Ancient history

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Well, it seems like a long time ago !

early 2ndschool university work198x work199x work200x

1970

Mum arranged for me to take some sort of entrance exam at King Henry Grammar School. I was very put off by the environment and definitely didn't want to go there.
Undeterred, I had to have an interview with the head at Bablake Grammar School.
Accepted into the 2nd of 4 streams.
Of course, when I arrived, it was a case of "spot the difference" between the 2 schools.

For the 1st time I was taken from an environment I understood and dumped into a strange new one. It was a bit of a shock. Single sex too.
I thought homework was a terrible imposition. Anyway, you just have to get on with it, don't you ?
I remember trying to watch "The Sweeney" while having to get on with homework.
These were the days (just) before VCRs. You either watched something now or missed it.

Being 4 miles (and 2 bus rides) away, I qualified for a free bus pass. This didn't quite work properly though, as we had to go up the road for games 1 day of the week at dinner time, which was outside the valid hours for the pass.

Although I didn't appreciate it at the time, the main building is quite nice.
When I was there, there were some horrid "temporary" prefabs, which were around a long time, but seem to have at last disappeared.
A very nice swimming pool.
These additions were at least on the edge of the site.
More recently they have put a new building on the front "lawn" which pretty well ruins the front view.

Bablake School now has its own site, but for many years before that they have run a weather centre.

1971

After the 1st year we were re-assessed.
I was moved up into the top/fast stream, which basically meant that we got to take O level exams a year early and dropped stuff like art.
Jes moved up too.
Richard was already there.

Around about this time I started reading.
Of course, I could read already, but I didn't do much of it.
Probably thanks to the efforts of English teachers at School, I discovered science fiction.
Suddenly, there was something worth reading.
John Wyndham, Edmund Cooper, EE Doc Smith etc.
It's probably this that has left me quite literate today.
English literature dragged us through Macbeth, 1984, Animal Farm, but it meant nothing to me. Unless you know a bit of history, you can't get the references.
At some point we had a "reading club" at school whereby there was a pool of novels which we could read for 1 of the 40min English Language periods in the week.
I got some Alistair Maclean thing. We were supposed to read them in our own time too, but there was so much other stuff to do.
The teacher was amazed that I never managed to finish it. At the end of the year the books were given to us. I think I finished it eventually.
I still read slowly - about half average speed, but I get everything.

At some point we all had to audition for the school choir.
I was not sure whether this was a good idea, but deliberately doing it badly never entered my head. I was in.
This meant losing some lunchtime and some staying late.
We had to share sheet music so I was paired with someone else. I don't remember who it was, but he seriously didn't want to do it, and would just not turn up.
Sometimes I was sent out to look for him, which meant that I didn't get my lunchtime, and I didn't get the practice either.
Eventually we gave a public performance (well, just parents/family really) of Handel's Messiah in the school hall.

We did Latin rather than a 2nd modern language, presumably because it was a grammar school.
We couldn't quite see the point at the time, but I'm glad that I did it now. Apart from the language itself we were inevitably exposed to a bit of the history.
The so called romance languages french, spanish, portuguese, and of of course italian all show their derivation from it.
The curious structure and intricate grammar make it rather hard work, but give an insight into why modern languages work the way they do.
I once translated a bit of Caesar's campaign as something like "They made tortoises and threw them at the ramparts" which although it has many of the correct words is not exactly what was meant.
Later on we got onto some of the more amorous poetry.
We would have to learn about half a page of the stuff and translate it as a test in class.
Various people used to make postage stamp sized crib sheets. I just memorised the translation. I don't think many people actually translated it on the spot, or at all.
Fortunately when it came to the O level exam, it just didn't seem that difficult compared to other stuff we were doing.
Maybe they were allowing for the difficulty of the subject, or I suspect that there was a new format to the exam that year and it was made easier just in case.
Despite a reasonable exam result, I can not now put a sentence of it together.

As the years went by, we gradually stood further back in the assembly hall in the mornings.
At some point I stopped mouthing the words to the religious nonsense that went on.
I remember standing there looking through 1 eye, then the other, and noticing that my left was not as good.

I'm not sure of the exact date, although it must have been around about this time when my parents bought me a pushbike.
I was horrified to find that it was maroon, a colour that I have never liked, and more like an old fashioned bike compared to some of the racing technology that some schoolfriends had. Something about being an engineer though - if you don't like something, you take it apart and rebuild it.
With some help from Adrian it soon got drop handlebars, racing saddle and a new red paint job.
I never actually went to school on it as the 4 miles would take rather a long time, and having to wear a suit didn't help. Also I qualified for a free bus pass.
Still, the freedom of having my own transport was dramatic. We used to get together with school friends all over Coventry.
Occasionally we would go on longer trips. Went all the way to kilsby once - where my grandparents lived (mother side).
It all seems too dangerous now. Maybe the roads were safer then, or maybe we just didn't worry about it.
We would carry model aircraft about on pushbikes to local open spaces.
It went with me to university where it acquired centre pull brakes.
I still have the bike, although it is black now, has considerably fewer spokes (replaced 2009) and most of the bearings are rather stiff.
It was also stolen and recovered - see later.
Here's a picture.

I'm not sure exactly, but it must have been about this time that I got into model aircraft.
People get very upset if you don't call them "models", although personally I don't mind "toys".
I have lots of toys, including the computer and musical instruments.
There's probably a complete spectrum between serious stuff and kids' stuff.
My dad had done aeromodelling in the past. I guess it was just a matter of time until I was old enough.
Almost everything sems to be radio controlled these days, but back then radio gear was very expensive.

I think probably the earliest thing I did was a Blue Peter glider from the TV.
I had worked out the smallest bit of wood from which I could cut the parts and asked for that when my dad took me to the model shop that was in Ford Street in town, in those days.
Of course, it's not cut to order. You just have to buy standard size sheets.
For years I thought that balsa wood actaually smelled like it did in that shop.
Eventually I realised that it was pipe tobacco, that the owner seemed to smoke all the time.

Later we did a few balsa and tissue rubber powered things. Typically keilkraft kits of ww2 fighters like the hurricane. These never flew very well, being scale, and they always looked rather anaemic, ending up as just doped tissue and balsa, rather than painted.
We had a small jetex rocket motor too to go in a gloster javelin. Being spring mounted this was eventually lost in the long grass.

Eventually we got on to internal combustion engines.
I think the 1st we had was enya 09. This was a bit weird as other people had OS 10.
Not only was it slightly smaller capacity, but the exhaust port was on the "wrong" side, so that fitted to a typical control line aircraft for anti clockwise circuits, the exhaust was open upwards.
We made quite a few control line models, eventually drifting towards combat with OS 20.
Several school friends including Jes and Richard were also into this.
We used to fly on the waste ground behind the church in Wyken Croft, and on the football field by the side.
This is now the river sowe nature reserve, and has been landscaped quite a bit.
I think it has been used as a landfill at some point in its history, and some mining before that.
When I think it about it now, the safety implications of control line models of about a pound or 2 in weight whizzing round at head height are quite worrying, although we never had any problems.
We had lots of arguments (noise) with local people claiming to be on "nights" whatever they were ?
Of course we didn't use silencers. They would just be extra weight to carry, with a reduction in power too.

Eventually dad financed the purchase of a 2 channel MacGregor radio set which found its way into a plan built Bravo powered glider model with a 10 sized motor.
I'm not sure whether we had an OS 10 by that time?
At this point we joined the Coventry club where we got some help learning to fly.
The MacGregor radio used dry cells, which meant a new set every week/flying session to be safe, but NiCads were quite scarce and expensive in those days.
Later we got a 3 channel (throttle control too !) SkyLeader set and a kit built Tyro Major.
This had quite a long career including dropping parachutes and flying inverted, before the wings eventually folded.
I even flew it at school on an open day, much to the (noise) annoyance of people running other things.
Later an OS 25 and the radio gear went into various models of my own design, the latest of which is now in my garage.
The Coventry club had access to a farmer's field at Dunchurch. we also flew at Warwick racecourse.
The 2 channel radio gear eventually found its way into an OS 20 powered stock car model, which I still have. Jes had 1 too.

1974

Passed 9 O level exams (a year early).

Of course, I stayed on for A levels.
The school tried to get me to do extra stuff, another language (Italian) in particular.
I couldn't see the point, as I couldn't see any prospect of me going to france, never mind italy. and being basically extremely lazy, didn't bother.

1976

Passed 3 A level exams.

And failed 1 O level. Not really very interested in politics and current affairs.

We had a rather entertaining chemistry teacher.
Probably just as well, as we used to have 1 afternoon of triple chemistry ie. 2hrs.
He once demonstrated a kipp's apparatus to us in the lecture theatre, which rather spectacularly exploded in front of his nose. No damage.
He assured us over the next few weeks that some air must have leaked into it.
I always found chemistry rather less than taxing on the brain, with organic chemistry seeming like little more than cookery, inorganic just a specialised branch of physics.
Nice to know a bit though.
We had a box on the wall, arranged as the periodic table, claiming to have a sample of every element in the relevant box.
Of course, in some cases this was impossible.

Physics was always interesting, possibly due to the teacher(s) we had.
I had always been trying to work out how the world worked anyway.
Physics just gives you a shortcut, with access to hundreds of years of experience.
Also teaches you the scientific method ie. test it.
I of the teachers told us that he had a magnetic monopole in his pocket, but it looked suspiciously like a key to me.

Never really had any problem with maths.
I seemed to be able to visualise what was going on behind the abstract equations.
I remember we got as far as complex numbers, which seem at 1st to have few applications in the real world.

I did an electronics course option at school, but I probably learned more messing about at home with bits and pieces.
We had to do a soldering test before being allowed to get our hands on real components.
This consisted of making a 1" cube out of copper wire, which tends to fall to bits if you're not in and out quickly.
The teacher had a supply of bits in the cupboard for purchase, but importantly would let you borrow them for free provided you didn't shorten the legs - excellent for messing about.
TTL logic chips in DIL packages were quite new at the time.
I remember having trouble getting a 74 series quad nand gate to actually do some nanding, until I found out that the inputs float high and you actually have to apply logic zero.
I built a clock and a stereo amplifier (using opamps) from circuit diagrams, all on veroboard and in home made cases - very low budget stuff.
I made a simple 27M oscillator and modulator made from a chain of monostables which generated a signal that could control our 2 channel model radio control receiver as far away as the end of the garden.
I fixed the school TV camera.
All I actually did was find some burned out pots on the pcb and replace them, but the teachers seemed impressed.
Up until then it had seemed that I was going to do physics at university, but the physics teacher (correctly) spotted that I would be better off with an engineering course.

We did a bit of computer programming (of a sort) at school.
This was using punched cards, or rather, we would scribble on some cards with a soft pencil, which would be taken away, and be mysteriously read and punched and run somewhere remote.
We got them back the following week with a printout of what went wrong.
1 week is a long time for a feedback loop.
I don't think anyone got anything to work.
We would probably have had about as much chance just shuffling the cards at random.

Failed my driving test (car). Passed 2nd time. Age 17.

School policy was to get as many people into Oxford/Cambridge as possible.
To this end, they don't bother putting you in for the entrance exam while doing A levels, but rather wait till they are out of the way, then train intensively on past papers for 1 term up to the exam.
This meant that combined with the fast track to O levels, you end up taking the entrance exam at the normal age.
There was a bit of fuss over someone who was quite capable, but didn't want to apply/go.
I just went along with the flow.

Took the Oxbridge entrance exam and "passed". However, you also need an interview.

1977

With most of a year to go before university I stayed on at school and took and passed 2 more A levels

It was a bit weird being aged 18, an adult still at school.
Some of the kids with wealthier parents were actually driving cars to school.
There was a lot of personal study time, much less actual teaching, presumably in preparation for university.
I started working some evenings/weekends at a petrol station (self service was only just happening).
Not used to late nights, I used to fall asleep some afternoons in the 6th form common room.

early 2ndschool university work198x work199x work200x