Lincoln School

Secondary School was Lincoln Boys Grammar School. I, along with 6 others wore shorts for the first year, before I got long trousers!! I was still in the same class as Charly and we also had another friend Richard Thornhill. I enjoyed school and always did my home work in an organised manner and was always around the middle to lower third of the class but never bottom. We had each lesson in a different class room, assembly, pe and football rugby cricket for each of the three terms. Later hockey was an option, but they usually mad me play rugby. There was also an outdoor heated swimming pool. I continued to be a good swimmer and represented the school and the county one time. I was school swimming team captain eventually.

I had a French exchange with Michel Chemineau. I went to Paris for a week of school then 2 weeks of Easter holidays on the West Coast at Aguillon sur Mer. I was very quiet but absorbed a lot of French. We fished each day for fish for our tea, and never had the same thing twice, apart from oysters which appeared each morning in a bucket ready for washing and shucking.

Charly Richard and I joined the Lincoln Velo Club and went on club Sunday runs and started doing ten mile time trials. I was never very good, but I enjoyed it. The 3 of us would cycle all over together on training runs and sprint for village signs and post boxes around town. We do short circuit road racing. I enjoyed it all but never came close to winning anything. I continued cycling into adulthood.

We had fantastic holidays as children. We owned 2 campervans. A Morris J4 van followed by a Bedford C4. We had long summer vacations in France and one year toured into Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Holland. We also had caravan in the south of France.

I completed and passed 9 ‘o’levels with medium grades, followed by 3 ‘A’ levels in Maths Physics and Chemistry and got a place at the University of Surrey studying Materials Technology with French. I would still be 17 when I went to University. I was too young looking back and should have had a gap year, but they hadn’t been invented then. Charly stayed to do Cambridge entrance exams, which was in effect a gap year. That didn’t seem to be an option for me, even though I got better ‘A’levels than him. We had grown apart somewhat in the 6th form.

I went up to Universtity and that summer my Dad’s job moved him to Coventry so home moved to Kenilworth.