I was born at the Liverpool Maternity Hospital on the 22^nd October 1946, the first, and as it turned out, the only child of Elizabeth and Stanley Jacob. ‘Betty’ and ‘Stan’, as they were always known,  had lived with my widowed grandmother, ‘Lizzie’ Evans, since their marriage in July 1941, at 37 Gilman Street. This small terraced house, a hundred yards or so from the ‘Spion Kop’ of Liverpool’s football ground, had been rented by my grandmother but my father managed to get a mortgage for its purchase. Years later I found the repayment book for the Mersey Permanent Building Society. The house had cost £300 and the monthly repayments were £1-17-6. 

 Some time before my fifth birthday I recall being taken by my mother to be enrolled at Anfield Road Infants school. The nearest school was ‘Major Lester’ (named after Canon Thomas Major Lester, a notable nineteenth century Anglican clergyman) but Betty thought Anfield Road was rather more ‘select’ and was more successful at getting its pupils through the ‘11 plus’ exam. Parental preference existed even in those days.

 I have few memories of Infant School. I remember being in tears, along with several others on the first day, at being abandoned by our mothers.  The teacher’s name was Mrs Tollett and she always wore a floral smock of the kind that was still popular among the more mature and refined infants teachers. After a slow start I learnt to read and seemed to cope well enough with school work without shining particularly  brightly. 

 At Anfield Road Junior Boys School classes were large, well over forty, and there were four classes in each year. The classes were streamed and for the first three years I was in the ‘B’ stream where I coped well. In the final year I was promoted to the ‘scholarship’ class where I was rather out of my depth, but with rigorous cramming in how to pass English, Arithmetic and ‘Verbal Reasoning’ tests I managed to pass the eleven plus exam and in September 1957 went to the Liverpool Collegiate Grammar School for Boys.

 Professionally, I’ve always been interested in the debates about the underachievement of boys and the fall off in performance when children transfer from primary to secondary school. I was a perfect example of both phenomena as the school reports in the ‘gallery’ illustrate. I think it was a combination of not being quite suited to, or possibly not quite bright enough for, the kind of education on offer and, and with a few notable exceptions, often lacklustre teaching. Or was it just down to my discovery of, and enthusiasm for, girls, rock and roll, hanging out, and guitar playing?

 However, I did eventually manage to acquire sufficient ‘O’ levels and ‘A’ levels to secure me a place at Westminster College of Education, Oxford (well, North Hinksey, actually). In my day it was regarded as the holiday camp on the hill but the Teachers’ Certificate I was awarded in 1969 enabled me to acquire a teaching post at The Avenue Primary School in the London Borough of Sutton.

 It was while I was there that my old college friend and housemate, Jon Hart, introduced me to Miss Bodger, the vivacious young head of the PE department at Coombe Girls’ School where he was teaching Mathematics. Jackie and I ‘tied the knot’ in August 1970 and have been happily married ever since.

 Unable to afford London house prices, even in those days, we moved to South Wales, to Jackie’s home town of Cwmbran. I taught in two Newport schools, Alway Junior (1971 to 1977) and Somerton Primary (where I was Deputy Head from 1977 to 1983) before becoming the Headteacher at Green Lane Junior School in Caldicot in 1983. Except for brief secondments at two other Monmouthshire primary schools (Trellech in 2002 and Llandogo in 2005) I remained there until my retirement in 2007.

 Two periods of part time study resulted in my gaining first a B.Ed in 1976 and a Master’s Degree in Education in 1986, both awarded by the University of Wales, Cardiff.   Perhaps I wasn’t quite so dull after all!

 Jackie and I have two children, Huw and Emma –both grown up and married. Huw and his wife Christine have two children of their own, Chloe and Megan. Huw has a degree in Popular Music and Recording and is a freelance musician (bass guitar) in Manchester (http://www.huwjacob.com/). Emma and her husband James live in New Malden in Surrey and after six years or so in public relations Emma is completing a PGCE at Roehampton and is going to put her degree in Food and Consumer Studies to good use as a Food Technology teacher. In September she takes up a post at Glenthorne High School in Sutton –the authority where I began my own career almost forty years ago!

 Although I had ‘dropped out’ of church attendance around about the time I went to  college, in the early 'eighties Jackie and I started attending All Saints Church in Wales in Llanfrechfa, the parish where we had lived since 1973. I gradually became more involved in church activities and in 2005, after another period of training, I was licensed as a Reader by Dominic, Bishop of Monmouth. I am also a churchwarden. http://www.churchinwales.org.uk/parishholding/monmouth/m564-en 

In recent years Jackie has had a number of health problems, the most serious being renal failure which means that she has to undergo dialysis three times every week, and will have to do so for the rest of her life. She copes with this with the same fortitude that has enabled her to put up with me for all these years! My sixtieth birthday in October 2006 meant I was eligible for a pension and in March the following year I retired. I still have an interest in schools and in education: I am an External Adviser in the process of Headteacher Performance Management and a Governor of Trellech Primary School in Monmouthshire.

 Although Jackie’s state of health was what prompted me to ‘call it a day’ I have no regrets about retiring. I seem to be just as busy as ever, but there is a little more time now to get out and about with a camera and I still play the guitar, electric bass and banjo whenever I get the opportunity. And my ‘scouse’ (i.e. Liverpudlian) sense of humour has never deserted me.

Perhaps you'd like to check out the pictures in the Gallery.