If you were to trace my story back to the beginning, you would find a sixteen-year-old boy standing on a factory floor, covered in steel, grease, and soot. I was a labourer for a firm called Air Oil Burner. By all accounts, I was a "good lad," but if you had looked at my school results, you wouldn’t have found a roadmap to much of anywhere. I had no real qualifications to my name—just a willing pair of hands and a factory floor stretching out ahead of me.
I could have stayed there. My dad, a Burma veteran, worked there as a lathe worker, and it would have been a safe, predictable path to follow the steady, rhythmic hum of the machinery for the rest of my days. But the men around us—men who had seen the world through much harsher lenses—knew that a life lived entirely in one harbour is no life at all.
We worked alongside giants like Tom Earnshaw. Tom was a member of the legendary 617 Squadron—the Dambusters—a man who had flown straight into the fire during the Second World War. When a man like that looks at a sixteen-year-old boy and tells him to get out and actually have a life, it carries the weight of an ocean.
My dad didn’t just give me advice; he gave me a shove. He walked me down to the recruitment office in London's Holborn, and just like that, I traded the factory floor for the deck of a ship.
I joined the Royal Navy in 1976 at sixteen, and for the next 28 years, I didn't just have a job—I had an adventure. I reached the dizzying heights of Warrant Officer, saw the world, and had the immense honour of receiving the Meritorious Service Medal. I spent three years leading a small ships flight through Gulf patrols, and later spent seven years providing the service stewards for Wimbledon (AELTC). The boy with zero qualifications had found his horizon.
But life is a masterclass in unexpected key changes. The charts you draw in your youth rarely survive the storms of your later years.
I’ve hit the kind of heavy, jagged crisis points that test what a person is made of. At nineteen, I was married and deeply in love—life happens fast, and you never know when those chapters will find you. But later, I knew the deep pain of a family falling apart, and the long, ringing silence of a twenty-year estrangement from my biological daughter. It leaves a quiet ache; I find myself thinking that maybe, one day, her own children may look back and ask who I was.
You think you’ve navigated the worst of the rocks, and then the wind shifts again. In late 2022, while earning £65k a year and successfully getting a company's compliance systems firing on all cylinders, I informed my employer that I needed an MRI check for suspected Prostate Cancer. Within days, my contract was terminated. Because I had only been there six months, they legally sidestepped me, throwing a £5k "good faith" payment at me to clear their boards. I saw it for what it was: a cold, corporate calculation to protect their balance sheet in case I died in service.
At that moment, the door was slammed firmly in my face. I was staring down a cancer diagnosis, out of work, and facing the absolute silence of unanswered applications.
It is easy to look at a moment like that and think the song is over. But the grit you build early stays in your bones. I looked to people who refused to be defined by a single bad track. During my recovery after the prostatectomy, while I was focusing on the slow, humbling process of strengthening my urinary muscles, I spent my days wrestling with those awful, tight white socks. Hospital staff call them Anti-Embolism Stockings, or T.E.D. hose, but to anyone who has worn them, they are just notoriously tight, difficult-to-get-on (and off), compression socks—a memorable badge of major surgery.
Lying there in that hospital bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering, what on earth am I going to do now? I stumbled upon a podcast. That was how I discovered the poetry podcast of Frank Skinner. Most know him as a comedian, but he was a former English teacher, and his brilliant, resilient reflections on faith, aging, and life gave me a language to fight my own battle.
For me, my education didn't stop moving. I went back and retook those GCSEs I had failed at Comprehensive school. I pushed forward and became an engineer, earning a BTEC Diploma in Air Engineering and adding an HND in Mechanical Engineering. Years later, I earned an Arts and Humanities degree via the Open University while serving in the Gulf, and eventually capped it off with a Law degree in 2016. For a long time, I stared down the SQE (Solicitors Qualifying Examination), wondering if I should take it just to prove I could.
But recently, I decided to put down the law books. I’m not pursuing the SQE. At 67, married again, loved again, and surviving, I am finally happy in my own skin. I don’t feel the need to conquer the world or prove my worth to anyone anymore. I’m still working—not retiring just yet—but the view from here is different.
In the margins of my days, I find myself thinking about the young people coming up behind me. I’ve met some absolute rogues in my time, but I’ve also met some genuine, salt-of-the-earth souls. My hope is that my grandsons will eventually find their place in the world, embracing whatever life brings their way. They will learn to look back and appreciate the journey that took them there, even when that journey included life events, temporary jobs just to provide an income, demanding bosses, or the fair-weather friends one invariably encounters.
Alec, in his early twenties, failed university and has been striving to get a position in the hospitality industry. The interviews keep happening, even after being let go by an unscrupulous boss. If you want a vibe for where you are, Alec, think of the broadcaster Andy Kershaw, whose obituary was a masterclass in "failing forward." He failed out of university because he was too busy booking bands, became a roadie, and used his natural "gift of the gab" and his pure love for people and music to land his own legendary show on Radio 1. What looked like a setback on paper was just him clearing the stage for his real vocation. You will find your niche in the things you love—and I wish you nothing but the absolute best for your interview with Royal Caribbean next week. Sail into it with that Kershaw confidence.
Dylan, at 19, you choose to earn your money while keeping the dream alive as an aspiring drummer with your band. Look at Dave Grohl. Long before he filled stadiums with the Foo Fighters, he was a teenager dropping out of high school, touring in the back of a cramped, sweaty van with a punk band called Scream, completely broke, but hitting the skins with everything he had. He didn't wait for a perfect contract; he built his foundation on pure work ethic, rhythm, and passion. Keep the beat steady, Dylan.
And Rowan is now over his GCSEs, looking toward Exeter College with the hope of becoming part of the Exeter Chiefs setup. When I look at Rowan's rugby dreams, I think of rising young stars like Henry Pollock, who was called up to the England training squad at just twenty years old. He described the sudden, elite pressure of that environment as "unreal" and "mad." It is mad—but that level of breakthrough doesn’t happen by accident. It only arrives if you have cultivated the mindset and discipline of a professional long before anyone hands you the jersey.
If I could hand down a map to the generation finding their footing now, it would be about the balance of the fire and the fuel. Here is my advice to those who really don't enjoy what they do, or the wages they earn, or for those who have met horrible people: When you are young and full of energy, you should grab life. Have the adventures. Chase the elite dreams. Form the bands and play the music loud. Live like the clock isn't ticking—because that’s the fuel that makes the early years worth living.
But remember to look at the horizon. Eventually, parental and life responsibilities start to knock. If you spend every ounce of your energy just chasing the immediate excitement without building a foundation, where will the income come from to maintain the fun? You need to build a life that can sustain the joy, not just for yourself, but for the family that might one day depend on you.
Grab the excitement, "Choose Life," as Ewan McGregor famously stated as he ran down the street in the film Trainspotting—although he cynically ranted: "Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television..." I say it without the cynicism: Choose life because the time flies faster than you can fathom. Just make sure you are building a foundation sturdy enough to keep the show on the road.
POEM
The Long Play
“Take it easy,” the Eagles said, when the factory floor was quiet, But you’ve got a life to live, through gales and storms—don’t be quiet.
The jersey’s weight is earned by sweat and pride, as U2 sang, “In the name of love,” To reach the height, you’ll need the fuel, and sometimes a hard-won shove.
When the door is slammed and barred, don't let your spirit feel the steel, The music’s in your hands, tomorrow belongs to the way you feel.
As Harry sang, it’s a "sign of the times" when the world gets tough, and the path ahead seems blind, But you find "as it was" that you're strong enough for the horizon you’re going to find.
If you’re going to adjust every sail, Don’t listen to those saying “Don’t stand so close to me,” The horizon’s wide—build your house, be strong, and show the world who you’re meant to be.