"Just out of interest after Teacher Training I worked for an Education Company. But to roll it back a bit I applied for a Coworker job at Juniper Communities home in York in 1984 with what were called then Mentally Handicapped People and if I'd got it, I'd have stayed there for the rest of my life . I was a full time volunteer there from 1983 to 1986 and was essentially paid in kind for the mostly full time work I was doing there with the men , most of which I became personal friends of as well. I got offered money sometimes but never thought I could take it from a charity. I tried to get work like this after Teacher Training but couldn't and I could have done a CQSW if I'd wanted to but I'd had enough college and training then. The point of this is being a househusband and all the duties it required with home-schooling my lads wasn't that different from what I'd been doing in Juniper and was prepared to do for the rest of my life .
When I say I'm still trying for a career it is simply this : if I get to work with the Learning Disabled , much better expression, I would seek to become a Senior House Parent , Lead Support Worker , it has various names and I'd organise and be responsible for the residents and the workers and that would be the best job for me . If I'd managed to do the Maths PGCE I wanted to run a Department and if I'd gone for Social Work all those years ago I'd have liked to be a Senior Social Worker . What I'm getting at Gaz is I have the potential to be an officer but not a general! If I'm lucky over the next year or so I may realise that potential and that will be a big thing for me. Being older , decrepit and disabled I probably won't but I have to try !
Little known fact about me is that I got into York University in 1985 not 1986 and I turned down the offer for that year and went in '86. I did this because I had a lot of things to do with the guys at Juniper and didn't feel it was quite the right time to be full time studying . That sense of social responsibility started first when I met Tom Owen in 1977 in Richmond Swaledale but got a big push from the many much more socially and politically aware people I met in York. Tom ,now in York as well, was still supervising me as a friend , very loosely! my university aspirations , qualifications, advice etc but I grew away from him when I started to think a lot more for myself come 1985. Still, he was a very useful bloke, knew everything I got up to in York and I'd still like to thank him now for all the help and encouragement he gave me with my education in the 1970s and early 1980s. I've never fallen out with Tom over anything and I still consider him a friend but he did find it difficult to come to terms with me becoming my own man, forming my own views , settling down and getting married and staying married!
I also started the Open University Mathematics Degree in 1994 but Clifford my youngest son arrived and that put an end to that . I should have been doing Sciences and Maths all along because thats where my main interests and abilities are . That is the one big regret of my life . Don't know why I'm babbling on about this . Sorry mate !"
