Indigo Foxtrot…

A brief history of Dean. Born in Loughborough, England, in the autumn of 1965 in the house where my grandparents (on my fathers side) still live I remember little of my first 5 years. At age 5 my parents moved some 50 miles up the M1 to Worksop in Nottinghamshire where we lived until I was 7 years old.

What little I do remember of those years in Worksop revolves largely around watching the Banana Splits on Saturday morning television and waiting upstairs in the bedroom I shared with my brother looking out of the window waiting for my grandparents to arrive, this on the occasions when they drove up the M1 to visit us. I’m sure we must have spent hours up there willing them to arrive.

In summary then there is little to tell up to now. Seven years in which little memorable appears to have happened. All that changed though in 1973 when aged just 7 years I went to live in South Africa. At the time, as a child, I was blissfully unaware of the political hoohah surrounding South Africa back then. To me it was all just some big adventure although I’m sure I understood little of the implications of moving 6000 miles away in an age when frequent air travel wasn’t the everyday activity it is today.

One particularly vivid memory I have from the time running up to our departure to South Africa is the way my school seemed to really celebrate that fact that I was emigrating to some distant land to start a new life. It seemed that every lesson was exploring some aspect of either getting there or living there. There was even a special assembly with a little presentation from myself to explain to the school just where South Africa was and what my life would be like once I got there. I felt quite the celebrity I can tell you!

Our flight to South Africa on a Boeing 747 aircraft was my first time in the air and I remember it as a very, very long flight. In those days it was still quite common to stop and refuel on flights that are now, in modern aircraft, flown non-stop. Our flight set down in the middle of the night at a remote island somewhere off the coast of Africa. As the aircraft was refueled passengers spent the best part of two hours in a hot & humid terminal building with no air conditioning, not something I’d care to repeat!

Two significant things happened in my last year in South Africa - firstly, having completed my time at primary school I went to high school in Pretoria as a boarder at Pretoria Boys High School, one of the most prestigious schools in the country, and secondly, having left there I spent a while at an Afrikaans speaking high school where English was only spoken in, well, English lessons!

To be honest I was initially not happy as a boarder at PBHS because I’d never been on my own away from home before (I was 13 at the time of first going there). By my time of leaving though I’d made some good friends and I was very much enjoying myself. I’m now proud to be able to say I once attended that fine school.

But get used to it I did and I was soon taking it all in my stride. One thing didn’t change though - I was still enjoying my education and doing alright academically. Having been blessed with a good memory for facts & figures I’d never really had to work particularly hard at school but ‘O’ levels and then ‘A’ levels a few years later soon changed that.

For the first time in my life I was now having to work hard to get the grades I wanted but I knuckled down and got on with doing just that because if they were achieved I was off to university! The problem was though that I didn’t really know what i’d do when I got there. I was unaware of what was available and I had no real career in mind. Time to see the careers officer! Looking back I do sometimes wonder what might have been had I had some sense of direction back then, some real sense of destiny or driving ambition to enter one or other profession.

Instead it was suggested by the careers officer that I look to do a “broad science based” degree on the basis it would allow me to pursue subjects I enjoyed (mathematics and physics) while at the same time not limiting my options beyond graduation. So it was that I started Leeds University in September of 1984 as a Civil Engineering student. What was I letting myself in for?

My going in position was that university was an excuse for three years of partying and generally having a good time. I was fond of a beer or two (or more) and believe me when I say I certainly drank my fair share of beers, wines and spirits. But playing hard didn’t mean I didn’t work hard, although to be fair I could and should have done better! I graduated with a respectable class of degree but to this day I remain disappointed that due my my own lack of application I didn’t do a little bit better. But, no time to dwell on what is past and can’t be changed, it was objective achieved, so, graduating in the summer of 1987 I was now in the market to make some money - I needed to find myself a job!