Accrington Grammar School

There were no girls in our day and I vividly remember ogling the young ladies from Paddock House Catholic High School as they walked past with their mortar boards on their heads. Remember Ben Johnson a feared  man with a cane and Ma Birtwell a maths teacher with a lethal board duster. The sixth form classrooms were just to the right of the tree.

Spiritual development

My years in primary and secondary school were not happy ones since I encountered quite a lot of bullying. At home I endured both neglect and rejection from my mother which resulted in my having a very bad stammer. I was a bit of a weakling both physically and emotionally and found it very hard with friendships. Especially with girls.
There was one redeeming factor in the story . I had a friend called Leo who was a significant factor in my spiritual development. He belonged to a very good family, who were very strong in their  Catholic faith.. If I was hanging around about teatime his mum would call everybody into the sitting room for family prayer and she would say to me “You can join us if you like or you can wait in the other room.”  Leo would go to early morning Mass with his dad most mornings and the whole family was a wonderful example of good family life. In fact it was everything that my family was not. His mum sensed that I was not happy and tried to take me under her wing as much as she could.. She also had two daughters the youngest of which I was crazy about but never even got near her. His dad took him out of secondary school in Blackburn and got him into Stonyhurst College, a very important Catholic private school.  The result was I lost touch with him for awhile but eventually he did become best man at my wedding some years later.

My teen years . was when I was allowed to drift without any real interest or guidance from my parents. Most of my life I had it drummed in to me that I was not wanted.!! In short I became a drifting wannabe which is why that is my logo. I scraped through everything and never really did well at anything even in the field of music where I dabbled with piano violin clarinet double bass and vibes. I was not trained to discipline myself to do things thoroughly or well. I liked the big band music of the 30s 40s and 50s and enjoyed playing along at home on a tea chest, pole and piece of string. My future wife was part of a church youth club including a trad jazz band with trumpet trombone clarinet guitar drums banjo. When I joined in with my tea chest they said I seemed to have a fairly good ear for a baseline so eventually I went out and bought a double bass which you can see on this blog. Once again I was playing by ear and not training myself to play from the dots. 

There is a price to pay for not doing things properly and my life has many regrets as a result.

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