Growing Up - The Teenage Years

The next stage of growing up came in 1975 when I was 11 and we moved house, at the same time I also moved up to secondary school, and lasts until I was 18.

I was devastated about the move, I loved the old house and it being next to the park. The fact was that I now had 3 younger brothers and we needed a bigger house.

The new house was on the other side of the same town. It was quite a large semi with a big front and

back garden. It was totally run down and needed a lot of work doing before we could even move in. I remember helping with a lot of this work. There was an old air-raid shelter in the garden which had to be filled in as it flooded. I also remember knocking down walls of 3 rooms to make a large kitchen. It was a great kitchen where we spent a lot of time, particularly family meals. I had a nice bedroom to myself. We had to do a lot of work on the garden and I remember chopping down trees and digging up roots. There were some great apple trees and a good damson tree, we had a lot of fruit, and we build a tree house in the damson tree. We used to play cricket in the garden and I also remember building a lot of obstacle courses.

After about 3 years in the new house we had an extension built. This gave us 2 more bedrooms, one of which I moved into, and a games room downstairs. We had a table tennis table, a small snooker table and a dart board.

I moved up from cubs to scouts, who met in the local scout hut. I remember doing a lot of scout activities in the Hall park which was next to the scout hut. The scouts were tied to the local St Mary's church and we used to go to parades at the church. Peter Clarke (from Junior school) went to scouts and he and his brother Jonathan went to the church youth group, I started to go along. The youth group, the YPF, met after church on a Sunday evening, at the church hall. They also met during the week for activities at the Highfield Road Baptist church. I made some good friends at YPF, particularly Richard Espin, who lived around the corner from me, so we always used to walk home together. Richard and I shared a love for the greatest album ever made The Wall by Pink Floyd.

There was always a lot of parties and events happening around YPF and I remember a lot of the 80s music (Ultravox, OMD, Wham etc), I also remember the Christian group, After the Fire, whom we went to see in concert, in London. I also went on 3 YPF holidays, 2 in Wales and 1 in Yorkshire, which were very good. We also went to the Christian music festival Greenbelt a couple of times, it was quite a diverse festival and I remember seeing U2 and Cliff Richard. I also remember sitting up all night outside of the tent of my wife to be as I didn't think it was safe to be asleep in a tent on her own.

There were quite a few different groups of friends at YPF, mainly based around the different ages.  Our group was Richard, Jonathan, Peter and Me. There were also a group of girls that we used to get on with Debbie Andrews, Jackie Bailey, Rachel Clark, Phillipa Branford and Rachel Jones. Being the age we were there was a lot of interest between the various members of these groups and a few went out together at various times, although I never had a girlfriend ever (I did ask Jackie out once, on a Christmas Eve but was turned down), although you'll see what eventually happened at the end of this blog entry.

I watched a lot more tv during this period, a; there was a lot more on for kids and b; I was getting older so was allowed to stay up and watch more. I remember the start of Saturdays Multi-coloured Swapshop and Tiswas. I remember Blue Peter after school, and also the wonderful Grange Hill. I remember Saturday evening tv with game shows like The Generation Game and 321, and entertainment shows like Seaside Special. I will do another blog entry about tv shows.

  

I remember listening to the chart show on the radio each Sunday in the spare room around my Nan's, putting together mixed tapes from the radio. I also remember watching TOTP each week. I especially remember Grease when it came out and all the songs from it.

I was also now at secondary school, Rushden Boys Comprehensive. The school was a few miles away and I used to either cycle or walk there. It was a large boys only school, our year had about 9 classes, I was in stream 2 for nearly everything except maths were I was put up to 1. I was very

average at school, finally ending up with B/C grades at GCSE's. I was quite good at maths, I liked art (and was quite good at it) and design (I was very good at technical drawing!), I liked PE (although was only average), later on I loved computing. I remember school dinners in the hall, I loved the spotted dick pudding.  I do remember reading various books in English, the War poets, Graham Green and particularly The Hobbit. I was a bit of a nerd at school, I used to produce posters for the History department during the lunch break (earning credits). I was a member of various nerdy school clubs, the chess club (I remember getting thrashed in my games when we played against the girls school), the stamp club (I used to collect stamps), the railway club (of which I was treasurer, we had quite a good model railway set up in our spare bedroom, I also a briefly dabbled in train spotting and once in a summer holiday I remember a

few of us had unlimited railcards and went around the country watching trains!), the board games club (I was very good at board games and won the L'attaque competition beating some 6th formers) and, later on, the computer club (see separate blog entry about Computing). There were a few of us who liked board games (my old friend Dominic was one, another was Patrick Downs and there was the teacher who ran the board games club Mr Hughes) and we would meet outside of school to play longer games, we played Diplomacy a lot, I was very good at it, and we also played War In Middle Earth, a Tolkien game, which was excellent and started me on the road to Tolkien collecting (see other blog entries). I did not really have any friends at school, I was a bit of a loner, my friends were all from YPF. There was a bit of a bad time when I was in the 5th year, I got bullied by a group of kids. It started when I went through a door which banged into a thug kid who was coming the other way, he tried to make a big thing of it but I wouldn't get involved, from then on, every time he and his group saw me he would try to start something, he even punched me once, I spent a lot of time trying to avoid him.

Most of the holidays in this period were with the youth group. There were also a few family holidays to holiday camps, some on Hayling Island and one to the Isle Of White which was particularly

memorable. I was a tall lanky teenager at this point. I remember going to Blackgang Chine and the Needles. We went along to a table tennis exhibition and, at the end, they asked if any kids wanted to have a go, I volunteered. After a game with the exhibitors, they said that I had some talent and I won a free holiday to a table tennis camp. After my success my brothers, Nigel and Ian, also had a go and they too won holidays. Our achievement even made a small article in the Sun newspaper. The actual camps were split into 2 age groups, my brothers went with my mum and dad and I went with my Nan Bird. We went by train and nearly missed the connection in London. My brother Ian came 3rd in his competition and won a table tennis table.

After this, the family took up table tennis a bit more seriously. We had some coaching and formed our own team along with another family of Birds (Kevin and John). We were in the local leagues and did quite well winning the 2nd division a few times and I did ok in a few tournaments. we played at the Highfield Road Baptist Church. Ian was always the best player.

During this period, my Nan bird moved into a bungalow around the corner from us, we would still go for tea on Sundays, and my Grampy from Wolverhampton died.

I always used to love Christmas and we always had a full house with my Nan (Bird) and often with my Auntie Olive and Uncle Tony. Christmas tv also used to be a lot more exciting, I remember when the Christmas tv times would come out and we would plan what we would watch, they always had big films, which you hadn't seen and the Christmas specials were also good. When I was 15 the youth group always used to go to the pub on Christmas Eve and then to the late night carol service at the church, it was actually great fun.

When I was 15 my dad got me a Saturday job with the glass company he worked for. This mainly involved lots of cutting grass, cleaning up, burning rubbish and washing vans. When I was 16, after

work, my dad would give me driving lessons first in the works car park and then, when I was 17, around the industrial estate and beyond. I passed my test on the 2nd attempt and I brought a really old Ford escort mk2 van my dad's firm were getting rid off, it was rubbish, but at least I could get about. My dad also had an old moped which we used to drive around on. One of the silly teenager things my mates and I did a few times was 4 people driving, one person would be in the drivers seat working the pedals, one would be behind in the back leaning over and steering, one person would change gear up and the 4th person would change gear down.

Also during this period my love for Home Computing and Games Consoles started with the Atari 2600, the TRS-80 and the ZX Spectrum. I used to play these a lot. See the separate blog entry.

My 18th birthday turned out to be a very big day for me. I had a party at my house with most of the youth group invited. During the party Debbie approached me and told me she really liked me and we ended up together and I had my first kiss (I was 18 and had never had a girlfriend before). The next day was a youth group disco, Debbie and I didn't know what to do about the day before and we ended up avoiding each other, our different groups walked home and we went our different ways, but another girl told me that Deb really liked me, so I went back and walked her home (there may have been more kissing involved). The following day was a normal youth group meeting and we were together again and I again walked her home again. From then on we were together, at youth group meetings and events and at each other's houses (I have never been on a proper date!).

About the same time, I left school and got my first job.

This was the start of the next chapter in my life.