Radio Clubs and All That.....

So coming up on Saturday 21st May is the Rochdale and District Amateur Radio Rally (RADARS) at St Vincent's Hall in Rochdale, an event I had previously organised for the last few years...nearly 20 I think! 

I relinquished my role as organiser due to several reasons but chiefly because of our move to Romiley. I have lapsed my membership and ceased to be a Club member so its good to see the Club get all the organising done without me as, without wishing to sound too big headed, I did it mostly on my own without too much help from other Club members. This was a little bit of a double edged sword in that I prefer to work on my own so other Club members would 'take the hint' and leave it all to me. Occasionally I admit I have moaned a bit about the lack of help but I was the agent of my own isolation!

Sadly the transition from my organisation of the Rally, which was decidedly informal and laid back, as compared to the new regime which is formal and rule ridden, has upset a few of the regular traders with whom I had built up good friendly relationships over many years. The main change is related to access into the Hall on the morning of the Rally.  The current arrangement dictates that trader entry to set up isn't allowed until 8am.  In my experience traders can turn up as early as 5am and want to get in and set up as soon as possible. Evidently at the last Rally in November traders were refused entry and made to wait in the car park. A war ensued and one trader went home...all the way back to Lincoln! I wasn't at the Rally myself but learnt of all the malarkey when I attended a similar Rally in Manchester last January. Several traders surrounded me and demanded to know why I had changed the normal arrangements! So the old idea that mud sticks is true even though I wasn't involved.... I understand the traders dilemma and sadly in my support of them there is an implied citicism of the current regime's organisation which I'll admit is well founded!

I wish the Rochdale Club well but I won't be rushing to join up elsewhere. I'm to old for politics

With all my vintage radio restoration activities I have kind of fallen out with the 'being in a club' idea. Its very hard on a Wednesday night to get up from the dinner table and trek 20 miles up the motorway just to sit in a room sipping coffee and basically not doing anything other than chatting and we can do that on the air.

A picture from NFD a few years back....

Having been an enthusiastic Club member many years ago when I  actually found the Club, I realise how difficult it is for a Club's committee  members to organise activities each week in terms of talks or other activities. After many years of being on the committee myself and being a Novice Licence Tutor I reckon I just ran out of steam. I used to really enjoy the annual VHF Field Day each July but that got tortuous with the site we used being moved to a place behind a locked gate which made access difficult for bods like me who have arthritis and can't do more than a few hours at a stretch. In my younger days I'd enjoy camping out for the 48hours duration of the contest but not now. I'll just enjoy the memories.....

Currently yet again with DABHANDRADIO I'm miles behind on my build schedule and I'm seriously thinking of stopping taking new orders for the foreseeable future. Currently I'm booked up till the New Year and with my grandson's recent arrival the build schedule has been squeezed again. I must stop taking on 'extra' work by way of the repairs and servicing which recently has become much busier and more time consuming for little monetary reward. Hopefully customers will bear with me and hang on.....

The end of AM radio as we know it? And introducing Thomas!!! He will live in a different world.....

Introducing Thomas!! My future Radio Apprentice!

I have finally managed a bit of time away from the workshop to spout a few words of reflection and possibly wisdom (although I doubt the latter) on matters radio and beyond. The time available is largely a result of the grand arrival of Thomas Martin, weighing in at 8lbs 8oz, born at 5.17am on Friday April 1st.  I've closed up the workshop for a few days to enjoy being a grandad and helping the new parents and grandma settle the new human into the world. He's just beautiful......  

So I got thinking about how my father (Thomas) and grandpa (Thomas) influenced my radio development and wondered how things might be different for young Thomas as he enters a world of wifi, computers, social media and all the 'fast living' that entails. His mum has already been feeding him with the help of an APP on her phone. Its definitely going to be different.

Will he have to learn how to hold a pen and write neatly? Or better for him to have fast keyboard skills? He will read of course but from the printed page of a book or from the pixels on a screen? Will he ever know the mysteries and joys of radio propagation or just develop his skills in sorting out a decent Bluetooth connection? When I try to teach him morse will he look at me aghast and think the old guy has gone even more potty in his old age?  "Why grandad??!??" ... Hmm, food for thought!

I recently read an article on Radiophile Magazine which I will quote from and paraphrase below on what might be the 'Death of Radio' as we know it and which has nothing to do with the much delayed idea of the 'digital switchover' and the rise of the DAB radio revolution.  The government I think are playing a crafty game here. Talk of the digital switchover has certainly gone quiet and because of this there are some out there that think that it will never happen.  They think that FM won't be switched off. They think that AM (Long Wave and Medium Wave) are safe. Too costly they will say, to switch them off. Not enough DAB radios out there to warrant the change they will say... Cars don't have DAB radios and reception would be poor.... Hmmm, no actually! Don't be fooled... The digital age is here and is beginning to dominate by stealth.... And this is why.... Read on!

The idea of a stand alone DAB radio is sweet enough but its the rise of other platforms that is actually taking over slowly but surely.  Internet streaming radio is now pretty universal and gaining popularity. TV's attached to cable or Sky dishes are streaming radio and offering an amazing choice of worldwide radio listening. 'Smart Phones' and Tablets sucking up wifi are now everywhere and everyone has one, don't they? DAB stand alone radios will survive (mainly on  the DAB+ platform) but they will be just a small proportion of the available multitude of devices on which 'radio' can be heard. 

The Pye P76

But this is the 'Death of Radio' as we know it? Yes it is and the main cause of the demise isn't at first as obvious as you might expect. Going back to the Radiophile article I mentioned above by Rob Rusbridge, he hits the nail on the head in his discussion concerning the make up of an old Pye P76 he was working on. Basically the Pye has a pretty daft aerial circuit which relies on a single coil for each waveband all tuned by the tuning capacitor and without what would or should have been a nice transformer arrangement to smooth out the signals coming into the radio. Instead a resistor is employed between the earthy end of each coil and  the chassis together with the other end of the resistor connected to the earthy end of the aerial. This means that the signals reaching the aerial develop a rather large voltage across this resistor which is in turn naturally injected into the tuned circuit. 'Bottom Coupling' this was called. 

Back in the old days this arrangement would and did work fairly well but nowadays, in our over noisy modern world of switch mode power supplies, broadband routers, LED lighting and flat screen TV's, all the radio frequency noise each and everyone of these new gadgets shouts out has finally come to, as Rob puts it, "come and bitten the wireless set on the bottom" because noises of all frequencies are most effectively coupled into that tuned grid circuit and there isn't a high-Q coil in the world which can enable an ECH42 valve to select Radio 5 Live from the cacophony of a thousand screaming switch-modes. 

So there we have it.. The death of analogue radio isn't and won't be due to a government imposed digital switchover. It won't be because of the rise of stand alone DAB radio sets.  It's death will come from the slow strangulation of the airwaves as they are swamped by man made electrical noise. It's a slow 'death by a thousand cuts' which will mean that the use of old valve radios, confined to Long Wave, Medium Wave and Short Waves, will become more and more impossible. 

Some old radios will hang on for as long as they have a signal to listen to. Those with inboard antenna systems such as the Bush DAC90A will have some use in that their design means that by moving the set away from the source of noise may bring about an improvement in the heard broadcast. Those with ferrite rod antennas will also have better immunity to electrical noise than those such as the Pye. These radios will linger on but eventually the insidious rise of 'the noise' will render them obsolete too.

My new grandson Thomas will never experience the fun of listening into short wave radio like me, his great grandfather and his great great grandfather. When I was young I used to listen to far off radio stations and feel like I had travelled there and had peeked, as if through a window, into those distant worlds. I feel sad that he won't experience those joys like I did.  However I'll do my best to tell him about the way it was and I'll play him recordings of those long lost radio stations whose names and places he will find on the old radio dials he'll see in my workshop... Athlone, Hilversum, Luxembourg, Valencia, BBC Home Service, Voice of America, Deustche Welle, Radio Switzerland and many, many more. He will no doubt humour me and show me his latest APP on his phone.... or perhaps on his personal cloud?
  

Blog? What Blog?.... Oh, I remember!

I thought it would be easy to keep up a blog when I opened this page all those years ago... How wrong I was! The next few paragraphs tend to read like a Christmas 'round robin' type letter but stick with it till we get to the radio bits!

Since the last entry much much water has flowed below that bridge everyone talks about at times like this. 2015 has been one amazing year! We have been to India, to Australia, to Hong Kong, to the United States, to Istanbul and even to Tenby in Wales (by far the scariest!)...  So radio has been on the back burner for much of the time. To all my waiting customers I do apologise and rest assured I'm quickly getting back on track with all the orders still in the pipeline.

India in February/March was a long planned trip as our retirement present to each other. This blog isn't about travel but suffice to say the sights, sounds, colours, smells, food and all the people we met made the trip an experience that has shaped the way we think and feel about the world we inhabit. My cynicism of all things political and politicians in general has been fuelled yet again by the trip. Suffice to say we don't know how lucky we are here in the West and also how much some of our 'western' ideas and influence have seriously damaged many vulnerable people across the world..... Look to the Middle East as witness to the mess we have created and the rise in terrorism.....So think carefully next time you nip into Pri-Mark for that cheap tee-shirt?

May saw the trip down under for the wedding. What a fantastic place Sydney is and how wonderful it was to meet up with Jules,my new daughter in law,  and her family. The wedding on Shark Island in Sydney Harbour with the back drop of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and The Opera House was outstanding. Our party, the 'away' team did an amazing job keeping up the our end with the Aussies! All was repeated in August back in London so the Irish and 'home' crowd could join in with the celebrations.

Just to sqeeze in a comment about Hong Kong... We stopped off for four days to explore Hong Kong on our way back from Oz. I was hoping to purchase a few radio related items on the notion that if Chinese hand held radios and such were so cheap here at home then logically they would be even cheaper in Hong Kong. Sadly this was not the case. They were a fortune and I still can't understand why you can buy a cheapo handie radio for £20 here and the same one is £70 there? Funny world....

The USA trip was a further long planned trip to visit our friends Tish and Jim and was designed to be a wonderful two weeks of rest and relaxation.  It was. Sitting on the deck drinking beer and watching the humming birds was sheer bliss!

Istanbul and Tenby were quick weekenders just for fun. Istanbul was for Pauline's birthday as in the same way we, the six of us, Ian and Louise, Jon and Jules, went to Iceland last November for my birthday.  Tenby was in the company of my old school friend Pete, with Stella, for a weekend of food and fun just 'because' we can!

To cap all the travelling this year we have also found out we are to be grandparents in April 2016!! Thank you Ian and Louise! This is totally fantastic news and we can't wait to welcome a new member of the family. 

And now to radio!! http://www.dabhandradio.com/

From the above you can tell that building radios has been a slow process this year. I'm slowly getting up to speed and whittling away at the waiting list. I'm giving priority to those who have been waiting longest so to Mr Mintaka (R1155) Sue (Ekco) Navy Lark! Joe Marshall and more...

On a serious note, part of the reason the waiting list slipped somewhat has been a cash flow issue. Since I started Dabhandradio it has been a hobby business to augment the pension. Recently things have decidedly become more expensive especially my electricity, phone line and broadband to the workshop and parts.  All the latter are separate to the utilities feeding the house, a luxury yes, but I do like to keep the two worlds apart as much as I can....  At least the phone won't go off in the lounge in the middle of a nice TV programme or heated  discussion! Its amazing what times some people.. customers ... do ring with their questions and queries. Often they could have waited for opening times??? 

So, I've had to shelve some waiting list jobs to concentrate on money spinning and revenue earning projects in order to pay the bills. This isn't to say that those jobs on the waiting list aren't as important but some of them, once you take out the cost of the parts plus the quote at prices charged two years ago... has meant that I would have been working at a bankruptcy level....

At the end of the day this is a hobby and hence getting too stressed about time and motion is not what its all about!

Right... This brings things up to date. The next blog is to follow and in my head already!

Merry Christmas!! I really need to write here more often!

I hate posing for photos because in my head I look like George Clooney but when I look at the photo obviously something has gone wrong!!!

Well, my excuse for not blogging recently is wholly and not surprisingly due to the move from Rochdale to Romiley. It's been a great move and no regrets but, with the benefit of hindsight, I didn't realise what a totally cataclysmic task we were taking on.  Living somewhere for just under 30 years, where the kids had grown up and where my roots had gripped in deeper than I had realised, meant that a house move and a business move was much more of an upheaval than I had expected. In fact, looking back on 2013, I realise now that business in effect 'stopped' for most of the year and has now led to a mammoth six month (if you are lucky!) waiting list on radio conversions/restorations.

An example of the chaos came to light this week when a customer rang up to see if his radio would be ready for Christmas...... The response from me was 'What radio? Who are you?' and hence a very difficult phone call ensued! Happily the Order has been found and the radio, along with about 30 others, is safely stored in our loft at 'The Bungle House' (more about this name later!). Worryingly, I found two old Atwater Kent Cathedral radios in the loft which I remember arriving with a very nice chap sometime during the summer months . One is for conversion and one for restoration but who the chap is and where he was from???? Oops!!  If you are that chap please get in touch!

From November 1st, a date I earmarked as the 'relaunch of Dabhandradio', I have at last been able to get back into the workshop routine and have been able to complete five radios on the waiting list and several servicing and repair jobs. As I write this, 20th December, I have one American Delco on the bench which is 'nearly' ready to go but I'll hang on to it now until the Christmas postal rush has subsided and I'll be more confident it will make the journey back to its owner in one piece. (Thank you Marie for your patience!).

I'll be starting back in the workshop full time from January 6th so I'm confident that the waiting list will begin to reduce and I can whittle it down back to a more realistic and manageable size. I'm aware that some customers, due to other factors, have been waiting more than a year for their Orders to be completed and for this I'm embarrassed and sorry! On the other hand, given the current economic climate, I'm chuffed to be in such demand! I've been advised that I'm not charging enough for my services but as long as I can keep the finances flowing I'm happy..and my overheads are low!

So, 'The Bungle House'? This is the name our daughter coined for our new home in Romiley just after we moved in and its kind of stuck. We knew that quite a lot of renovation would be needed but the extent of the work and what effect it would have on just 'living' was massive and very unexpected. Hence the rigours of having a new roof, new floor in the dining room, new kitchen extension and new units, a new door cut into a wall and new patio doors and lintels....... not to mention the re plastering, new fireplace (including taking away the monstrosity of the old one) and just basic decorating...... meant that we really did bite off more than we could comfortably chew! Running or trying to run the business during all the mayhem was catastrophic and what I really should have done was to officially close for six months, stop taking Orders, and waited until I could easily slip back into production. Alas I didn't do that so next time...hang on, there is NEVER going to be a next time. We are not moving again its far too traumatic!

The up side of all the above is that we now have a beautiful home and I have a great little workshop! The latter is fully insulated, has a new floor and has its own power, broadband and heating. I've gained on tools and equipment too although storage space is very limited hence having to use the loft which, luckily, the previous owner had boarded and insulated to use for his model railway layout!

I'll sign now wishing everyone, especially my waiting customers (Gavin in particular..Your wall mounted Murphy internet DAB music centre is first on the New Year's list!) a very Happy Christmas and prosperous New Year!!

Catching Up and weariness......

I don't suppose I should be adding to my Blog whilst also hosting my radio show on OPF 107.7FM but here goes......

Whilst four back to back Kinks tracks play away I thought I'd just see if The Blog was still operational after all this time.... Seems to be! I really must knuckle down and get more regular with my inputting but hey, I just don't seem to get the time or rather, time just seems to go much faster the older I get???

Imagine this.... When you are young life and time is like a skipping rope which you can swing around your head. The longer the rope the slower it revolves, the shorter the rope the quicker it goes. That's time... It goes faster when its shorter!

Life as usual has been hectic and not without its ups and downs. The move to Romiley has proved to be brilliant but also stressful. We've had builders, kitchen fitters, roofers, joiner and electrician all in the house doing various necessary repairs/rebuilding/rewiring - sometimes all at the same time. One day I even went to the pub across the road for a pint, on my own, something I haven't done since I can't remember when! We took a holiday to get away from the strife first to The Azores (whilst the kitchen floor and all the internal doors in the house were changed) and then to Cornwall (where we had a week of solid sunshine and warm weather, unheard of in Britain for the last few years!). Trouble was that it still took time to cast off the stress and, if I'm truthful, I'm still stressed even though we had a  break.... There's work still to be done, but I think we still need a rest.

Which brings me back to radio...Oh, remember that?? The business has suffered greatly from the move. Apart from having to get the workshop refitted and up to speed , most of the stock and customers commissions had to go into storage until I was ready, or so I though at the time, to start trading again. Sadly I still have  many customers patiently waiting and for that I'm very grateful, but a time is coming when such support may well begin to wear thin so I really need to 'pull my finger out' as soon as possible. I've still a long way to go before I'll be back to full production and this week I've finally started putting the finishing touches to a Phillips that has been on the bench for at least three months... The income is lacking as a result so I must get down to work as quickly as I can or else the bank won't be happy!

Mainly though I just hate letting customers down and in fact I've even resorted to compensating some of the very long 'waiters' with a discount! It's mad business wise but only fair in terms of my reputation and honesty. I'm struggling on and let's hope my health too will improve as some of the delays have to be put down to my levels of energy which have been sorely lacking. I'm pretty much bushed by lunchtime these days and that's not good! My mojo has definitely left the building and I need to catch up with it soon!!  

Gosh... Enough whining!!  This week I hope to finish the Phillips (I'm about to change the final smoothing caps so keep me covered whilst I go in!) and the Murphy 146 case should be back from the polisher next week and I can finally get that out and on its way. That will be an all singing and dancing full internet streaming base station when complete so I'm already looking forward to building it. 

As `far as reminiscing is concerned, thoughts over the last few days have taken me back to the TV shop in Birmingham where my dad was manager and  where I spent many a Saturday afternoon out in the back workshop with Ray the engineer (later uncle Ray as he married my dad's sister!) and who allowed me to solder the 'simple' jobs and where I learnt a lot about radio repair and how to respect electricity. I think I had my first blast from a live chassis one afternoon so I've always been careful, having learnt the hard way like all of us I suppose! Radio repair and electric shocks can't be compared to say, bee keeping, where legend says that the bee keeper gets immune to the stings. The only way to get immune from electricity is to be, well, dead.....

Here's Huey and Duey, the Murphy 146 cabinets, playing football in the yard with Chloe the  cat. 

Huey, on the right, has been re-polished and Huey, on the left, sadly broke his leg diodes in the footie match and had to be put to sleep and went to the Great Dump in the Sky.

Good grief!!?? How long?????

I just can't believe how long it has been since I last made an entry into this Blog....... Over a year? How did that happen?

Well, I suppose I do have excuses and reasons. For one we have moved house and since January this year we now live in Romiley, which is a nice little place within the boundaries of Stockport, Cheshire but it has its own little village centre and identity. Its only about 20 miles south of Rochdale but a positive quantum leap away from the dire descent of our old neighbourhood.... 

For all our friends still living in Rochdale please don't take offence, or be hurt,  but frankly Rochdale - like many many towns across Britain - has been slowly decaying for a number of years.  We lived there for 27 years all told and for the great majority of that time enjoyed the experience. Over the last ten years things got progressively worse in terms of the demise of the town centre - just pawnbrokers and charity shops it seems - even Macdonalds moved out of their town centre premises along with Woolworths (bankrupt) Littlewoods (bankrupt) The Body Shop (couldn't sustain trade economically) British Home Stores (ditto) Burtons (ditto) and several more leading retailers. 

 Where Bury and Ashton  councils capitalised and invested in their town centres, the Rochdale local politicians did little and dallied until things got so bad a point of no return was reached and now I'm not sure things can be salvaged......  It's such a shame for the old town. The recent bad press on sex grooming offences coupled with news reports from the 'poorest ward' in the country, Fallinge, having the most people on welfare doesn't help. 

There are 'plans' to revitalise the town centre, open up the River Roch, and develop a cafe style environment along its banks...... but then again that plan has been on the cards for ages and nothing seems to have transpired. Many hopes were raised with the advent of the tram and its connection of Rochdale with the rest of the Greater Manchester network until the blundering nit wits in charge decided to scrap the fast rail link (Rochdale to Manchester in 15 minutes) and replace it with the tram on the 'Oldham Loop' (Rochdale to Manchester in 45 minutes, eh?).  They also said the tram would revitalise Drake Street (the old main shopping street of the town)  and then 'forgot' and then or rather 'decided'  it would be too expensive to have a tram stop on the street.... So everyone (ex-potential customers) can wave as they pass the derelict shops...

So, if all the above, plus other changes are taken into account -  by this I mean the difficult subject of the rise of the Islamic power and its influence in the town -  suffice to say it saddens and appalls me that since 9/11 things have just got a little out of hand and uncomfortable. Sorry.... I'm a left wing chap (always have been) and not in any way racist. I hate with a passion the BNP and such like, I hate Tories and most politicians of any flavour who have screwed up our beautiful country over the last few decades.

  Hate is a strong word but I'll dance on Margaret Thatcher's grave when that the bilge of media nonsense about how great she was will no doubt hit the airwaves when she kicks the bucket.... urgh!......... 

 So enough politics! Its a big waste of time under its present guise as when times are tough and things go wrong as they are now we all need the  help, support and expertise of the teacher, nurse, soldier, policeman etc etc but we NEVER need a politician, do we?..... They are useless!  

However, getting off my soapbox, there are also some very practical reasons why we moved! 

The old house and workshop were at the top of a hill which meant a car ride to town or to the shops. Here in Romiley I've had a new lease of 'walking life' in that I can now nip up to the post office, grocers, butchers and pub on foot!  We have been here nine weeks and I've lost weight and feel much fitter! We have also enjoyed the nest building taking place via the plans we have for new kitchen and decoration in our 'no stairs' (what joy with my knees!) bungalow.  The new workshop is brilliant (!) and the new home is just everything we wanted and needed despite a very large amount of building and decorative work to be done! It will be great when its finished.... Did I mention the pub? It's across the road.....

The business, after a very long break, is now back up and running as of last Monday. I've all but completed two jobs off the long backlogged waiting list and looking forward to getting to grips with many more over the coming weeks.  No new orders are being taken at the moment which grieves the businessman in me as its like turning down money  but its only to be fair to all my customers who have been waiting so patiently over the last few months. I'll be adding some photos of current work and a few shots of the new workshop here... I've still got to replace the windows with laminated (thief proof)  glass and put up a few pictures to make it homely but those things can wait. I have three Boeing 737 cabin windows to put in too!! just to reinforce that I haven't lost my quirky ways with the move!

More soon.....

It's been sooooo long since I did my last entry!!!!

I have loads of excuses and several genuine reasons for not getting my thoughts down. Chief amongst them must be the sad news that my father-in-law Dennis passed away in early December and, what with Christmas and everything etc etc...... Nuff said, bad times.

So, where do I pick up the thread?  The last entry discussed the RADARS Traditional Radio Rally which is always enjoyed by all (including those who attended but who ought to wash more often ...).On the strength of our dwindling Club funds we are going to do it again but this time in the summer!! A Rochdale Radio rally but with shorts on! This time its branded as a Summer Flea Market and Junk Sale. I just hope there's more junk on sale than fleas... Make a date in your diary for Saturday May 12th,  kick off at 10.30am.. £2.50 to get in... No charge to get out.

Going back to the thread of the life story, I can pick things up just past the endless Saturday afternoons down at the back of the TV shop with Dad and Ray and journey onwards to sixth form and my first 'real' job prior to leaving Birmingham and going off to college.

I'll need to explain in a little more depth a few points that stick out in my mind as needing to be got off my chest before progress can be made though....

Generally, sad to say but with hindsight, I wasn't a very happy chappie throughout my childhood. Although there were certainly some happy times, most of my memories tend to dwell on the negative rather than the positive. I can certainly say that my love of radio definitely pulled me through some really scary times. As I've mentioned before, I look back and wish that my Dad had taken more interest in my radio pastime and of course Grandad Thomas McGuire was in Ireland and not exactly down the road to go and ask advice.

I was a very nervous kid. Very timid and deemed 'shy' by most of the family. I had failed my 11 Plus exam, so was henceforth at this time labelled 'a bit thick' (a smidgen of racism here pointed at my Irish heritage fuelled this!) and went 'up' to the catholic Secondary Modern School attached to my primary school.... The wonderful Rosary RC School  where the Sisters of Charity and Marist Brothers dominated the staff and the pupils alike.  The catholic religion has a lot to answer for and no, I wasn't abused aka the recent scandals.... er, unless you call being beaten with the cane several times??  This wasn't just if you did something out of line and perhaps 'deserved it' but we were beaten on a daily basis, in lessons, for not getting spelings rite or youre sums rong. It left an impression not just on my receiving hands but deep down too... Unfortunately this was the norm in those days and we are only talking about the middle 1960s?? Just what a kid like I was at that time really needed to nurture and boost confidence... Add a generous amount of bullying and the ridicule of my classmates for the occasional public weeping episode (well, the cane DID hurt!) and you can imagine my state of mind as a 10 to 13 yr old?? I sensed that the key to my poor relationship with my Dad at this time was no doubt as a result of his failure to relate to a son who wasn't a 'lad' in the traditional sense. I was a loner, quiet, no good at sport, emotional and cried a lot.

The change came when I was put in for the '13 Plus' exam. Birmingham Education Authority were at the forefront of the demise of the 11 Plus and instituted a second chance arrangement for any budding 11 Plus failures who fell foul of circumstances beyond their control and who were misplaced in secondary modern school. Credit to my Mum here as she found out about this and approached the school to get me entered. If she hadn't poked her nose into this it might have never happened for me and, well, this story would be very different. Together with a couple other mums (and dad's I suppose) pressure was applied at the school and a group of us were entered for the new exam. 

I remember the day the application forms were given out in my class to me and a chap called Paul. Funnily enough we got on well and sat together in lessons. We were like minded and similar in that he was very good at art, quiet like me and also couldn't play football. Again, not a 'lad' in the accepted sense of that era in working class Saltley. The event sticks out in my mind due to attitude of the teacher dishing out the forms... Mrs Czepiel (pronounced 'shepezel')...  just dumped them on our desk, looking down her nose and sneering  'Not a chance!' to both of us. Again, wonderful confidence boosting practise.

Suffice to say that Paul passed the exam and went to Moseley Art School and I passed and went to Bordesley Green Boys Technical School. I think my life really started at this point and the changes came on rapidly.  I went up in my Dad's estimation, I suddenly had a fresh start with a load of boys so had to shape up, so to speak, quickly learning from past mistakes and not repeating them. 

Looking back it was a bit of a duck to water situation. My confidence grew, my reputation grew and I started to think I was worth it.

The first day kicked off this instant progression in a peculiar way. The first lesson of the day following Registration and Tutor Group was P.E..  I trotted out from the changing rooms barefooted and chested as decreed by the rules, or so I thought, and proceeded to run around doing warm ups with all my new classmates. Unknown to me the shorts were meant to be worn commando style. At the shrill of his whistle the 'master', a Mr Lunn, stopped everyone in their tracks and singled me out as the only one flagrantly flouting the rules with the damning evidence of visible underpants  slipping out from beneath the shorts....  In full view of everyone I was made to strip naked, removing the offending underwear and correcting my breach of the rules.....

Now as first days at a new school go this was pretty traumatic but in another way it earned me a great deal of respect from all the other boys present. This wasn't due to my perfectly formed and obviously impressive physical endowments but due to my new classmates' universal sense of fairness and justice. Mr Lunn was a hated figure, an obviously warped old git. The rest of my classmates rallied to my situation. I was instantly became one of them, part of the gang. So indirectly Mr Lunn helped me enormously to fit in quickly and settle into my new situation. I'm proud to say that one friend, Pete Ward, is still a true and dear friend to this day some 40+ years later....

The technical nature of the curriculum was brilliant and suddenly I became known to be  'good' at things...Well, except French and Maths but neither have held me back in later life! (As a side comment, amongst several, I gained 'O' Levels in Physics, Technical Drawing and Metalwork which I think proves that my thinking is very connected to things of purpose rather than abstract  symbolism... So what if X + Y = a banana... Who cares? ) I even got good at football scoring six goals in one game... It was nice to not be one of the last men picked when teams needed picking for a change!

I carried on at the TV shop with Dad and Ray until football, ie Birmingham City FC, took over my Saturday afternoons. I hardly missed a home game from 1968'ish till I went to college in 1973. Freddie Goodwin, Bob Latchford and  Trevor Francis, jumpers for goalposts... ah, those were the days.... 

The pressure of school work and hormones took their toll over the next few years but radio still featured in my life even if it was reduced to Tony Blackburn in the mornings and Johnny Walker whilst doing my homework... But then again we did have Jenson's Dimensions and the fledgling John Peel, not to mention The Old Grey Whistle Test on TV. Needless to say these programmes were listened to mainly in my bedroom on an old HMV 1126 and I still lay awake into the early hours listening to Luxembourg 208 and the North Sea International and, of course, Radio Caroline... And Short Wave was still a daily twiddle of the tuning knob just to see if anything interesting popped up....

My first proper job came along in the summer of 73 just before leaving for teacher training college. Having finished my 'A' levels in June I had until late September to find work and hopefully gather some funds to help sustain me through the summer and help boost my grant... In those days tertiary education was free and we got a maintenance grant to live on. This grant was boosted by money from Mom and Dad so any extra I could get would help ease their burden a little.

Enter stage right Mr Sothers of C.A Sothers (Electrical) Ltd of Soho Birmingham.   I duly turned up at Washwood Heath Labour Exchange and was sent to Bromford Bridge Petrol Terminal and told to ask for  'Bob' the site foreman for C.A Sothers Ltd who were engaged on a job there on behalf of Shell. I found him down a hole, he hired me.  So started a long relationship with the small Brummie electrical company which sustained me from the summer of 1973 right through to Easter 1976 in that they employed me every vacation from college throughout my studies.

Thanks to Mr Sothers, the owner, I managed to earn more in 'real terms' than perhaps I ever have since! He took me on every holiday, including Christmas and Easter, as a casual worker. As a student I didn't pay tax or much national Insurance. Weekends and overtime was always available and when we worked out of town we got a generous subsistence allowance and travel allowance.  In the days before electronic payments I enjoyed a brown envelope every Friday which was stuffed with money, or at least it felt that way! I remember taking home one Friday £115 which in the early 70's was equivalent to maybe ten times that today!.. Well, petrol was 30p a gallon and a pint of beer about 20p???   I think he was a real gent and I think he took me on because in some way he wanted to 'do good' and give someone a helping hand on the ladder of life.  Many thanks to him...

The Christmas and Easter holidays were usually confined to boring stock taking and over the course of three years I must have counted and recorded every tool, length of cable and all the electrical fittings appertaining to the industry they possessed at least twice. The summers were a different matter. Given the extended time available, July to October, I was able to get stuck in on a variety of sites all over the Midlands and ultimately the infamous summer of 75 down in the east end of London. I was even once given my own 'job' in charge of two slightly younger apprentices to dig out and re-cable some fire proof cabling for a large pumping station over at a petrol storage depot in Bilston.  We did the job in three days and were richly rewarded!! In the next blog I will reveal the details of the summer with Sothers down in the east end of London sandwiched between the Avon perfume factory and the abattoir... It was certainly a smell that lingered....