Growing Up - Life After School

The next stage in my life really started when I left school and got a job and about the same time I started going out with Deb (my future wife). This phase ends when we had kids. It goes from when I was 17/18 (1981) to 26 (1989).

The first change at the start of this stage was getting a job. I had done ok at my O Levels, getting B's and C's, but didn't know what I wanted to do as a job, so I started A levels in the 3 subjects I did best in (Maths, Geography and Art - quite a random bunch). I had liked the new computer club the previous year, so I also did an additional O level in Computing (which the school was just

trialling. As the first year of A levels was finishing, I went along to an open day at Tresham college, at which there was an apprenticeship in computing being run between the college and a local phone company, GEC Reliance. As I liked computing I applied. I went for an aptitude test and an interview, however I was too young, they wanted people with A levels. A few days later they phoned me saying that they had a spare place on the course, I was in. So I left school and started a job. The job was initially a 2 year apprenticeship were we spent a few months in the different departments in the company, interleaved with periods at the local Tresham college doing a BEC/TEC in Computing. I made friends with a guy on the course, Andrew Bailey, we were paired together on most of our placements. The placements I remember were Admin (where I did a stock control system on a Commodore PET and also wrote a digger game),   

Research (where we developed a wave analyser program in Fortran) and Data Processing (where I developed data reports in COBOL and also a chess game). There were also some sessions at the companies site in Irchester where we learnt electronics, I remember these being in summer when it was very hot, I would travel to Irchester on our moped and during lunchtimes we would go down the local pub and played the Missile Command arcade game. I don't remember much about the college stints just different classes and programming assignments. At lunchtimes we would go into an arcade in town and play Space Panic and Pacman. I also remember going on a 2 week team building residential course, I listened to the album Hot Space by David Bowie and the Red and Blue Beetles greatest hits albums. There was also an Asteroids arcade machine which we played a lot.

The second change was getting a girlfriend. As described in the previous growing up blog entry,   

this happened very suddenly on my 18th birthday, when Debbie Andrews and I got together. We got on very well and spent a lot of time together, at youth group events and on our own at each other's houses. We would spend a lot of time listening to music, a big early favourite was Simon and Garfunkel's greatest hits. We watched quite a bit of tv, I remember Eastenders starting and a couple of our favourite series were Brideshead Revisited and The Singing Detective. We also spent quite a bit of time playing computer games, first on a Trs-80, playing a fantasy adventure game we got from a magazine (listening to Queen II) and then on a ZX Spectrum. We played a lot of the Ulimate games (Jetpac, Sabre Wulf, Attic Attack etc) and Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy. Whilst playing games we would listen to albums, I remember No Parlez by Paul Young and Bat Out Of Hell by Meatloaf.

After a while we stopped going to the YPF youth group and spent more time together and with Andrew Bailey from work. It was the video rental era and we watched a lot of Horror movies. I particularly remember the Georgio Remero Zombie movies and also The Evil Dead. We also went to the Cinderella/Rockafella nightclub in Northampton and I remember seeing Michael Jackson's Thriller video there on the day it was released.

Deb finished her A'levels and applied to various universities. I took her to various interviews and we stopped the night in a hotel in Wales following an interview at the University of Wales. Deb decided not to go to university but got a job at an estate agents in Rushden. After a while she got a job at Nationwide building society in Wellingborough. I remember us going on a works weekend 

with her colleagues to a holiday camp.

We went on a few holidays together during this period. One to a holiday camp down South, not sure where, with the rest of my family, and one to Devon staying with Debs family.

Deb was very musical, she had been in the church choir and she played the piano, which she taught herself. She got a flute to learn to play and had lessons which I used to drive her to each week, unfortunately I managed to sit on her flute and bend it, so we had to get a new one.

Soon I had finished and pased my apprenticeship, I was offered, and took, a job the Computing department. I did this fot a year and then I got a new job at another company, Weatherbys, still in Wellingborough and still in Computing. I made friends with Sandy Comrie. He was a member of Weavers Old Boys Saturday football team and I started going along to training and then playing on Saturdays.

Deb and I decided to get married. We brought a house in Rushden on Grangeway and I moved in on my own 6 months before the wedding. We didn't have a great deal of money so only had 2nd hand furniture people gave us. I also fitted a new kitchen myself. I remember us listening to the BBC dramatisation of Lord of the Rings.

Our wedding, March 1st 1987, was quite low budget as we had to pay for it ourselves. We had to setup the venue, Irchester hall, ourselves, which I did with my family in the morning, it was quite a rush. Deb had an accident in the morning when a chunk was ironed out of her vail, but her auntie was able to mend it. The actual wedding was at the church we used to go to, St Marys in Rushden. It was a very cold day, with snow still on the ground. There were quite a few relatives at the wedding, Debs from Devon and mine from Wolverhampton and locally. The reception was at Irchester hall. We had quite a lot of friends there from the old youth group, from my Weatherbys job and from Debs Nationwide job. Unfortunaltly we couldn't afford a honeymoon.

There was a nice Chinese takeaway just up the road from where we lived which we used to go to regularly.

During this period we had a couple of cars. A very old red Ford Escort, in which we used to listen to 10cc Greatest Hits, then a newer white Ford Fiesta and finally a light blue Ford Escort. I taught Deb to drive and she passed first time.

I remember going on a computing course in Brighton, just after the Conservative conference bombing.

We wanted a family, and luckily it wasn't long before Deb became pregnant.

The end of this period of my life came when we had our first child.

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.

Growing Up - The Early Years

This blog entry is a few random memories around growing up.

Growing up for me was split into 2 parts.

The first part, the early years, was up to when I was 11 (1963 - 1975) and lived next to Spencer Park in Rushden. When 11 we moved to Wymington Road Rushden and at the same time I also started secondary education, so everything changed, the teenage years.

I have very few early memories, perhaps the earliest is of a play group I vaguely remember going to in Highem, even that I can only remember the car journey and where it was.

The early years were dominated by living next to Rushdens Spencer park. Me and my brother Nigel, spent a lot of time outdoors playing football, on our bikes, hide and seek and such games. I remember the mass of leaves in autumn and a by flood once. There was a paddling pool in the park where we would sail boats. The main path way was on a raised mound and we would play lots of games along this. There was a small shop on the other side of the park Wasis where we used to by sweets. Next to the park was a big school, which we used to play around, although we were not allowed to and would get told off by the caretaker if caught. On the other side of the school were some fields and wooded area, with a steam, we would spend a lot of summer here building camps and playing crab apple races in the stream.

Two big events would happen in the park during the year. Rushden carnival was in the summer, we would watch the huge marquees go up days before and play around them. On the day the carnival would parade through the town and end up in the park, we would watch the parade sitting on the wall and throwing pennies. I was in the parade a few times, on a cubs float and once with my brother as tv's. Back I'm the park were stalls and demonstrations and I remember the marching bands. The fair was in the Autumn, we watch it arriving and being erected and played amongst the empty stalls before it opened. At night it came to life full of exciting light and sound. I could see it from my bedroom, it was always a great week. It was during carnival week that my parents told us we would be moving and I was devastated.

Our house was a 3 bed semi but was quite small. I remember our small kitchen table used for meals. I remember an arger type fire in the early years being very hot and I remember a rocking chair would be brought into the kitchen when we were ill to snuggle into and keep warm (in fact I still have that rocking chair). We had a front room which we didn't use much. I shared a bedroom with my brother, a bunk bed in an L shaped room, I had the bottom bunk. Our bedroom window looked out over next doors flat roof extension to the park, one day I bounced a power ball onto the flat roof and I could see it for until we moved. When I was about 7 we had an extension built which added a lounge and another bedroom, the layout of the kitchen was also opened up. I also remember us getting our first phone.

I spent a lot of time in the garden, my dad did a lot of gardening (I remember broad beans and marrows). We had a swing at the bottom of the garden, we used to build quote solid dens around the swing. I remember playing action men under some bush/trees. We also had some tents which would sleep in during the summer. In November we would celebrate bonfire night with people from the street with a big fire in the garden and a guy, which my mum would make.

At the top of the road were we lived was a small field, part of a hospital which had the best conker tree, each autumn we would surreptitiously climb over the railings to gather conkers.

When I was young I had meningitis and measles at the same time, I remember spending a lot of time in a remote hospital and an incidents when a nurse tried to stick a big needle in my bum. I had a lot of time off school to recover and remember getting home made get well cards from all my class, I remember having to miss a country dancing show at school which we had been rehearsing for ages. I also had quite bad allergies, animal hair and dust, but this went away as I grew up.

I went to Alfred Street Infants and then Junior school. I don't remember much about school. I do remember the walking to school through town. I remember the separation of the Infants/Juniors and watching the older kids over the playground wall. In the Infants in remember drinking milk from small bottles and being milk monitor. I remember walking across town to get to a playing field for sports, we also had to walk to the separate dinning hall for dinners. I remember dancing around the maypole and harvest festival in the hall. I remember the school being closed once due to snow and my mum had to come and get me. In the Juniors I remember spending a lot of time doing projects and producing scrapbook type books of work. I remember once being sent to the headmaster, not sure why, but I hid in the cloak room instead for a while and then went back to class, I got away with it. I remember playtime/lunchtime in the 'cages' playing massive games of football and British bulldog. I do remember some classes, at desks with ink wells, and making Christmas decorations.

I went to Cubs which was also at the school and remember it being weird being in the school with a bit more freedom. I remember doing bob-a-job cleaning windows and cars in our street. One of my worst memories from childhood is with the Cubs after a remembrance parade in a church service wetting myself because I was scarred to walk out to the loo during the service.

I remember Rushden High Street as we walked through it everyday going to school (there were a few routes back from school, we even tried to get a direct line which was through the back of the shops but you got told off if caught). I remember Thomasis newsagents where we used to get sweets and other crap when we had some money (I also got run over outside Thomasis), when a teenager they would also give me a paper round. There was Osbornes toy shop but we couldn't browse in there for long, they were quite strict. I remember the big Co Op with its toy department up a double flight of stairs. There was also another Co Op nearer home, on Higham Road bottom of Washbrook Road, which had some train sets we used to admire. I remember Woolworths which had lots of general stuff to browse. I particularly remember Christmas time, hunting for presents I could afford.

Each week the family went to Fine Fare for a food shop. I remember me and my brother would take it in turn to choose the cereal, we mainly based this on the free gift in the box. I remember collecting some Dr Who cards. We would also get large boxes to carry the stuff home in, and which we would make all sorts of things out of.

The main toy I remember having was Action Man, I used to get as much stuff for him as possible for Birthday and Christmas. I remember a parachute which we tried out by dropping him out of the bathroom window, we had wound the shoot up too tight so it didn't open and we then had a damaged action man. I remember making a lot of stuff, some from Blue Peter makes, such as a snow sledge from lolly sticks.

I remember playing with Lego a lot, it was raw bricks in those days, not kits so you had to be quite creative, I remember a lot of space ships. I also played quite a lot of board games (I remember a friend up the street, Julian Ellis, had one called Battle of Little Big Horn which I liked). We also used to make up our own games such as crazy golf around the house, lego flick a brick, show jumping and rubber band battles (with toy soldiers - spending hours setting them up).

I also remember collecting Football stickers, trading them at school, there was always one rich kid who had thousands of them.

I don't remember many friends there were just a lot of people at the park and at school. Julian Ellis lived a few doors up the street and I used to play with him a bit, although he was a year older.

At school I remember Peter and Jonathan Clarke, whom I would later become good friends with. It was not until I was about 10 when I became friends with Dominic Edwards did I have a real friend. This was when my nerdy side developed more and we played a lot of board games, particularly Scrabble. Domonics family were a bit posher, his dad was a music teacher at the secondary school, we would have chocolate spread sand witches when I stayed for tea. They also had a croquet set and, although they only had a small garden, we played it a lot.

On Sundays we went to Rushden Baptist church. There was a service and then we would go to quite a large Sunday school. I only really remember the large hall with different sets of tables for each age group.

Sunday afternoons we would go to Nan Bird's for tea (dinner). She also lived in Rushden, Washbrook Road. I remember these a lot, in summer we would have outdoor picnics (I remember Macaroons), there was a great plum tree which used to have loads of fruit. My Dad had an allotment which was near my Nans so we would do bits of work on that. I also remember watching Sunday tv in the evenings (see separate tv blog entry). We always went to my Nan's on Boxing Day.

My other grandparents lived in Wolverhampton and we used to visit them a few times a year. It was quite a long car journey, not so many a road/dual carriageways then. I also used to go bad stay with them during the holidays for a week. My Grampy Bannister was a lay preacher at the small local church at Merry Hill so we would often walk there and also to the small group of shops. Sometimes we would catch a bus to Wolverhampton centre. I remember the daily routine of lighting the real fire in the kitchen. I also remember going to see Wolverhampton Wondereres play a few times with my Dad and my Uncle Don, who also lived near my granparants. I also had 2 cousins (Caroline and Michael).

Saturday afternoons I remember watching Dad play football, at Higham Rec. I didn't watch much football but spent my time playing in the small wooded area. We would listen to the football results on the way home.

I loved the summer school holidays, mainly playing in the park/fields. I also remember some church activities where in Irchester country park and at some grounds on the outskirts of Rushden where we would play big team hunting games. I remember going to a Rushden Swimming pool quite a lot, it was outdoor, and swimming lessons, particularly doing my half and mile certificates.

We would go to holiday camps on the East Coast, first there was Corton Beach. It had some very basic 'sheds' for accommodation, very cold (no heating), I remember a plague of flies once. I remember a big food hall and a big dance hall, we played bingo in the evenings. I remember doing a catch the pennies where all the kids would run around the hall collecting pennies thrown by the adults.

The camp was split into teams and I remember various activities/games, I also remember being in the fancy dress as a clothes line. There was a great beach which was down a steep cliff. After a few year we moved up the coast to the large Caister camp, the accommodation was a bit better, but it was very similar. I mainly remember the sports competitions Putting, Table Tennis etc.

I also loved Christmas. I loved shopping for presents, I only had a limited pocket money budget and would hunt the High Street shops for hours. We made a lot of our own decorations, some from Blue Peter. Nan Bird would come round to stay and I would sleep on the floor of my parents bedroom.