School Ruined My Education!

On February 15th 1971, the day British money became decimalised, our family were homed into a three bedroom council house on Thackeray Street in Sinfin. It felt like a black and white life had suddenly become colour. As I approached my eleventh year, I found myself surrounded by a massive adventure playground. A golf course, farms, fields, woods, building sites, an old army barracks and further afield, a canal, river, orchard, gravel pits and even caves. I fell in love with Sinfin from day one and have pretty much explored every inch since.

 

By the time I entered secondary education, I’d lived in seven houses/flats and was attending my fifth school. I fell out with education on my very first day at Beckett School in 1965 following a telling off for licking tasty pink custard from my plate during dinner. That bollocking initiated a distaste for establishments of learning from then on. Through Beckett School, Castle, St James and Sinfin to Homelands, the contempt progressed to rebellion.

My drawing ability was luminary to my peers though, especially my derogatory cartoons of teachers, which often got me into trouble and even corporal punishment. I preferred the massive adventure playground of Sinfin and beyond to education and my school attendance dwindled to rare over the last two years. I left in 1976 as the best at drawing in the whole school, but not even qualified to use a sweeping brush.
Without a clue what to do next, I was talked into seeing the world, eating the best food, being part of a team and having a great life shooting people, so I joined the army.