Despite a poor start to my schooling whereby I missed most of the first year due to some 'nervous illness' that no-one was prepared to explain to me in later life I enjoyed school and did well.

I remember my first class, and the teacher, Miss Randall but I don't think I learned much as because of my poor eyesight I spent a great deal of time playing in the sand tray - that's when I wasn't absent.

At home I learned to read somehow but couldn't write much and only in capital letters. When I went back to school in the second year of infants I was put in Mrs. Hipper's class and one girl took great delight in telling me that if I was in her class I'd never pass the 11plus.

Fortunately for me, we moved house during this year and I found myself in the Infant school right opposite our new house - or rather bungalow - in Costessey.

Someone made an error and I was put in a class with children a year older. The teacher realised that as my reading was good I should be able to catch up with arithmetic so she gave me individual lessons at break times. In those days 'class positions' were the be-all and end-all  so I can remember that, thanks to her efforts I went from 24th in class to 3rd by the end of that year.

When we went to the Junior School the mistake was discovered and I had to spend two years on the same class. Then, one year after that,  paradoxically, the Headmaster decided that three of us should be given a 'boost' by skipping a class and moving to the 'top' class a year early. However, we were not allowed to take the 11plus with the rest of our classmates. We had to stay in that class for another year! So in my five years at junior school I only had three teachers: Miss Rouse, Mr Chamberlain and Miss Powley.

My childhood was very happy and it was a time when we were free to roam and play where we liked. My playmates were Trevor and Lynne from next door but one on the right and Martin  who lived next door but one on the left. We often went to the woods or the marshes and would come back filthy but happy. If not, everyone had long and interesting gardens and we could make dens or pirate ships or use the greenhouses as spaceships.

 I remember that Lynne's mum lent me loads of books - mainly Enid Blyton's fairly tales  - and I devoured them avidly. There were very few books in our house but I found a copy of Jane Eyre and was scolded when they discovered I had started reading it as they thought I was too young.

It was while we lived at Costessey that mum rediscovered 'Uncle George' a friend of her brother's whom she had courted before she met my father. They had split up and George went to Australia but now he was back and separated from his wife. He and I never really hit it off, and, looking back, I wonder if he resented the fact that mum wouldn't accept his son but expected him to accept me.

As far as I know, apart from one holiday at the seaside as a 'foursome' George lost contact with his son after he married mum Many years later he tracked him down and tried to make up for lost time but there was too much bitterness and it didn't work.

Knowing Uncle George had its advantages though. He ran a Radio TV and Cine shop and had access to 16mm films which he would show at home on Sunday evenings. I was never allowed to stay up for the feature but used to watch the cartoons and the Flash Gordon serial before going to bed. He also installed a television and built a very high aerial in the back garden. On a good night we could get a signal from Sutton Coldfield and enjoy a grainy picture which may or may not last  for the entire programme. Of course, it wasn't too long before our region had its own transmitter but, for a time, my friends were pretty jealous that we had a television - even if we couldn't guarantee to see a programme all the way through before the reception faded.