A Short History of a Nearly Nobody

  I was not having a particularly special educational experience at Hardy's Grammar School, Dorchester. Having missed most of term due to glandular fever did not help, but academic I was not. Agricultural science was a great subject for me but the specialist teacher left and the subject was dropped by the school, so the end of my ambition to become a farm manager with it; Becoming a policeman was another dream, but a minimum height requirement of five foot ten inches certainly blocked that too (I maxed out at 5 ft 4in). I think my parents realised that the RAF might offer me a career, so I set off to RAF Cosford for assessment sometime in early 1957. This was my first time away from home and so armed with a Rail pass I was dropped at Dorchester railway station to start what was an "eye opening" experience for a 15 year old country boy. Changing train at Bristol Temple Mead station was interesting then the next leg to Birmingham was mostly through beautiful Engli...

My dad had a motorbike and sidecar and one day he decided that it needed to have a de-coke and the valves needed to be reseated. So this turned into my first lesson in motor maintenance.  Grinding in the valves meant having a sucker on a stick and some grinding paste. Keep grinding until the sound of the valve being set in its seat was a solid clunk, then it was done. This stood me in good stead in later years when I had my first ford van.