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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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