I was born in a small village in West Yorkshire called Heptonstall, where I lived until I was 6.  It was a lovely village in which to spend ones first few years and the kind of place where most people knew each other. 

It's quite a rugged little village, having just one main cobble stoned street running through the middle of it, with terraced weavers cottages on either side  and a small estate of council owned houses at the lower end.  Being positioned close to the Moors and about 1000 feet above sea level, we would always have a good fall of snow during winter, which would allow my friends and me to make fantastic snowmen and play on our toboggans in the fields to the back of where we lived.  I remember quite clearly being in a field one winter after a particularly heavy fall of snow.  The snow was so deep that I could walk through it with the snow all the way up my legs to my upper thighs.  I thought it was just fabulous and maybe those first few winters in Yorkshire set something inside me which has stayed with me ever since.  I love the snow and skiing in the mountains.

Mum would do hairdressing from our house and if during the day I would go missing, she knew I would either be at the local school next door or I would be out playing.  Even though I was too young to attend school, the teachers would sit me down and give me something to do.  Sooner or later I would either come home with my sister or be brought back by one of the neighbours.  It was just one of those small villages at a time when things like that could safely be done.

There aren't many things I remember about living there but it was a very happy place to spend ones first few years and I think Mum and Dad realised quite early that if they were to give their children a chance to experience a broader education with more opportunities they should move to somewhere a little more 'go ahead'.  I don't go back there very often, but when I do I know that the decision Mum and Dad made to move was not only the right one but impacted on my life greatly for the better.

Of the few things I do remember about that time of my life they are mostly associated with health and accidents.

I had a squint as a child, in other words both of my eyes didn't always look in exactly the same direction.  I would go to the eye hospital and do eye exercises on a machine.  I remember having to look into these eye pieces, rather like looking in a pair of binoculars, and an image of a lion would be in one eye viewer with an image of a cage in the other.  My task was to move the images and put the lion in the cage.  I would find great difficulty in doing this and it wasn't until I was 18 years old that I realised why.  I had worn glasses from an early age and had 2 or 3 operations on my eyes to try to correct the squint.  Eventually I stopped wearing my glasses when I was about 10 as they were doing more harm than good and I actually could see better without them.  However as was usual I would have an eye test every year at school, something which I had done many many times over the years.  It is usual practice when having an eye test for you to cover one of your eyes with your hand and read letters, which were gradually smaller in size, off a card some 3 or 4 metres away.  For most of the time I performed this test I figured that you had to cover one eye to stop you cheating by using whichever eye you wanted.  I came to this conclusion as the only possible explanation for the doctor not simply asking you to read the card with either your right eye and then your left !!  I thought that this would be an entirely legitimate request to be made as I did, and still do, only use one eye at a time and can voluntarily switch to use whichever eye I prefer at any time.

Whilst this may appear unusual, I now know it is not that uncommon but of course at the time I thought that everybody, like me, used their eyes individually and it wasn't until I made a throw away comment to a friend when I was 18 that I discovered that most of the rest of the world use their eyes in an entirely different way.

It really isn't anything of a handicap, it never stopped me flying but it did provide a good explanation to something which had baffled me a small child.  I could never understand how crane drivers could 'land' their cargo onto the target !!  I was sure that if I had tried it I would have missed by miles as my monocular vision didn't give me a very good depth perception.  Even now when pouring a drink from a bottle into a glass I will put the end of the bottle onto the glass, just to be sure that the two are aligned properly !

Another little event that happened to me when I was 2 was when I trapped my finger in a car door.  Dad had a garage when we lived there and I was always playing in the cars.  I have no recollection of the event at all, but somehow my finger was left in one of the car doors as my Dad was closing it.  My finger was operated on, but the nail couldn't be saved.  So to this day the middle finger of my left hand has no nail on it.  Surprisingly hardly anyone ever notices it, but it's hardly disfiguring.

So when I was 6 we moved to the coast, to Cleveleys which is just North of a major seaside resort in the UK called Blackpool.  We used to go there for our holidays and I guess that Mum and Dad, quite rightly, recognised there was more opportunity there for all of us.

The day we moved from Heptonstall the village was virtually cut off by a large snowfall and a snowplough had to be called into service so that the removal van could get through.  I packed my beloved toboggan, but it was never used in anger again, Cleveleys being both flat and at the coast where the salt air hardly ever allowed snow to fall.  Whenever it had fallen over night, Mum would wake me in the morning knowing how exited I would be at an event which had been so commonplace in Yorkshire, but was so rare at the coast.  I still do get excited by snow and in a strange coincidence, on the day I am writing this page, London has had the most fabulous fall of snow, and not just the usual wet slushy stuff which we normally have (if at all) but the large dry flakes of snow which usually fall in the alps.  It really does put a smile on my face and bring out the child in me.  I hope I never loose this affinity with the snow.

There was much more opportunity at the coast, there were more schools to choose from and more children to mix with.  I joined the cub scouts and that gave me a number of experiences over the years that I was in the scout organisation.  I also joined a brass band and played the trombone (not very well as I could only just reach 6th position !) but I enjoyed those organisations and like everything which happens to you in life, they were experiences which, in the main, I enjoyed for the time I was associated with them.

In the band I would also play the horn and baritone before I eventually stopped playing when I was about 12.  I remained with the scouts for some time, not leaving until I was about 16 and in the main I enjoyed being with them, although I have to say that I am slightly uncomfortable with some people who have tarnished to good reputation of this organisation over the years.

The scout group I was in had a particularly go ahead leader and would organise trips abroad which was very unusual at that time.  When I was 12 we went to America for 4 weeks (I'm second from the right on the front row in the picture).  We spent three weeks in Chicago and then the rest of the time in New York and Washington.  I was very lucky that Mum and Dad could afford (just) to send me.  From that point on I never went on holiday with Mum and Dad again, always with school, skiing or the scouts camping, and always abroad.  I'm sure that this has had a major part to play in my love of travel and I just love to be in the mountains skiing.  I have many things to thank my parents for.  Helping me to travel to foreign countries and meet with other cultures has continued to be a joy for me, which they first enabled me to do.

After we had lived in Cleveleys for about six years Mum and Dad decided that they would buy a small guest house/hotel.  We moved closer to the beach than we had been and lived in this small hotel which had about 7 or 8 bedrooms.  I think if Mum and Dad were to do it over again they would have only provided Bed and Breakfast accommodation, but at the time this was still quite a new idea and they would cook breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper for the guests.  This meant that not only was Mum fully occupied catering but the profits were probably very slim.  As a Bed and Breakfast it would have been perfect.  However it was a lovely house to grow up in and during 'the season' there was always plenty of people about.  The big plus was that during the Winter when the hotel was closed I could spread out my Scalextric car set all around the dinning room and have my friends around to play in loads of space.

Whilst I was at junior school there was such a thing as the 11+ test.  Essentially this was a test that all final year junior school children took to determine whether they would go to the Grammar School or the Secondary Modern for their education after the age of 11.  The difference was that the top 30% of children taking the test would go to the Grammar school and the rest to the Secondary Modern.  Well I was fortunate enough to pass the test and I went to the Grammar school for my continued education.  Passing this single test, at such a young age, would have consequences for me, almost exclusively good ones, which would shape the person I am and have become.

Whilst I was a bright child, I don't think I ever really excelled at anything in particular.  I had a very logical way of thinking and always needed to understand how something worked or came about.  I would always watch a lot of TV, and not always children's TV.  I would take a lot of information from TV programmes and during my teenage years enjoyed watching things like current affairs and news programmes, which tend to give information at a general conversational level, which meant that I had an understanding at a superficial level of a broad range of topics.

Whilst at Grammar school I started to have Gym lessons on a more formal scale than I had ever experienced at junior school and I found I had a natural aptitude for this.  I had always had a good sense of balance, I remember my grandfather teaching me to stand on my head when I was 5 or 6 and Mum took me ice skating to the rink at Blackpool Pleasure Beach when I was 6.  I seem to remember taking to that reasonably easily.  So when I had more formal gym lessons at school it was something which I could do and took to very happily.

As far as academic achievement was concerned, well that wasn't quite as successful.  Whilst I had passed the 11+ I was always in the lower of the three sets which we were put into for each of the subjects we studied.  I don't think that I was incapable of being in a higher set but I think that I was easily distracted and persuaded to concentrate on the less important things than my studies.  I was a good natured and honest boy, but just easily led and so my academic achievements were definitely below my potential.

Having good co-ordination and being relatively fit meant that I could participate in most sports, without excelling in any and generally without too much effort to achieve this minimum standard for playground acceptability.  Certainly when it came to team sports at school I could always represent my House at a few of the many sporting events which were required of us throughout the year so swimming, athletics (not too far of a run though), basketball and football all came relatively easily and allowed my natural ability to qualify as 'close enough to the standard required for selection', without putting in too much extra effort.

But Gymnastics really did it for me.  I enjoyed the opportunity to vault, tumble and balance but there was limited opportunity at school to be coached to any kind of a standard, so I when I was about 13 or 14 (far too late for anything serious to come of it) I started to attend coaching sessions at the local college.  This really was at the infancy of the modern, more dynamic form of gymnastics, which really took off a year or so later after the Olympics of 1972.  There I would have more formal coaching and really did improve.  I wasn't ever going to be something special, but I certainly had (and still have) an aptitude and ability to 'do things' with my body under a modicum of control which continues to satisfy and amuse me, even at the dizzy age I now find myself (47 at the time of writing).

When I was about 13 I went on my first skiing holiday with the school to Sauze D'Oulx in Italy.  I guess my natural balance and the fact that I had been ice skating for some years by now all went into the mix which meant that I took to skiing immediately.  We would have lessons all day and I would always be one of the first few behind the instructor.  I wanted to ski just like them and had a confidence that I could 'do' this sport well.  I was so pleased that the first time I went skiing I passed the obligatory test at the end of the week with a 2 Star Silver medal.  This was something of an achievement and gave me confirmation that I had discovered something which not only I enjoyed, but that I could do well.

It wasn't just the skiing though.  There was an attraction about skiing which appealed to me; the balance between danger and exhilaration which came from skiing fast or steep down a slope with the ever present danger that if something should go wrong it could have very serious consequences.  And yet that balance was acceptable because I was in control of the situation.  I could choose how fast or steep I wanted to ski and the impact of external uncontrollable influences was acceptable.  I sometimes make the comparison between the acceptable risks of skiing with those of rock climbing.  When I was in the scouts we would go rock climbing in the lake district and whilst I could do it perfectly well, I thought the balance between danger and exhilaration was skewed far too much towards the danger side of things.  I didn't get the same feeling climbing up a steep rock face that I do skiing down a slope.  The danger element, for me, is much more acute on a rock face than a ski slope, so in skiing I had found not only something I could do well, but something which I was at one with.  And that 'oneness' was reinforced by the environment in which it occurred.  There's something quite unique about being in the mountains on a clear blue day, with the sun shining and perfect powder dry snow underneath ones skis.  In fact I would go so far as to say that there is something quite ethereal about being in that kind of environment.  I know that the mountains aren't always like that, but no-where is perfect all of the time.  I have skied many times a year ever since and have become very competent.  I cannot foresee a time when I will not want to go the mountains to ski and could quite easily see me spending more time there at some juncture in the future.

I know that you have been skiing and I hope you too have enjoyed it.  I must admit to having the odd quiet moment when skiing and thinking how wonderful it would be if you were there with me.  It's things like that which over the years upset me and make me realise just what I have missed with you.  But I am confident that one day we will enjoy time together and I live in hope that it will happen sooner rather than later.

As far as academic achievement was concerned I wasn't exactly the most meritorious pupil that my Grammar school ever produced.  It wasn't that I was without ability, but more a reticence to apply it appropriately.  So whilst I wasn't a disruptive student by any manner at all, I just didn't shine as perhaps I could have done.

The fact that I ended up as a teacher of Mathematics as my first job, which I did quite well for 7 years, is testimony that the ability was there, but it seems like I needed to go to the edge of calamity before I used it.

I took my O level examinations at 16 and only managed to pass 1 of them.  So, realising the situation I was in I stayed on for a further year in order that I could re-sit my examinations again, which this time I did rather better at than the first time.

I eventually left to go to teacher training college where I studied Physical Education and Mathematics.