D.o.s.

  Shoeburyness was just next door to Southend, and it wasn't until i attended secondary school there that i started to take my art seriously. I was one of those kids that used to draw in all my exercise books and get knacked for it from the teachers who used to end up making me recover the outside of them with wallpaper to hide the doodles, though me being me, never used wallpaper like everyone else, instead i used posters from computer games magazines, which was way better than wallpaper any day.

Shouburyness high school for me was actually a pretty good school experience for me, i had some really good friends, only got in the usual 'boys will be boys' kind of trouble now and again, got on with most of my teachers, and did quite well in most of, if not all, of my classes. Don't get me wrong, i wasn't a swot, but i wasn't a thicket either, i was pretty average in everything except for two subjects. Art, and Drama.

NEW BOX

Yeah, you read that right, Drama. I bloody loved it. Y'see, my home-life wasn't exactly a happy one. My real dad left before i was born, and when i was three my mum met my step-dad, who, to put it bluntly, was an abusive twat. So as soon as was old enough to go out with my mates as apposed to staying in, i went out every opportunity i got, i even preferred being at school than being in the house, and at school, Drama class was the perfect escape from all the crap at home, it was the one place where i could pretend to be someone else for the hour that the lesson lasted, i bloody loved it! i'll never forget the drama teacher, if there was spokesperson for the motto "those that cant do, teach, and those that cant teach, become secondary school teachers" she was the perfect walking advertisement. She was a little on the eccentric side, and also she always had a bottle of teachers brand whiskey in her bag, but she was great.

As for Art class, well it was brilliant, it was the only class where i didn't get anything less than an A-. The reason was the teacher, he was good because he could somehow focus on each student individually at the same time as teaching the whole class. He was that good that when it came to me going to year ten, he ended up with 60 kids in his class, they had to knock two rooms into one just to fit us all in, and he had to hire a teaching assistant to give him a hand. A perfect example of how good he was, was a lesson i'll always remember to this day, in fact it was my first art lesson as a year ten, and also my last with him. When we came in, on every table were some lettuces that he'd cut in half. It was basically a still life lesson, we had to draw them in all their squiggly line goodness, except this particular day, while everyone else was drawing them in pencil, he came over to me, put an old ink pot and wooden dippy quill pen in front of me, and said "i think you should give this a go dean, i think youll be good at it" and so i did, and i was. And that why i liked him, because he always pushed me to do something new. If i was good at something, instead of just keep having me do what i was good at, he'd throw something new my way. That, and i liked the whacky ties he used to wear, the one i remember most was the one that looked like a fish. Unfortunately i didn't get to finish the picture before the end of the lesson, and so put it away and eagerly waited for my next art lesson the next week to finish my picture. A lesson which never came.

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See, my stepdad had been adopted, by none other than the man that coached Newcastle United to victory in the 1969 fairs cup INSERT FAIRS CUP PICTURE