My life started, as I recall, in a little Cornish town called Hayle. As an only child raised mostly by my Grandmother I learnt from an early age to be independent.
Hayle has an amazing 3 mile beach and most of my formative years were spent swimming, surfing and playing on the beach with my friends many of whom I have stayed in touch with over these many years.
I vividly remember long hot summers and when a teenager in the sixties spending long warm evenings partying on the beach taking this wonderful paradise for granted.
As a child I grew up with a chip on my shoulder because I never had a Dad in my life (my Mother had had me out of wedlock) and because of this my perception was one of deprivation. In fact, in retrospect, not having a father in my life taught me to look after myself and how could I be deprived living where I lived?
On my 18th birthday me and three friends returning home drunk from a local seaside bar got seriously mugged and ended up in causualty. I swore from that day that I would never let any person physically harm me again. My biggest problem as I saw it then was, I was too nice.
Just to prove films have more of an affect on people than they realise whilst sunbathing on the beach one day at the age of 20 yeaqrs I saw this amazing platinum blond goddess in a bikini leave the sea. She was just like Ursula Andrews in the Bond movie and I was madly in lust. Later I was to marry this person at the tender age of 21 years of age.
I left Cornwall at 21 to join my dream woman who lived in Birmingham in the West Midlands. It was at this time I took up martial arts so that I would be able to always defend myself and to satisfy, what I now know to be my macho ego.
I became a third dan in Jujitsu and ran several clubs teaching children and adults over the years I was in Redditch. I had a student called Chris who was training in martial arts in my club from about 8 years to when he died at 21. He not only was a fine all round martial arts black belt he instinctively knew what many of us were trying to grasp - that the physical practice of martial arts was only a way of learning to spiritually attune. It was so strange that when I was moving back to Cornwall in the early 90s I decided to hand my clubs over to my black belts to carry on. They decided to have a presentation night and a Christmas dinner all in one at a local golf club all that night I was so concerned that Chris had not turned up but one of my other black belts told me and he spoken to Chris who said he was sorry but he had a hot date with a girl in the next town and he knew I would understand. I felt so empty that night as I was aware something was not right. very the next morning I received a phone call from his sister who told me whilst running to catch the last bus he fell between the back wheels and was killed - he was just 21 years old. many martial artists from around the country attended the funeral which was very charged with emotion. At the church I found all my black belts standing in a row and when the coffin arrived and was taken fro the funeral car they stepped forward and demanded of the bearers that they would be carrying him to his grave - a very moving moment and has his mother later related very appropriate.
I worked during this time in many dead-end jobs in factories and shops and began to realise that I could do better for myself. After getting married and with my wife being pregnant we became homeless and ended up, after living in a hostel for a while, in rented accomodation in Redditch 15 miles southwest of Birmingham.
In total spent 26 years in Reddich and enjoyed making lots of friends and getting involved with what was then a vibrant new community, being a New Town.
I was active as Chairman of the local residents association and also on other committees such as the local carnival committee. I made friends with some local journalists and was invited to write some theatre reviews under another name as I was known in those circles. It was at this time my marriage finished and after a year of deep depression I picked myself up and went to do a degree in english literature at Walsall College. I continued to write my reviews during this time and often smiled to myself when others remarked about what my non de plume has said in the paper that week about a particular show.
After completing two years of my degree I fell ill with a serious mastoid infection which was also infecting my brain. I was operated on in Birmingham in what was an old Workhouse and took around six months to recover. The operation left me deaf in one ear and unable to go into water as I would lose all sense of balance.
A friend who worked for the local council sent me a letter with and advert for a job at his place of work. The job itself was a lower grade position in pest control with the Environmental Health Department. I applied and the job was given to someone already doing the same job for another authority. I remember it was just after a depressing Christmas when a knock came to the door and two officers from the Council stood there and asked me whether I still wanted the job - I of course said yes immediately.
This single kind gesture of a friend sending me this letter completely changed my life direction as I went on to go back to college, part time, to take my environmental health exams and take up my career in health and safety enforcement.
