About Myself

  Introduction
Personal Topics

Early Years

School Days

End of School Days

Southgate Technical College

Work Experience

University

 

To write about oneself...?

It's not something that comes easily, and it's not something that will necessarily appeal to anyone else, but hey (as they say) - I appreciate that ...

By choice or by accident almost anybody (OK, anybody) could be reading this, and, having found (stumbled along or cruised to) this place - of all the myriad islands that float in the vast reaches of the Electronisphere - it behooves me to make some effort at least to entertain  my visitors (be they pioneers or ship-wrecked souls) or inform them about who it is who has created this space and borrowed (OK taken) their time.

For me to know something of you ... it is necessary for you to know something of me ...

 

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Early Years

 

I was born in Stoke Newington, London, on the13th September 1953 and was later raised in Muswell Hill (and, what North Londoner has not spent at least some time in Muswell Hill) and passed my formative years in Highgate (of 'Happy Highgate' fame - Betjeman, the Flask, the Rising Sun, the Prince of Wales and many more) and in Hampstead (the Heath, of course).  I have fond memories of these times; I was innocent - very innocent - and then it seemed that life was always full of variety, of interesting places and friends and of joy, most of all I remember the joy.

 

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School Days

 

After Highgate Primary School, (where my Mother, Brenda, taught) I went to school at Stationers' Company's School, Hornsey and here too I felt, more or less, at home.  It was a Grammar school (when I arrived) and having 'sold out' to the local authority when I was in the third year, it combined with another fairly local school to form what was supposed to be a Comprehensive.  What resulted was a battle field, where the traditions (and standards - both academic and social) were undermined and eventually defeated by years of successive under-funding and demoralisation.  It was the fact that the Worshipful Company of Stationers could no longer support the school sufficiently that required the Governors to look to the local authority for funding and one thing lead (inevitably) to another.  I wonder what the long line of old-boys (and of very old-boys) long since retired to the their Caxton presses in the clouds would think about the demise of their legacy to the coming generation.  Call it nostalgia if you like but they were the best days of my life and, in many ways they are still are the best days and are with me today.

I was not academically successful there and scraped 4 O'levels in the fifth year, another in the lower sixth and an extremely modest A'level the following year.  Science was my thing.  Logical, stimulating and, for me, offering a very creative outlet to my imagination.

 

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End of School Days

 

I discovered the eventual fate of my school - which beautiful red-brick edifice used to occupy the high point on a ridge (Ridge Road) supported, as it were, by various roads that ran up the hill - one of which was Mayfield Road.  Our school commanded a view out over the north of North London passed even  the hills of Highgate and Hampstead and Parliament Hill (of the Gun Powder Plot fame) and beyond and, to the south across Finsbury Park and on into the City itself.  I returned to Crouch End several years ago, and many years after leaving school and travelled along a lower road - Weston Park - that ran parallel to Ridge Road and, isn't it funny when you return to a place after a long absence, you're sure you remember where everything is; you still know it like the back of your hand and yet ... I looked to the ridge, to the place where Stationers' stood and - I must be mistaken - it must be further along the way.  I passed between Mayfield Road and Denton Road; this was the place - I looked up to the heights, and - nothing, emptiness, a space where my school had been.

 

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Southgate Technical College

 

For what I wanted to do and where I wanted to do it, an E (I'm talking A'levels here) were no where near enough.  I needed better grades and another subject but although I did increase my tally (but not my grades) this paled into relative insignificance compared to my new love - the stage!

"We need a 'Bernado' in 'Westside Story' and you're it!", I was informed by a friend.  I was to spend a few years under the influence of the producer of this show - Wendy McFee - she helped me onto the stage and I thank her. 

'Westside Story' was a success and for me the greatest ego boost I have ever known; it firmly convinced me that the stage was for me and that I was going to be a star and, Drama School here I come!  OK, I didn't get in - no surprise really - what did I know about Drama?  Zilcherooni!

Still, I had been bitten, and the 'ego-fix' (as opposed to the idee-fix) would again be satisfied - eventually...

 

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Work Experience

 

After leaving Southgate and completely failing to get into Drama school- well, not completely failing - I got through to the second round at both LAMDA and Rada but when it came to the workshops where some of experience of Drama activities, like improvisation was required, I was all at sea. I tried my hand at some temping - you know the sort of thing, nothing too taxing, just to pay the bills (what bills - I was still at home) and, you know, I could leave this any time I wanted, you know, not committed or anything ... Anyway, I really took to several jobs I had; Accounts department at a well known (and now defunct) tailoring establishment, met a chap by the name of Anthony Romer-Grundy (how could I forget) wonderful chap - really taught me to "shift the paper".

Thence to Abbey Life in St Paul's Churchyard - again, another fine place with great people who, eventually thought I should take a proper qualification in Business Studies, so..

... I could stand the city centre Poly', barely a term - hated it and everything about it; 'nough said!

Life seemed rather grim; I'd left the relative security of a temporary job, felt I needed to to know more and could sense myself sliding - I had entered into and not for the first one of my many cul-de-sacs and the future, well, was bleak ... but ...

 

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University

 

... it was brother Paul who this time came to the rescue!   He'd been at Loughborough College of Education, doing a BEd (in PE (he was a great athlete - not a natural - but for that reason alone - truly great) and Drama; now he was (and still is) a great and natural actor) and he had phoned our Mum to suggest that brother Dave (now, nobody calls me Dave except close (and I mean very close) family members; I'm David, I always have been - don't ask me why) might enjoy the new BA in Drama course they were going to offer - no Education or PE pure Drama!

My God, it was tough!  The first year of the course, every thing to prove, they laid it on 24/7 (now, I hate these newfangled, short hands - but let it stand as a concession to - whatever (and I hate that 'whatever' too)).  We worked like dogs - and I'm glad to say that I for one really earned my degree.  Not for me the feeling that I just had to turn up to pass. No, we were a bunch of misfits when we came in (and when we left, for that matter) but our course was, I believe, about the best of it's type at the time and our staff: Len Dixon, Barry Hawkins, Bernard de Bear Nicol, Thora Burnley Jones, Simon de Lancey, Ron Chan, Peter Lewis, and Brian Way (our external examiner-cum-adviser) and others (funny how you forget some people's name and remember others, isn't it - who was the voice teacher - I can still remember her voice, even now?) were the best. I do remember, yes I do - Marion Speers! A lesson in voice just to listen to her.

We covered a broad range of practical skills: speech, movement, dance, acting, directing, radio and TV and an exacting academic course that included:  History of Theatre, Greek, Medieval, and Caroline and Jacobean Drama, Ibsen, Shaw and Chekov, 20th Century Drama, and Dramatic Criticism, and not forgetting of course and hefty wodge (or wadge) of the Bard himself; all in all a wonderful all round education and a great foundation for the would be dramatist. 

I left knowing a little about a lot and, which is more, and was to prove vital - I learned how to write properly.

Thanks to you Loughborough - both Town and Gown - for giving me the start I needed. And for bringing me together with my future wife not she was ready for me then but she it was that helped me learn how to write and with whom I fell in love and have never fallen out of love with since.

As I write this - now in March of 2013 - I realise that this is really a blog - hate the word...

... moving on ...

 

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