1975 to 1976

My second year at Salisbury Road, which started in 1975, was a completely different kettle of fish. It was the last year of being unstreamed, so there must have been assessed work or exams of some kind through the year. This wouldn't have gone well with me. Now aged 8, very nearly 9 - still very young - the young female teacher we had this year was of the sink or swim variety - wherby if someone was subject to bullying as I was - she didn't only not take any action, but actively put the boot in herself. So I learned the hard way about not going to the authorities. A harsh but necessary lesson larned.

She got married during our year with her, poor sod.

So I entered my second unhappy period - and as with the first one, thanks to shitty teacher with a bad atttitude. Teacher shave a lot to answer for. Good ones can inspire and push you to achieve great things, but what is less often mentioned, the shit ones can completely mess you up.

At home I was having a great time. This was a period where I was running around relatively freely in the neighbourhood. I played with the gang in one of the back lanes - Peter Freeman, his little brother, Nick Biddle, and some other kids. We used to pretend to be, variously, Starsky and Hutch, the Six Million Dollar Man, etc. The games tended to be my ideas for some reason. Climbing walls, playing with toy cars, etc were also involved.

My very first Radio One experience was between May 1975 and before November 1977 - probably during 76. I was sick and allowed to stay in bed instead of going to school. Mum gave me a lucozade - so I was definitely ill. Mum tuned radio to Plymouth Sound and left it on, when she went to work. Somehow I knocked the radio and ended up with TB presenting the mid morning slot. Found it very entertaining and much better than PS, but then I was only about 9. When mum came home she seemed put out that I had enjoyed listening to Radio 1.

Remember getting told off for scratching on a wall with a stone - it would have washed clean in the rain, but old people then aren't like old people now. They were genuinely outraged by nothing, and we were expected to be quiet when told. Things are much better now in that respect, but of course kids seem also to have lost their freedom to roam.

1976 - Open All Hours - RB again.

George and Mildred spin off from MATH in 1976 - the great Yootha Joyce. Robin's Nest - which I soon apprecited to be a pile of crap - 1977; and my paretns watched the rag Trade which was a revival of an old 50s/60s sit com - I had no interest - didn;t even klnow it was a sit com till i looked it up on Wikipedia.

This period came to an end in 1978 - when i was 11 an went to a different school from most of my friends.