Introduction

A little information about me follows. I have not included great depths of detail, as those who know me will nevertheless be able to identify some of the events that I describe. If you do recognise any of them and you would like to make a comment, I should be very pleased to hear from you.

Thank you for visiting.

I was born in Bromley, in Kent in the United Kingdom in 1954. I have a sister, Jill, who is younger than me. Our younger brother, Robert, died suddenly in April 2000, aged 38.

From the age of 4, I attended St Nicholas' School in Lynwood Grove, Orpington, in Kent, until I was 7. I then went to Clare House Preparatory School, 22 Oakwood Avenue in Beckenham, in Kent. [Help, please].

I have written a brief history of Clare House Preparatory School. Much of what I have written is based on the memories of Clare House's long-serving former Headmaster, Mr John Hodges, who kindly agreed to talk to me one day in June 2001 about his experiences at the School. Since then, with the help of some other former pupils who have made contact with me, I have set up the Clare House Preparatory School Former Pupils' and Staff Association (known as the Clare House Association).

The Clare House Primary School [Note 1] that is on the same site today is a modern state primary school funded through the London Borough of Bromley.

The untimely death in September 1964 of my father, Martin, meant that I had to leave Clare House Preparatory School when I was 11 to attend the Royal Masonic Junior School for Boys at Bushey, in Hertfordshire, moving at the age of 13 to the Senior School (a picture of the Front Entrance of which is below), also at Bushey.

I have made some more detailed notes about my personal recollections of my school days here.

Having left school in 1972, I went to work for Lloyds Bank in Andover, in Hampshire, as a junior clerk and later at the Bank's branch in Pewsey, in Wiltshire. As I became more experienced in banking, I transferred to the bank's Belgrave Road branch (in Warwick Square, London, SW1) and then to its Berkeley Square branch (in the Mayfair area of London, W1).

Just after we married, I started working for Southgate Tubular Products Limited, a small engineering company in the village of Methwold, [Note 3] in Norfolk, as Purchasing Manager. I remained with Southgate Tubular Products until just before it ceased to trade in 1991.

After that, having tried unsuccessfully to start my own business, I began to pay more attention to my self-development. In 1994, I achieved the BTEC (now Edexcel) National Certificate in Business, Management and Finance. I was awarded the JEB Teacher's Diploma in Information Technology Skills (TDip ITS) in 1997, and the City & Guilds 730 Adult and Further Education Certificate in November 1999.

From March 1993 until October 2000, I worked for CambsTEC (the Training and Enterprise Council for central and southern Cambridgeshire) which is based in Histon [Note 5], near Cambridge, in the county of Cambridgeshire. During this time, I had several roles in the organisation and its predecessors, ranging from project support to advising on training; and latterly to information collation and reporting, and software support.

I am the proud father of two wonderful sons, born in February 1984 and July 1986. The older one is employed by Kingsway Tyres on the Trafalgar Industrial Estate in Downham Market, while the younger attends the University of Bournemouth.

Until October 2000, I was employed by CambsTEC (the Training and Enterprise Council for central and southern Cambridgeshire) which was based in Histon [Note 5], near Cambridge, in the county of Cambridgeshire.  The Labour Government closed the Training and Enterprise Councils in March 2001 so, rather than work for its successor organisation, the Learning and Skills Council, I decided to leave CambsTEC.

I was employed by the Borough Council of Kings Lynn and West Norfolk in Kings Lynn, in the county of Norfolk after that until June 2004 when I joined Fenland District Council in March in the county of Cambridgeshire.

From 1998 to 2000, I taught a weekly evening class for Norfolk Adult Education Service leading to the OCR (formerly RSA) Integrated Business Technology - Level 2 (IBT2) qualification. This course was taught in 30 x 2-hour sessions, starting in mid-September. In the 1999-2000 academic year, I also taught an Introduction to Computing course. This course consisted of 8 x 2-hour sessions, usually starting in October, January and May.

I now facilitate OCR's CLAIT Advanced course for Downham Market High School.

On several occasions in 1999, I undertook some freelance work for Cambridge Training and Development Limited providing IT support for a series of workshops led by the Cambridgeshire Association of Local Councils (CALC). These workshops, funded in part by the European Social Fund, were held to assist Fenland Parish and Town Councils [Note 6] to promote themselves more effectively to their constituents, including developing a presence on the World Wide Web.

This was a project at the cutting edge of education and Downham Market High School was one of only sixteen schools to be selected to take part, following the receipt of over 2,500 enquiries by the project organisers. The project was financed by the Government's Department for Education and Employment (now DfES) and a range of books and online resources were provided free to schools and participants on the course by Result, which is part of the Granada group of companies.

There were many innovative features in the Online Latin Project. Students might have found it strange, initially, when lessons were not always dominated by a teacher at the front of the room. With some teacher input, they also had weekly contact with an ‘E-tutor’ in Cambridge University who set, marked and returned assignments by e-mail. The primary objectives were for students to become accustomed to taking responsibility for their own learning and to use modern technology to the full.

As far as the Latin itself is concerned, the emphasis is on the use of the language rather than on the grammar. The boring old Latin books with which some readers may be familiar have been discarded.

Book I of the Cambridge Latin Course introduces the basics of the Latin language through stories centred around the lives of Caecilius, a banker in Pompeii - a real person - his family and his household. They all lived in the first century ad, just before the great eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 ad. Much of the material for the book has been built around knowledge gleaned from recent excavations in Pompeii.

Outside work, I am a Trustee of two local Charities, one of which I set up with the object of raising funds to improve the leisure facilities on the Recreation Ground in Wimbotsham [Note 3].

I am a Governor of Downham Market High School which is the second largest secondary school in Norfolk. In 2006, I became a Tutor for Norfolk County Council Governor Services, based at the Professional Development Centre in Woodside Road, Norwich, Norfolk. In this role I will be able to keep myself up-to-date with developments affecting school governance and help other School Governors to make the best of their opportunities as well.

From 2001 to 2004 I was a Young Enterprise Advisor for Downham Market High School. Young Enterprise is a national education charity in the United Kingdom with a mission: to inspire and equip young people to learn and succeed through enterprise. Young Enterprise runs six programmes, each for a different age group from 5 to 25 and over. These are run on a “learning by doing” principle. My role is to give advice to the Directors of a Young Enterprise company, to explain some of the practicalities of running a company - and to allow them to make a few mistakes!

On the recommendation of my brother, Chris, I completed the Landmark Education Forum in August 1998 and the Advanced Course in October 1998, both of which are tremendously beneficial to me personally. In the Forum and the Advanced Course I met some marvellous people, all keen to live wonderful lives. Please use the next link to find out more about Landmark Education and the Curriculum for Living.

Since January 2005, I have been member of the King's Lynn Festival Chorus, which is a local choir that presents at least three concerts each year in King's Lynn.  These are a performance in July as part of the King's Lynn Festival, a carol concert in December and a concert in March.  In October 2006, the choir recorded a CD which will be available in April 2007.

At home, I have produced a few programmes for Microsoft Windows 3.x, using Microsoft Visual Basic 3.0/4.0 and I am currently learning to use C/C++ programming language and HTML. I have also built, configured and networked my own PCs.

All original material on this site is copyrighted © 1999, 2000, 2006 Norfolk House and may not be reproduced without permission.