Well everyone, I believe I have had a few different lives with the time I have had on this Earth so far.

What do I mean by that well let me explain:

I grew up in a very religious family environment, but not one of the main stream religions, with most people having no idea what it was about. Even to the point that many believed our religion was a sect, however, that was only their opinion usually not based on any fact and with little knowledge of our views.

The religion in question was ‘Christian Science’ both my parents were heavily involved and met through the church. My Dad went to Iraq during the Second World War, and on his return, they got married in Rochdale where they both lived and my brother and I were both born (me in 1956) Rochdale is around 10 miles North of Manchester.

At 3 years old though my parents moved to a place in the South of England about 20 miles (32km) from London called Ashford in Middlesex (now known as Surrey) and was within roughly 3 miles of the outer fencing around Heathrow airport.

So here we all were in a very nice 3 bedroom semi-detached house with front and back garden and a side garden next to a garage, compared to today it was a nice size with plenty of space to play and grow trees and vegetables as well as flowers.

I spent my whole childhood here and it was I suppose rather an ideal life, happy and loving parents, school days were OK! Especially when I got to secondary school as I played football for the school team in every year in a very good side that won trophies of one kind or another each year I was there.

My religion was very much a big part of my life going to Sunday School every week from as young as 3 and until I left my home to join the Royal Air Force in 1985.     

So that I believe was my first life.

I then got into the RAF and trained as a Radar Technician spending a whole year training at a station in Cosford near Wolverhampton. After which I was posted to RAF Binbrook the last station with the old Lightening aircraft, it was here that after year or so I saw an advertisement on our notice board for servicemen of any career could apply to become a Physical Training Instructor something that I had wanted to do, as I’m very keen on exercise and sport. I applied and after some ups and downs managed to secure a place and began training again back at Cosford.

Whilst I was pretty fit and a good all round player of a few sports, nothing could have prepared for the move up to becoming a PTI, we were trained mainly by doing and not by just watching. So the instructors would give us a lesson lasting 45 minutes, with a 10 min warm up then 30 min of work out and 5 min warm down. There were many different lessons using all kinds of equipment and we had to make plans of all the different types of lesson and then take our turns to instruct each other in one of those lessons.

I guess back then I was still quite shy and introverted, so I did struggle a bit at first in the teaching as were required to have a loud voice in order to command the lesson in a very large gym. I used to go into a cow field near the station and practice shouting (hahaha I wonder if anyone noticed).

After completing my training, that also included going to North Wales near the mountains, at a place called Llanrwst, to do our Outdoor Activities, which included, hill walking, rock climbing, abseiling, sailing and artificial climbing.

I was to get to know North Wales very well over the next few years as my first station was on Anglesey a small Island off the North Wales coast joined to the mainland by the famous Menai Bridge built Thomas Telford in 1826.

Again even here, under a 6 month probationary period as a PTI my then boss a Squadron Leader though I wasn’t going to make it, but my enthusiasm for the job got me through in the end.

Here I stayed for nearly 3 years and spent a lot of time in the mountains of North Wales scaling all the ones above 3,000 feet and going up and down ‘Snowdon’  the highest mountain in Wales and England.

I even ran up Snowdon once using the railway tracks in the pouring rain starting out at about 7 am on a Sunday morning, those were the days.

Getting back to my sporting achievements here at RAF Valley I became a pretty good squash player and won the station handicap competition, ran a marathon in 2 hours 42 min, won the 1500 meter race on Sports day and played football for the station winning the local area cup. I also played for a local team Holyhead United, playing against teams like Colwyn Bay, Llandudno, Porthmadog, etc in the North Wales League.

I then moved to an RAF station called Halton near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, lovely area of the country, many good places for a run. This was much different from my previous station, Valley was the last training for pilots before they went operational and many didn’t make it, very tough course for them and we got to train them for exercise, parachute training and sea rescue.

Here at Halton, it was the biggest training camp in the RAF, from the mechanics to nurses and many others as well as apprentices, these did 3 years training but at the end they became officers. I was just a lowly Corporal, but as a PTI it was almost like being a celebrity, everyone knew who you were and on the whole were respected by the other servicemen.  

I stayed at Halton until I left the RAF in 1985, this I would call my second life. I need to make a point here during this time I stayed in my religion until the age of 26, I’m not really sure of the exact reason for my parting ways with my religion, but it had something to do with my life as a PTI and being in a very Spiritual religion it felt a bit hypercritical and I didn’t want that.

Anyway this happened and the next 30 odd years I basically spent in the wilderness, those of you that know your Bible will get what I mean.

So as I said my two lives so far had gone quite smoothly.

(To be continued)