Life On The Hard Shoulder

Growing up in Grimsby, I was lucky to have had parents who truly cared about their children, and there were seven of us. Leaving school just before my fifteenth birthday with a miserable tally of academic achievements, the pinnacle of my school career was being made a milk monitor. I hated school with teachers telling me I would never amount to anything; that's how to prepare children to face the world. When I look back at old photos, I was really small at fifteen, and shortly after leaving school, I shot up to over six feet. You don't need to have studied child development to draw any conclusion from that. Unable to get a job, it was decided, against my Father's wishes, that I might look towards becoming a priest or something in the church. I was sent to Gorton Monastery, Manchester a Franciscan friary, to explore whether this might be a way forward for me. The first thing to overwhelm me was this dimly lit Gothic silent place, and even worse was that the tea cups didn't have any handles! That night I was given a bed in a dormitory with other youngsters and forbidden to talk, watched over by a series of monks.The following day, I walked out, never to return. I made it to the centre of Manchester. Here I met a group of homeless youngsters and learnt how to survive on the streets. We slept in one of the many derelict buildings around Piccadilly. One way to raise money was to offer people three pennies (1p) for a cigarette; they invariably just gave you the cigarette. There were always scruffy men around willing to buy them. After a while this life began to get boring and I knew I should let my family know I was OK. I hitchhiked home and was still unable to find work, I would hitchhike all over England, still selling cigarettes. Finally, one guy gave me a job helping on a building site and I trained as a domestic plumber. Later moving on to larger projects, such as pipe fitting on the construction of power stations and oil refineries. This was a nomadic life living in digs and labour camps, which suited me perfectly.I was always up for anything adventurous and learnt to parachute jump using the old WW2 surplus silk parachutes before the sports parachutes were invented. You had to climb out holding the wing strut and have one foot on the wheel, and then let go. Figure 1Three of us crammed into a Cessna. I used to run a sports club for people with a disability, I also dated a social worker who encouraged me to train to become a social worker as she thought "I was good with people.". After returning from South America, I applied to Southampton University and was accepted to complete a social work course, eventually becoming a manager in Social Services. I found I had a brain. Throughout my working life, I ran my own business buying and restoring property, eventually building up a rental portfolio comprising thirty-eight properties in the UK, Spain, and the USA. This enabled me to travel for extended periods.