Although I qualified as a PE teacher at Loughborough College, I taught in primary schools in central Leicester for over thirty years as a class teacher and latterly as a head. Most of the teaching was in schools in deprived areas of the city which presented numerous social, cultural and academic problems for the children and staff. All the talks are of true incidents, humorous, distressing and worrying.

From 1984 I have grown streptocarpus, exhibited at numerous shows, propagated and hybridised my own varieties. I have given numerous illustrated talks to clubs round them Midlands but have now returned to Surrey where I spent much of my wartime youth as a type of family evacuee.