I left KEGS in 1960, aged 16, because I wanted to get into the adult world. I found myself a five-year engineering apprenticeship with British Sugar in Bury, and was quite pleased with myself, even after headmaster, Bob Elliot called me into his study to demean my choice by telling me “You could have got that job from the Silver Jubilee” (the Secondary Modern school). Seven years later I was one of British Sugar’s key team, loaned to a Scottish Engineering company to commission a sugar factory in Mashhad, Iran, about fifty miles from the Afghanistan border. A difficult task as it was being sabotaged, but we achieved it.
How easy it was to totally change career in the 1960’s. British Sugar would not consider me for management training as I had not been to university, so I took a new job as trainee Assistant Manager with a very large traditional floor maltings in Bury, eventually becoming Managing Director. In 1993 I was offered the rôle of managing the trade association for the UK malting industry and became its Director General. In that role I lobbied in Westminster and Brussels, chaired the technical committee of the European Maltsters Association and was a Director of the Home Grown Cereals Authority.
I met Bob Elliot once again twenty-five years later, in 1985, when he was Mayor of Bury. He was welcoming guests to a British Gas event, where I had been invited to receive an award for energy conservation. I decided not to remind him of his last comment to me. I retired to another active life change in 2006, and continue writing poetry, which you can read and hear on my website, www.versifier.co.uk