How Did All This Happen?

I came into school a few days later to have a conversation with them both. The reality was stark and clear: I could not continue to do night-school A-levels one night a week over one year and realistically expect to pass. But, on the other hand, I couldn’t afford to leave my job. After some deliberation, it was agreed that the school would give me a letter that I could take to the unemployment exchange to say that I was studying part-time. Once they accepted this and guaranteed I would receive my dole, then I would leave my job.

The school was basically gambling that the unemployment office would not get in touch with the education services who, had they found out I was only studying part-time, would not have given the school the full remittance for my place, while Ms Philips would have faced serious questions about why she had told lies.

Everything was agreed and the letter was accepted. I was to return to school to do English and History A-levels, whilst I was to continue at night school once a week to study Law. It was a decision that would change everything I would do from then on, and it opened the door to a new world of potential opportunity.

What I had not envisaged was how this plan would sound to anybody else when I tried to explain it. The night that everything was agreed with the teachers, I went home to tell my mum and dad. I knew that they had been proud that I had been taken on at ICI as it offered one of the few permanent jobs for anyone my age in the area, but I assumed they would be pleased with my decision to leave, particularly once I had explained the financial side of things.

However, my announcement was met with blank stares. The kind of stares I would have expected if I had said I was going to join the Foreign Legion. Clearly what had left my mouth was the least expected thing in the world, and we sat talking until nearly midnight over endless cups of tea.

Although my mum was more supportive, my dad was clear and honest in his view. He did his best to convince me that having a job with prospects was so much better than taking a chance on doing A-levels and only possibly going to university. At this point, only my cousin Karen had gone to university, and it was generally accepted as something not for the likes of us.

Also, Karen was clever and known to be so. I was a boy and so intellect was balanced by my ability to carry things, and within our family history we were more greatly predisposed to the latter as a way to make a living. I knew I was going against the grain, but I also knew I had to tell them that this was what I wanted to do.

As I write these words now, it almost feels like I am talking about ‘coming out’ to my family that I read books. It wasn’t so dramatic; it was more that I was gambling on something better and needed them to see it too, although at the time A-levels appeared as useful as magic beans. There were no jobs, so why give up a perfectly good one in the hope of another one in the future?

I set my argument out as best as I could: I wanted something more than it appeared I could achieve if I did not change direction.

After hours of talking, my dad summarised it all in just one sentence: ‘I think it could be a mistake, but you have got to try. If you don’t try, you will always wonder what might have happened.’

And that was that. From that moment, I had their full support and they never questioned my decision. It was a great relief that they supported me: once my mum and dad get behind you, they are there for the long haul, and you can’t ask more of anyone.

So for the first time, but not the last, I left a well-paid job to try to achieve something against the advice of many, but with the support of those who mattered.

Eighteen months later, I was sitting in the passenger seat of a second-hand BT van next to my mum, as my dad was driving us north to what was then Newcastle Polytechnic. My mum could have said goodbye at home and let me travel up with my dad, or they could have put me on a train. Instead, they wanted to make the eight-hour round trip in a car none of us was sure could make it in order to say goodbye properly, because that’s what loving parents do. The van had been acquired a few weeks before, and it was another in the long list of unique vehicles my dad has owned. With a top speed of 50 mph, the journey took a very long time.

In actuality, it had taken 18 years. I was leaving home and saying goodbye to start the next stage of my life.

CHAPTER 7

NEWCASTLE

Newcastle didn’t exactly work out for me as I had planned. I enjoyed my first term there, and I liked the people that I met. However, I had gone to study an English and History degree having achieved a ‘B’ in my History and an ‘Ungraded’ in my English A-levels.

The English grade had shocked the school to the extent that they had paid to have the paper remarked. They had predicted at least a ‘B’ grade, but when the paper was returned it was clear why the ungraded mark had been given. Somewhere in the exam my brain had turned to mush, and my mild dyslexia had gone berserk: I had written some words backwards, some upside down, whilst others were just illegible. Although I certainly am not the greatest speller in the world, and had been tested for dyslexia on a number of occasions, I had never before displayed such a meltdown.

I have always put my inability to spell down to the fact that in junior school we were taught to spell phonetically, which means speaking the word slowly as you spell it. The problem with such a process is that if you speak with an accent as thick as mine, and live in an environment where you are not surrounded by the written word to counterbalance your exposure to these sounds, then it is easy to make mistakes. I was 10 before I realised the word ‘there’ did not have a ‘d’ in it.

What happened that day has never happened since, and it is still inexplicable to me. But, using the grades I achieved in General Studies and the Law exam I did at night school as a trade-off, the school had somehow convinced Newcastle Poly they should allow me to do a degree in a subject that I failed at A-level. Which you have to say is no mean feat.

I began the course in Newcastle full of enthusiasm. It was my first time living away from home and I immediately fell in love with the city and its people. To this day, it is one of the first places I look for when I have a tour booked. I was living in the student hall of residence and threw myself into the social life that this presented. I gained a casual girlfriend called Anne and managed to get myself into the first XI football team, which provided a great social network. It also provided fantastic trips away, as Newcastle Poly sports teams were generally regarded as quite strong.

On one particular trip, we were to play against Edge Hill University, a teacher training college near Ormskirk. I can’t remember the score, but I know we won, and what I can remember is that after the game we went to the student union for a drink – only to find out the ratio of girls to men at Edge Hill was roughly 4 to 1. We had a whip-round to convince the bus driver to allow us to stay a few hours longer, and at the end of the evening we returned to the team bus triumphant. Every single player (apart from Lawrence, who played in goal and whose cousin attended that college and to whom he’d had to talk all night) had got at least a snog. It was a fantastic feeling to be amongst a body of men who had arrived in new lands and challenged the local men to do battle on the football pitch, emerging victorious and then finding pleasure among the local women. It was probably the closest I will ever come to being a Viking.

Despite the fun I was having in Newcastle, I was quickly becoming disillusioned with the course. In truth, my experience in literature has been limited to books that I was forced to read for school rather than books I wanted to read; it was only during my A-level course that I had begun to read books for pleasure. Prior to that, if it was not a comic book or a Roy of the Rovers annual, I never read anything.

I regret those wasted years, and I am pleased that my three sons are avid readers. I still don’t read as much as I would like, but I attempt to have at least one book always on the go. This does also lead to the accumulation of a mass of books that I have started on a train journey somewhere and never finished. I used to feel guilty about not finishing books but, as I’ve become older, I have come to the conclusion that this is not my fault – if the book was any good, I would have finished it.

This could be a very pragmatic way to explain my laziness, or it could simply be true. Books are the only thing that you embark upon feeling responsible for your own enjoyment of it; even if the first 50 pages are rubbish, there is a sense of defeat if you don’t finish it. That doesn’t happen in any other art form; it certainly doesn’t happen in comedy. You can’t be rubbish for 20 minutes to the extent that the audience get up and leave without seeing the conclusion of your act, and feel totally reassured that on their way home they will think it’s their fault.

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