My schooling was patchy in quality, but consistent in approach. Primary schooling was at State schools, and then at eleven I was dispatched to a boarding school. I’d classify it (well, as it was then) as a sort of ‘boarding comprehensive’ – an all-boys school with secondary-modern and Grammar school streams, and established for the benefit of ‘sons of Royal Naval personnel’. There was an entrance examination, giving an impression of academic competition, but I think it was really for the purpose of streaming new boys into academic streams. Having said that, my youngest brother ‘failed’ the entrance exam and so went to a very different school. I have an (unfounded, I’m sure) impression that the entrance exam formed part of the package of information that advised entrance and streaming. Suffice to say that I turned up in January 1968 at The Royal Hospital School, near Ipswich in Suffolk, streamed in the ‘X’ stream (the lower of the two Grammar streams in the school – the other was the ‘U’ stream, where one might have an expectation of proceeding from school to University) with my elder brother (and eldest sibling) already installed, three academic years ahead of me. My elder sister, being a girl, was excluded – she was educated at whichever local comprehensive school was close to home. My younger brother joined just over two years later, so he was three academic years below me. I wasn’t a success at school. At the end of my first term I came resoundingly bottom of the class. So, in keeping with established tradition, I was demoted to the next stream down (‘A’), where I came bottom again. So, I started my second year in class 2B2 – the lowest stream in the school, where the expectation was, I think, that I’d simply muddle along until I was about 16 and then would proceed into some lowly job or another. This wasn’t to be, though, since I managed in the summer of my second year to clamber back up to the ‘A’ stream, where I stuck – somewhere towards the top of the class, but never high enough to be restored to the ‘X’ stream where I’d started. As was normal, we had to select academic ‘options’ to proceed to examination with, when I dropped History, Geography, Woodwork and Biology. So, in 1974, I sat Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) exams in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, French, Metalwork, Technical Drawing, English Language and English Literature. I achieved what I thought was a very creditable result – six Grade Ones and one Grade Two (French), which allowed me to progress to the sixth form to do a set of ‘O’ levels. After another school year, I was the proud(ish) holder of a set of seven ‘O’ levels, and then I progressed to the ‘proper’ sixth form to do three ‘A’ levels – Maths, Physics and Chemistry. It was during this time that I attended to Admiralty Interview Boards, hoping to win a place at Dartmouth as a Naval Officer. I didn’t get the place I’d hoped for, but at the end of the year I did manage to pass my ‘A’ levels and to went on to Queen Mary College, London University in September 1976 to read for a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. It was during my first term at University that I received a surprise letter that invited me to join the Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth the following January. I was to serve about 20 years in the Navy as an Aircraft Engineer, before leaving to join a software engineering company in Bath.