Brighton
On leaving Wolverhampton College of Art I would have liked to do an MA course in Printmaking. I applied to the Central School and was offered a place but was unable to secure a grant to sustain me in London. I was almost destitute at the time. Luckily I had friends who had moved to Brighton to join the Teacher Training course there and one with a new job at the University. I moved into a hippy happy, dynamic, mixed accommodation in St James street, Kemptown, near the seafront . I needed a Job and set about my career as an artist. Initially I found work doing night shift in a bakery. I was in the cakes department but the night work did not suit me and I was fortunate to pick up a job teaching English culture to foreign students learning the language at the many summer schools in the town. I then got a job as a steward on the cross channel ferries sailing between Newhaven and Dieppe.I ran the coffee lounge attached to the main bar on the MV Senlac. In the meantime I drew and painted and did some printmaking at the art collage when I could. This all culminated in my first exhibition, with another local artist, at the Gardner Centre for the Arts at Brighton University (as it was then).
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Shortly after this my Brother, who at the time was a serving officer stationed at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, rang me up one day and said there is a job going managing a caravan site just outside the the town of Kyrenia on the North coast of the island. I guess that being young and stupid and seeking adventure I said I would take it. The job came with an old Land Rover, I didn't even have a driving licence so needed to take a driving test when I got there. I spent the next six months doing very little and then moved to a new job with a design agency in Limassol until I was repatriated by the RAF back to the UK when the island went into meltdown and was partitioned between the Greek Cypriots and the Turks; as it is to this day. The RAF kindly dropped me at Paddington Station penniless and in the clothes I was standing up in as my only possessions. The coach driver gave me a £5 note and wished me good luck. Thus started my 13 year stay in London.
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