at “big school” is always a big step for any child but more so for a drip who
is the “baby” of the class, having been born in August which is close to the
cut-off point between the school years. So I was one of the youngest in the
class, if not the baby of the class.
I
have one memory from that time, my first year at Chigwell. The kids were
playing some early rock music in the classroom and because I had been brought
up in a strict religious household, I had been made to believe this was sinful.
So I cried.. and of course was ridiculed for that. Elvis Presley with his
gyrating hips gave my father apoplexy so anything to do with Rock ‘n Roll was
the work of the devil and his stainless little boy should keep his mind pure
with Purcell. Not Persil; that is a soap powder.
I was
not popular because I was a religious prig! That was how I had been brought up.
I remember once being punched in the face by a bigger boy who said, “Now let
Jesus save you!” Unfortunately Jesus didn’t respond with a bolt of lightning.
Anyway, we were inside a bus. I was also very childish when most of the boys
were being terribly male and grown up. Some of
them may have passed on by now. And I am still here... and childish (now, I would call it "girly"!), even at 75. You only have to look at the photos of me in my teens (which I hate) to see what a self-satisfied smile I had. No wonder I wasn't much liked. I like myself much more now, then I didn't like myself at all.
Academically,
I did well at school, 8 O levels and then at 18, I gained Maths and Physics at
A Level which enabled me to join the BBC which had been my dream. By contrast
many of my contemporaries went to university, in some cases to put off the
decision on what to do with their lives. Or maybe just to have fun! I knew what
I wanted to do. The photo below is of me after a cross-country run looking very
breathless - I had problems with breathing. I was always amused by what looks
like a discarded leg behind me!
I
haven’t written much about my time at Chigwell because it is all a distant blur
and maybe it wouldn’t be very interesting to you anyway. I guess I
wasn’t very happy, I had no real friends. At that stage in my life, I had no
clue how to make friends. I remember being caned by a master and also hit with
a slipper by a Prefect (one of the senior boys). Homosexual games between the
boys were quite common - the school was boys-only but I guess most of my
friends grew up to be happily married. Many people dismiss this period of
adolescence as a “phase”. I was on the point of being carried off somewhere to
be molested but the other boys seemed to lose interest and I walked away
unscathed.One event with a little irony was when in the changing rooms another boy put his hand up inside my shorts and threatened to grab my private bits, I am not sure what I was supposed to do to stop its progress. A couple of years later I was very keen on a girl from the local girls' school. And guess who ended up marrying her!
The girls from the school were all very beautiful to me but I had no idea what to do, I was so innocent! One girl who I was in love with allowed me to put my hand on the front of her jumper as a treat at my birthday party, that was about as far as it got till much later.
I was never told the facts of life. Friends at school circulated obscure facts which I didn't really understand so I was none the wiser. I had spots, really awful spots which destroyed any confidence I might otherwise have had with girls. I bought creams and TCP and was scared that my mum would find out. I had an orthodontic device to push my top teeth forward but it incorporated a plastic panel which fitted over the roof of my mouth, so you can imagine how garbled my voice was. And then my voice broke which added to my woes. But I was relieved about that obviously, I didn't want to spend the rest of my life hairless with a girl's voice!
I also went through a phase of repetitive obsessions, counting a set number of times, that kind of thing. But fortunately I got out of that.
Anyway, back to my school. One
old boy came back one day to talk to us about careers and he was cameraman for the weather forecast. Wow,
imagine that! The glamour! But it sold
me on TV and sound in particular because I was always fiddling with
loudspeakers and amplifiers, in those days using valves. There was a famous kit
amplifier called the Mullard 5-10 and I built two of those in order to have
stereo sound. I built a huge folded-horn speaker in wood.
I
never kept a diary, so the chronology of my story is a little mixed but it was
about this time, when I was in my teens when I had a traffic accident which
quite possibly changed the course of my life. The road running through Woodford
Green was the A11, it still is I guess but now there is a motorway, the M11
linking East Anglia with London. It was the main road carrying all the traffic
ultimately to Norwich. Even then, it was very busy and potentially dangerous as
I discovered. My friend Richard had lent me a bike with a small petrol engine
which, when lowered onto the rear wheel, drove the thing forward. In order to
turn into the road where I lived, I had to take a right turn in the A11 which
meant going to the middle of the road with hand outstretched. I would never do
that now on busy roads but that is way we were taught to cross roads and now I
always wear a helmet. Then, it was not so common and this was a bicycle wasn’t
it? Unfortunately a car coming the other way decided to overtake another car
and failed to see me till the last minute. It hit me head-on and my head struck
the road or the car sufficiently hard to fracture the skull and I was
unconscious for a while as I was propped up at the side of the road. I was very
disappointed that I didn’t go to hospital in what we used to call blood-waggons
with blue light flashing. Instead, ironically, it was the driver who had hit me
who drove me to hospital where I remained for a week with concussion while the
skull healed itself. When I returned to school, my friends said that I was
different and I was never sure if they were joking or not.
For
me the worst thing which certainly did change my life is that I lost much of
the hearing of my right ear where my skull was fractured. And for a boy
interested in sound, this was a major disaster and I got very depressed because
I could only hear low frequencies on that side. Over the years it has improved
and I don’t think about it now. But later it possibly affected my career in the
BBC because I became convinced I could never reach the highest level especially
as stereo sound for TV was being discussed. As you can imagine, the accident
could have been a whole lot worse.
My
parents, my father in particular, disapproved of my friend Richard. I always
remember him zooming down our road on his smart Vespa. I longed to have such a
machine but maybe I should have kept quiet. My parents took me at my word and I
clearly remember being woken on the morning of my birthday, the curtains were
drawn and there on the lawn was a…… NSU Quickly. It was a moped basically, with
pedals to get it moving and turned in the reverse direction for braking. It is
was often called NSU Slowly. A Vespa it was not. But of course my parents could
not have possibly afforded one of those. My heart sank into my boots, or maybe
slippers. I guess I would have been wearing slippers. I put on as good an act
as I could muster but after a few months, I part exchanged it for a small
motor-bike.
I was very keen on photography and took loads of photos of girls at the church youth club. These were innocent times so forget any ideas about the casting couch! I can't remember her name but we had lots of fun together.
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She really liked me and, I (stupid), only realised I liked her as well, far too late! |
Away from my academic life,
things were not good; lots of things troubling me. I felt a deep sadness inside
me which I couldn’t understand and of course I was entering the minefield
called adolescence without the equipment of knowledge because nothing was ever
explained to me about the facts of life either at home or at school. My parents
simply assumed that I would find out
somehow or other. But in fact I was too embarrassed to ask. I do remember
saying to my father when I was in bed that I didn’t think my penis was growing
properly. I assumed he would have a quick look and say, “That’s OK son, nothing
to worry about”, but he recounted being hit by a cricket ball in the balls and
reasoning that because I was in existence, then nothing was damaged. That is assuming
it was before my conception! So the bedroom light went out and I was still in
the dark. Actually I think he sent my mum up to talk to me but she was
hopeless. Maybe she didn’t know much either. Actually, they knew plenty! But I guess they were embarrassed to pass on what fun sex could be. At another time I remember being in the toilet and wondering what the two little balls inside a sack were for, but I never asked. I know now.
In
these days we are more enlightened, almost too much so with very young children
being exposed to information which they could not possibly understand, such as
being given the choice of being a boy or a girl. Understandably, young girl
Brownies would be a little disconcerted about sharing a bedroom with small
boys, albeit claiming to be girls really. Now it has gone crazy.
I was
into religion and attended bible classes called The Crusaders. And I went to church a lot and attended
Sunday school regularly – I still have the Bible which I was given for
attending 100 meetings. It is in very good condition but maybe that’s more of
an admission of failure in not using it rather than a pride in taking care of
it!
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A Crusaders Camp on the Norfolk Broads |
But I have an enduring
memory of my bible classes and a little red book which we boys were given.
Presumably the girls were at home helping mum in the kitchen. It listed all the
sins which we had to confess to God. One was, “did I have impure thoughts about
girls?” Of course I did, I met lots of them, beautiful young girls in the
church youth club. I took lots of photos. How is the human race supposed to
survive if young boys don’t have impure thoughts about girls? It didn’t say
anything about impure thoughts about other boys! This was an innocent age. And
the obvious sin in the book, probably in capitals and underlined in red (I
can’t remember), was that of self-abuse - what a spoil-sport the church was! So
I grew up under the distinct impression that church was the opposite of fun.
I
used to ask lots of questions as to why I felt so bad. I still do that but far
less these days because it is all fairly academic. I used to agonise over the
past too much, parents, childhood, religion. I visited psychologists and wasted
lots of money in the process. And for what? I’m still the same. Modern teaching
is to “live the moment”.
But I
was discovering girls, usually meeting them at the church youth club. And
falling in love. And I was very keen on photography, I still am. And I took
loads of photos of young girls from the youth club (hey, fully clothed). It
always used to amuse my mum to see the wet prints stuck to the inside of the
bath in order to dry.
But
it wasn’t till I was 20, the year President Kennedy was assassinated, that I
touched a breast for the first time. It felt rather strange, soft and squelchy
because the girl was quite plump. But I had very little interest in what went
on down below. I was introduced to Bobbie by a girlfriend who I was very keen
on but she had no interest in me. Maybe she thought at the age of 20 it was
about time I started to discover these things so she sent me along to Bobbie.
I
remember when I was much younger, I guess around 5 or 6 asking my mother about
breasts, “what are those for?” I can’t remember her reply, maybe she was
embarrassed. The logical answer would have been to say they were to feed me
when I was a baby! (I know that from her letters).
So
all my relationships up to the time I met my wife were chaste affairs, maybe a
little fumble but no more than that. One girl I was very keen on was a member
of the church youth club and we went on holiday together with four of her
friends who were couples. But my dreams of becoming part of a third couple were
frustrated, that was never on the cards. But the name of the town we visited
echoes down through the years because it pointed to where I would end up living
50 years later: Llafranc in Spain, in Catalunya. The Costa Brava was the dream
destination for us Brits a few years ago. Now of course people travel further
afield but Llafranc is still very popular with the British. And from my home in
Spain I can get there in 40 minutes instead of two days of endless tree-lined
roads in France with a grey choppy sea crossing to add a little excitement.
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Llafranc in 1963 |
Another
time, the boot was on the other foot and I went on holiday in a group and one
of the girls was very keen on me but I felt nothing for her. So it was a
difficult time for her.
I
also included a sheet from my father's note-book which he wrote many
years ago. He dreamt about going by train to Barcelona and worked out
all the train times. It is very touching because that is more or less
where I am now. So I made the trip for him. A little faster than he
would have planned and now, of course, we have a high-speed train all
the way to Paris and then through the Channel Tunnel to the UK. He would
have loved to have seen that!
I
write later about my time at the BBC from when I left school and how, with huge
regret, finally I decided it was not really for me. Or they decided I was not
for them! But how much of that was due to my impaired hearing? I will never
know. Maybe I was not a corporation man anyway.