KBGS Old Boys' Forum

A place to discuss Keighley Boys' Grammar School. 


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KBGS Old Boys' Forum
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What do you want to be when you grow up?

Adults seem to want to ask children this question every generation. Do we ever know what we want to be when we grow up? Even now!
I do recall a time when I was at KBGS when we were given the chance to try to answer that question. I hope that others can confirm my memories and that it was not just a dream.
I recall that around 1961/2 (I think) an event was held at the school where a number of large national businesses set up stalls in the school and we were able to wander around and have a chat to those manning the stalls. For a number of years I had a small printed sheet that I'd been given by a fellow from A V Roe and Company (AVRO aero engineers) who had advised me to contact them when I left school.
Does anyone else remember this event?
And if you don't then - what did you want to be when you grew up? And did it happen?

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1958-65

Current location (optional) Leeds

Re: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Yes Shaun, I remember it well. The Careers Fair. I remember visiting the journalism stall (somebody from the Keighley News), and the Probation Service. Neither career floated my boat, but I later drifted into Social Work in Scotland and, as a generic social worker, wound up carrying Probation cases amongst others.


Re: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Firstly, I left school in 1958.

Earlier, after noticing guys up telegraph poles, I thought it looked interesting. I eventually ended up as architectural then finally, a landscape draughtsman.

Being an avid reader, I certainly missed my way. No acorns to massive oaks here.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1953-58

Current location (optional) Brighouse

Re: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Thank you Allan. Yes, the Careers Fair it was.
As far as what I wanted to be when I grew up - my first recollection is of when I was six or so. My father's influence when he talked about WW2 had led me to have become a confirmed pacifist already and I had decided that I could't be conscripted at age 18. I had also heard that vicars were exempt from conscription and so I wanted to be a vicar (get back up off the floor Allan). Then conscription was ended so my ambitions changed. In my early teens I wanted to become an aero engineer. That was knocked on the head because I was pretty rubbish at physics. By the time I was 21 I wanted to work in Operational Research and, sure enough, I got there in a specialist steel producing company. Didn't last particularly long because steel production in this country went down the pan to a large extent, and I moved on.
Later my ambition was to retire.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1958-65

Current location (optional) Leeds

Re: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Things were a wee bit disorganised when I first started my time at KBGS, i Indeed WW2 still raged on in the Far East. I certainly do not ever recall anyone mentioning careers. I may be wrong, but I doubt it, We never experienced anything like a careers convention in the immediate post war era. My father was a builder, a stone mason by trade, at the time I attended KBGS he was a General Foreman fora large construction company in Leeds. He was in charge of several big jobs in the Keighley area and occasionally I would visit him on site at dinner ( lunch) time for a corned beef sandwich and a pot of strong tea. Sometimes my dad would take me with him to work on a Saturday morning and I became quite familiar as to how a biggish construction job was run. I also met architects supervising the job and I thought that being an architect would not be a bad job. So that was the career I set my heart on. I recall that the architects supervising most of the jobs my dad worked on was a Leeds based firm - Ledgard, Kitchen, Parish and Pyman. Mr. Pyman told my dad that if I matriculated, he would take me on as a student. So that became my raison d’etre - to get a good school certificate then to become an architect. In the summer of 1950 I achieved part one of this goal and one Saturday morning I set off with my dad to LKP & P office in Leeds for an interview. I was shown round the big office where I would be working, shown my desk and introduced to the other pupils employed there. Then my dad was invited into Mr Pymans office from which he emerged about five minutes later with a red face. “Cum on lad”. We marched out of the office, down the stairs and on to the bus back to Keighley. Only then did I pluck up courage to enquire when I would be starting work. “Tha doesn’t” he replied. Mr. Pyman had told my dad that an annual premium would have to be paid during my pupil age - an amount my dad could not afford. So my dreams of becoming an architect bit the dust there and then. Instead I returned to school for a term in the sixth form before being appointed Pupil/Clerk Sanitary Inspector with a local authority. No premium had to be paid there. I was paid a salary of £135 pa. things didn’t turn out too badly though. I retired in 1994 as Director of Community Services with an authority down in Cambridgeshire.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1945 - 50

Current location (optional) Norfolk

Re: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Never in any doubt from a early age that I wanted to be a farmer . My mother was a farmers daughter from Thirsk area .Totally a country girl she passed on her knowledge and enthusiasm for farm life to her family .I seem to have taken up the challenge . My father too was of farming stock and he retained his love of the land too . We were lucky in the wear years that we were able to have the summer holidays on our uncles farm which made me even more determined to get into agriculture somehow .The big break came when Dad retired and we moved as a family to a Leicestershire village . I started on a dairy farm on 25 shillings a week
I was an avid reader and subscribed to a lot of farm journals and realised I needed to get to an Agricultural Institute or College .
I had managed a fairish school certificate . No careers advise at school so I wrote to my old headmaster at the Grammar I last attended and got a reference . Then applied to study Poultry Husbandry at Nottingham University .
Since then I got stuck in and with luck and some bloody hard work moved from Six acres and 94 hens to 100000 head and 4 farms with 750 acres .

That was in 1982 .We then had a big upheaval when the National Coal Board tried to sink mines in the Vale of Belvoir . We fought it but eventually decided to pack it in and moved out to Tasmania bringing all the gear I could plus the family .
I then started all over again . With the help of my youngest we began producing vegetables but soon moved to restart in poultry . This time in chicken production. My eldest took on the job of breeder and hatchery on his farm (60 miles along the coast ) we had about 1500 acres then .
I worked till I was 80 and had by then passed on the farm to my son.

The chicken factory has now been sold and a new venture is in the early stages . A vineyard and wedding venue . I am now 87 and am the grass keeper on the vineyard with 25 km of grass tracks between the vines to keep trimmed . The grass will soon be growing again so am looking forward to the spring and summer.

None of the above would have happened without the backing of my wonderful wife Mary . She had always said as a girl she would not marry a poultry farmer.. Good job she changed her mind .

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 43-46

Current location (optional) Tasmania

Re: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Interesting Mike. I have frequently wondered about the little lad who was at KBGS a year or so before me. Now I have a better idea.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1945-50

Current location (optional) Norfolk

Re: What do you want to be when you grow up?

These posts from Mike and Denis are wonderful.
It's a pity that so few people now use this site.
It would have been great to see similar posts from lots of ex-KBGS folk.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1958-65

Current location (optional) Leeds

Re: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Thanks for the comment Shaun. I enjoyed reading Denis” contribution . After some hesitation I thought “ well why not have ago “. It might be of interest to someone and I have never put anything like this out public before . Been an interesting life but I can hardly believe it has happened sometimes .
65th wedding anniversary coming up in a months time and already got a card from her majesty !

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 43-46

Current location (optional) Tasmania

Re: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Wonderful? Well that’s how you rate my contribution. Thankyou. But that’s how it was. You might e interested in a sort of follow up to my initial desire to become an architect, which I am, in some ways, still sad that the ambition failed.
Harry Harpin was my hero at KBGS. He was the one that fuelled my interest in things arty. I recounted several years ago that in mid life I began to paint and sketch and I contacted Harry, then a Priest in Italy, actually in Assisi. He remembered me and we held a brief exchange of correspondence because sadly he died shortly after I contacted him. Anyway, my interest in painting continues and for many years and certainly since my retirement over quarter of a century ago, it has been my main occupation. I have painted all over the world (but not now I’m afraid. My forreys are confined to the Uk). Anyway, to get to the point of this note, I’d been on a sketching trip to Williamsburg in Virginia and I was travelling to New York on a very slow train. It was an eight hour trip. To kill a bit of time, I’d taken out my sketch book and I had it laid out on the table, glancing through what I’d recorded in Williamsburg, making a few notes etc.. I became conscious that I was bing watched and I looked round and saw a big chap standing behind me looking over m shoulder.h. He took a step back, apologised and confessed that he’d been looking at my’pictorial journal’. He asked if I was an architect to which I replied in the negative. He then twigged that I was not an American (West Yorkshire accent!) , he pulled out his wallet, produced his card which informed me that he was the Dean of Architecture and Design at Howard University, Washington DC and asked me if I would accept an invitation to speak to his architectural students and show them my sketch books. “They spend all their time on computers and never look at things the way you do..”. I was flattered, but wasn’t going to Washington. I was going on to Boston from where he offered to fly me back to Washington. I never did get there, but by Jove, those few minutes gave me a real lift. That was fifteen years ago and we still correspond. And I think that is the nearest I ever came to becoming an architect.
Oh, and because of that experience I had on the Williamsburg/New York train, I used his phrase ‘Pictorial Journals’ to describe my sketch books.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1945 - 50

Current location (optional) Norfolk

Re: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Great stories! And yes, Shaun, it’s a great pity so few people visit here to read them.

Re: What do you want to be when you grow up?

HAPPY..

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1960-1965

Current location (optional) bradford

Re: What do you want to be when you grow up?

" l thoroughly object to getting old. If you could make me 16 again, I'd give you all I've got and all I'll ever have." Felix Dennis.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 55/60

Current location (optional) Harrogate

Ageing

Will you still love me when I get old, she said.

Get 'old and I'll tell you.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1953-58

Current location (optional) Brighouse