I don't really like talking about my early days. Up until about 7 they were happy enough, but after my parents moved to Newcastle in 1958 things went downhill for me. Both my parents are now deceased, my father in 2003, my mother in 2010.
We had settled in Hoylake, Cheshire after I was born in Manchester and my parents had taken a detour via Leamington Spa. My mother always loved Hoylake and was heartbroken about being moved from there and hankered after life there ever after. I had good friends with the people there. My first school was one called Kingsmead School (which closed in 2020) I don't remember much of it apart from the famous "Mersey Mud" choocolate puddings! The last Christmas I was there I contracted measles with the spots coming out on Christmas Day itself! The doctor was so pleased at coming out that day!
Here is a picture of me on Christmas day 1957 with one of my Christmas presents - a book on Astronomy. Alas I couldn't read it for long as the doctor forbade me from having the light on as measles can damage the eyes.
In 2019, on a visit to the area, I passed the house I had lived in 62 years ago, here is the picture. Alas the new owners weren't in, not sure what they would have made of me calling!
I don't remember much about church or religion at that time, but I do remember from about that time, my mother telling me about hell and the dire ooutcome of spending forever and ever and ever there. It terrified me then. Perhaps it did the job of bringing me into line. But it haunted my thoughts for many years, even after I discovered that my mother never believed in it herself.
Newcastle
It was when we got to Newcastle in 1958 that religion started to enter my thinking. We started off living in Jesmond, and my parents, mostly my mother, went to St George's Parish Church, Jesmond. At that time that church was so called "High Church" or Anglo-Catholic wing of the church with its love of tradition not too far removed from the Roman Catholic church in all but name and with many features of Roman Catholic thinking. Another well-known church in the same area is the well-known evangelical Jesmond Parish Church, but I knew nothing of that. My mother had a very dark secret in her life, the details of which I didn't discover for many years, and for which I suppose she felt had to atone. There was much she couldn't cope with in the Catholic-style doctrine of that church at the time, but she stuck to it. She took me along to the church with her, although my father had no time for it all. It may be unreasonable to say this of the dead especially one's father, but he was a very nasty man, violent at times. I hope and believe that I am nothing like him. I was sent to Newcastle Prep School. It was a different place than the school in Hoylake, but I was bullied continuously there and the staff did nothing about it. The headmaster was a Mr Cockerell, who got to know my parents and took my father's side in the numerous clashes I had with him which my parents told him all about.
Boarding school
From there I was sent to boarding school in 1964, to Worksop College in Nottinghamshire. That was the most hellish experience of my life. Square pegs in round holes doesn't come into it. It was (then) an appallingly bad school with weak and incompetent teachers. There was much homosexual abuse in the school and whilst I wasn't myself involved, a chance remark coming home from school to my mother at Christmas 1967 provoked an extreme reaction when she relayed it to my father, who gave me the third degree about it. It was certainly an over-reaction but, he immediately moved me, this time to Sedburgh School in the Yorkshire Dales. This was a better school than Worksop, but with its heavy emphasis on sport, in which I have no ability or interest, I still had no place there.
Just before I was moved, my parents moved again, this time to a village called Harden, near Bingley in Yorkshire. I never really got to know anyone there as I spent so much time away. My last term at school, in Autumn 1968, (in those days you did a separate entrance exam after A-level if you were going to Oxford or Cambridge) I shared a study with a guy called Gordon Prosser, who told me that he had become a Christian during the holiday. We debated much of that, and I found myself reading the works of C.S. Lewis. I became very interested in his writings, especially Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain, however I couldn't make much of Till we have faces then (although I now consider it to be his best book). I still like his writing style, it's a logic which very much appeals to me, even though I now begin to see some of the holes in his arguments. As a consequence of this, I gradually found myself moving towards a more positive Christian viewpoint.
Harrogate and Macclesfield
After leaving school, just after my 17th birthday (yes I did my A-levels at 16), I got a job in Harrogate and who should I meet up again with Gordon Prosser. He introduced me to his circle of friends, all Christian. Without much introduction, I was plunged into the routine of prayer and bible study which they were into. It all seemed terribly strange, and no one really explained anything to me, but I fitted in and conformed for a while. Even after I got another job, I used to go to Harrogate each weekend. However don't get me wrong - I know that somewhere along the line, albeit on my own, I did "pray the sinner's prayer" and "ask Jesus into my life" and meant it. In fact I probably prayed it several times, as nothing seemed to happen.
In September 1969 my father threw me out of home. I had helped a friend move house all day and was covered in dirt and sweat. However my father had some strange notion about the immorality of having a bath at night (please explain if you can) and on my insistence that I should have one, things became ugly and he insisted I leave. My mother, who would have had to wash the sheets I slept in, did nothing to intervene, as was her wont. After staying with my Harrogate friends for a while, I got a job in Macclesfield in Cheshire. I spent many weekends with those people up until University. Their friendship was genuine. I also got to know an evangelical Church of England vicar, a guy called Brandon Jackson. I was to keep in touch with him over the years.