OK, Floo. Here goes.
I was born during WW2 into a working class Roman Catholic family in Nottingham. After the war we moved to Lincolnshire. I was named after a footballer who had ceased playing before my father was born. I have no interest in football and have always resented my name (which has - on occasion -been used to mock me).
In contrast to my family I was a bookish child who loved music of all genres. I was not given an early opportunity to develop musical skills. When I did start piano lessons I was already at the grammar school and pressures on my time meant that the music lessons had to stop. I did, however, sing in choirs.
The cultural consequences of puberty caused me problems. Apart from my mother, we were an all male family (I had younger brothers) and I knew nothing about sex. I learned the “facts of life” in discussions in the patrol tent after lights out whilst at a scout camp in Cheshire. Nothing untoward occurred but there was a large pond nearby where an angler spent (what seemed to be) many hours playing with his exposed erection (much to the fascination of my fellow scouts and I). About a year later I was befriended by an adult man who eventually took a hebephilic interest in me.
He went to prison.
My relationship with my father deteriorated – my lack of interest in sport, my love of music and my adolescent experience had convinced him that I was “not normal”. This, my lack of close female relatives, the fact that I went to a boys’ grammar school and the rantings from the pulpit about “purity” meant that I knew nothing about girls. My early attempts at close friendships were disastrous.
I left school after O-level. It was expected that I contributed to family income, but I didn’t like school anyway. Eventually I left my home town for London and employment with the Ford Motor Company, which was not particularly enjoyable.
After a while (and some study) I found employment with a very well known international transportation company. I was thrilled to get this job. What I was not aware of, however, was that this company was being torn apart by managerial incompetence and would, in a few years, collapse.
I met a young woman, two weeks later asked her to be my bride, and nine months later married her. Our children were born some years later.
She supported me when I went to university. I expected that I would struggle against school leavers with A-levels (recalling the awe in which departing students had been held when I had been at school). I couldn’t have been more wrong. They were the ones who found the experience difficult whereas I had acquired a number of social and life skills which enabled me to thrive in an environment where, for the first time, I was valued for who and what I was.
I remained in academia for the rest of my working life, teaching in an institution which progressed (with no help from me) from FE college to HE college to university. As well as living in the West Midlands my wife and had a home in France.
I retired from a career I loved to be with my wonderful wife who had been diagnosed with cancer. Some years after her death, I had a lovely relationship with another woman. She, too, died from cancer.
