FROM the age of four, in 1927, I went to Byfield Council School near Daventry. It was an absolutely marvellous school. I found it interesting and stimulating. I just enjoyed learning.
It didn't seem strict at the time but, looking back, you weren't allowed to fool around.
Then when I was ten, in 1933, we moved. My father was a railwayman and we moved to Doncaster for his work.
I had already taken the 11-Plus to go to Towcester Grammar School so I went to Doncaster Grammar School instead. It was a very good school. It was a little bit rough at times but the quality of the teaching was very good. It was stricter, but I never got the cane.
We were streamed and I was in the top stream, but after the third year this meant I was in the classics stream and I didn't like Greek. So I asked to do German, in the middle stream, but I couldn't, so I went into the last stream – to do chemistry and physics.
I was working towards my O-levels, but in 1937 we moved again, to March in Cambridgeshire, and I went to March Grammar School. It wasn't the same quality teaching but I was back in the countryside, which I had missed up in Doncaster.
I took O-levels a year early, at 15, and went into the sixth form, but I didn't settle very well. I was a very confused 15-year-old. I didn't know what I wanted to do or where I was going. But then I was offered an apprenticeship in retail pharmacy at Boots in March. I left the sixth form after two terms when I was still 15.
Later I went to do a degree in pharmacy at University College in Nottingham (now the University of Nottingham).
I had an excellent all-round education but there wasn't anything to point you towards a future job. You had to work it out yourself.