Generally, I don’t think that it’s too unreasonable to make a link between childhood hobbies and an eventual career. In my case I started with a desk littered with tiny wings and propellers, and the hundreds of the other components that are needed make a scale model of a Spitfire or a Hurricane, my hands were usually covered with plastic cement and my bedroom splattered with the many paint colours needed to camouflage a squadron of Airfix kits. I moved from plastic models to the mechanical world of Meccano, mastering the art of joining a multitude of strips of metal with nuts and bolts was of course a perfect training for scooter maintenance. Removing the wheels to oil them would obviously enhance my top speed, what could possibly go wrong? Well, it turned out that tightening the nuts on a scooter is rather more critical than the nuts on a Meccano creation, the front wheel parted company half way down a steep hill and my chin still bears the scars! There were other notable failures in my endeavours to work out how things worked by dismantling and rebuilding them, but none of them as painful as the scooter incident, although I didn’t ever quite get my fishing reel back into a state where it would actually be of any use in the quest to catch fish.
A handful of nails and hot smelly glue
I was introduced to more practical skills for the first time at school where Woodwork, Metalwork and Engineering Drawing were still alive and well, although definitely the preserve of the boys, the girls were far too busy learning to cook and sew – how times have changed! Woodwork, however, was a non-starter for me, the teacher did not seem to be blessed with anything resembling an aptitude for teaching, the tools were blunt and I had little interest in making a pencil box out of four pieces of pine, a handful of nails and hot smelly glue. Metalwork was much more exciting! This was an hour and a half every week filled with hitting red-hot metal with big hammers, creating showers of sparks with grinders, being able to say the words ‘BASTARD file’ with impunity (although I found that if you say it too often you do get a detention!) and the extreme excitement of waiting to see if anyone in the class would forget to tuck their tie in and attempt to strangle themselves on the lathe.
