My education started at Hinckley Road Primary School in Leicester, subsequently renamed Dovelands. There were two classes in each year. I was in the higher class after year one, where most of us passed our eleven-plus exams and won places in Grammer Schools; in the lower class far fewer did, and they went to Secondary-Modern Schools.
I won a place at Wyggeston Boys‘ Grammar School, in existence from 1876 to 1976. The most famous currently-alive ‘old-boy’ being Sir David Attenborough. (This was written in 2025).
Dad warned us all that he couldn’t afford to pay for a University Education for all four siblings, so we were all asked to seek scholarships. I won a ‘1-3-1’ scholarship with AEI (Associated Electrical Industries). The first year was spent working in a factory in North London making radio valves (vacuum tubes) for radio and TV receivers. The middle three years were spent reading Electrical Engineering at Imperial College London; as a sign of the times transistors hadn’t been invented until I was near the end of my third year, and even then, they each consisted of an individual device with 3 leads. The college halls of residence were far too small for all students, so I spent my three years in ‘digs’ with a family in Mortlake Road, near Kew Gardens, travelling to and from college each day on the London Underground. Since I had to travel to South Kensington straight after breakfast, arriving just in time for the first lecture, and had to travel back again soon after the last lecture for my evening meal, I had no opportunities to socialize with fellow students, thus missing out on a lot that university students elsewhere enjoyed. I probably didn’t realize this until living near Cambridge in my senior years.
GEOLOGY. Having been an active mountaineer for decades, I eventually decided that it might be about time to take a more active interest in the rock I was climbing and handling on a regular basis. Accordingly, I joined the OU in 1999 specifically to ‘cherry-pick’ their Geology Module. I can heartily recommend doing likewise to anyone keenly interest in geology.
ASTRONOMY AND PLANETARY SCIENCE. Having got myself hooked on the excellent standards of the OU, in the following year I chose to study their Astronomy and Planetary Science Module, which taught me a lot.
MATHEMATICS. Having had a long-term interest in Mathematics, I polished my understanding of the subject by spending a year qualifying in it.
In all three courses I passed the final exams gaining distinctions, but after 25 years I bet I've forgotton quite a lot of it.
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