I was born in the middle of an air-raid with my first yells competing with the sound of air-raid sirens and anti-aircraft fire. The fact that this occurred in Kent, in the strategically unimportant Garden of England, whose very name implied a certain bucolic gentleness, seemed lost on the Luftwaffe, who regularly deposited bombs, doodlebugs and burning aircraft onto it, when they were not enjoying themselves, machine-gunning cows, sheep, empty fields and the odd hop-picker. Somehow my father survived the war, despite both Allies and Axis laying considerable odds against that happening and so I had the good fortune of having been brought up by both of my parents but also with a brother, which of course, unfortunately, meant sharing.

I spent a great deal of my childhood reading, which of course made Christmas and birthdays easy for my family. They simply had to get together and remember which book they hadn’t already bought me. I also spent my time listening to a radio (there was no television to begin with until Mrs A just up the road got one on Hire Purchase and the entire street queued patiently to have a look). The advantage of radio was that it both stimulated the imagination and allowed you to tune into a whole host of exotic places around the world, so developing a sense of adventure and curiosity (and geography).

At the tender age of eleven plus, I passed what turned out to be a life changing exam and found myself complete with school cap, uniform, hymn book and a shiny new satchel in a 1950s grammar school where I was assaulted daily with lashings of schoolwork, discipline and rugger. The teachers wore gowns, carried canes (which they used whenever the mood took them) and the boys doffed their caps in the presence of their elders and betters. It was stultifyingly narrow, socially exclusive, but gave the few boys lucky enough to be there, an entrée into the academic world of the university and the professions. I had however discovered English Literature and the beauty of the English language. So, thank you for that school.

 

BA(Hons) Graphic Design and Liberal Studies (first class honours)

CNAA Post-graduate Certificate in Education

 

So, accordingly, I left, post sixth form, academically successful, and began work with a gang of Irish labourers on a building site… and so my education really began. I was curious to join in with the real world (as the blisters on my hands soon indicated) and rapidly discovered that there, my ability to decline Latin verbs was of little value. But social skills, hard work and determination were. This was a world where you were regarded for who you were and not what you knew.

It may have been that radio and all those exotic place names or the fact that my father had been something of a hero (amongst heroes) in WW2 (he had been one of the first Allied soldiers to crash-land behind enemy lines in a flimsy glider on the eve of D-Day, 1944) that convinced me to make my next move. By now, I had promoted myself from labourer to the role of gardener and junior grave-digger (as well as seasonal fruit and hop picker) and one lunchtime, found myself volunteering to join the Parachute Regiment of the British Army. I won’t bore you with the selection process, except to say that of my intake, sixty per cent failed to make it. So, I became a fully-fledged paratrooper, serving my country for a year in the mystical deserts of the Middle East and later in a rather bloody civil war in Cyprus. And, not only did I keep a diary, but I began to write. Write home… about a strange, mysterious and at times potentially life threatening world, whether from thirst or bullets. About the spiritual beauty and isolation of the desert and mountains, of the people and later of abject fear and hatred and terror. And my mother kept all my letters. Of course she did.

 

1^st Battalion Parachute Regiment. Served in Europe, Middle East and UN Peacekeeping Force, Cyprus (UNFICYP). Awarded UN medal and Cyprus 64 campaign medal.

 

Three years later, I found myself in England again, a civilian, with the strange urge to settle down. I applied to a college, became an art student and then a graphic designer based in London. (Very exciting in the 1970s).

 

Senior Designer, Royston Cooper Design Consultants.

Design Consultant, Edco International.

Managing Director, Zurcourt Group.

 

Later, I took those skills and became a Course Leader and Principal Lecturer at the University for the Creative Arts, giving me the opportunity to pass on my knowledge and experiences to young people. (Also, more travelling, this time to exhort the advantages of the English University system in Europe, Africa, Far East). It was now, that I also first became involved in the professional process of writing by having research papers published. A very specialist form of writing but I can still remember the thrill.

 

Course Leader, HND Graphic Design/Illustration.

Industrial Researcher/DES.

Member of Design Education Group/ Chartered Society of Designers.

Curriculum Development and Operations Coordinator.

Moderator for London Open College Network.

The Language of Assessment. Published by Centre for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design (cltad). Presented at International Conference, Barcelona.

 

Then, I took early retirement. Retrieved the bucket list that I had made out when I was eighteen, ticked them off - OK I wasn’t going to play football for England now – bought a saxophone ( a wonderful 1947 Buescher, with a case that when opened smelled of fags, mould, weed, sweat and passion) and decided to become a writer. That seemed to summarise everything I had ever done.