daytripper
Born early on United Nations day 1950, I was hurled into a world of hope,
rationing and the new N.H.S.
My mother had come from Wales to Birmingham, to find work, having being made redundant from making bombs, as a supervisor in a munitions factory.
My father had spent his war, making the tools and jigs, for the production of Spitfires and Hurricanes.
They got married in the peace and blizzard of winter 1946, at Wrexham cathedral and I was a planned child.
My formative years where spent, in a large Victorian town house, next to the park in Small Heath. With a posy of thespians, who boarded upstairs, in the attic and in 1958 we moved to Sutton Coldfield.
Fathers business was doing well and he was one of the many, who turned wartime into peacetime production. He was the last of the old style managers. Having left school at 14 and learnt his tool making skills, at night class.
My grandfather who had started making pen nibs, in the back bedroom, handed the business over to his sons, after the war.
Sutton was a revelation for me. The trees weren't covered in soot and butterflies flew to the sound, of the farmers, Coventry Climax tractor.
The local school, Leyhill, was a state of the art primary and though more than halfway up the top stream, I managed to fail my 11 plus and was sent to a prep school, in Wales.
I quickly rose to the top and was granted a place, at a public school in Colwyn Bay.
It did not suit me and so with my parents blessing, I went to the local Secondary Modern in Sutton and flourished.
Leaving in 1967 with a toolbox of exams, I went on to be an apprentice, with a Birmingham industrial photographers.
I hit the road in 1969 and began squatting and hitching all over the UK. I soon got into the underground thing and managed to raise a good sum, for the newly created "Release", at the Bath and West showground, having got under the fence, with no money.
From there I went to Worthing for Phun city and after that was over, numerous other large and small outdoor festivals, including the Isle of Wight with Jimmy Hendrix.
Having been in Paris during the students revolt some time earlier, freedom and change were my mantras.
The idea was to work at the festivals in summer and squat in the cities during the winter. This culminated at Worthy farm in 1970.
Seeing Mr. Farmer hadn't much of a clue what to do, I had a word with him and using my underground contacts in London (notably a kind sister, on a stall at Kensington market) went to see Andrew Kerr and stayed the night at his place.
The next day we went down to the farm and the 1971, Glastonbury free festival, was created.
I came back to the farm in 1971 to help build the festival and then headed up to Glasgow.
It was here after a spell in London, that I ran out of steam and headed back to my family only to get sectioned to the local bin, where I was forcibly injected, drugged up to the hilt and plugged into the mains 9 times.
Brain damaged and labelled, I was made to work for 6mths for pocket money and then thrown out without any support. I know how those kids that make cheap shoes feel like!
The workhouse asylum is closed, though bits of it hang on like rotting cloth, around a corpse.
Warehousing the poor is a nice little earner in this part of the world, from grotty care homes, with pissed owners, half dead charges and cheap of the books labour, they continue were the workhouse and asylum left of, with the help of the local quacks.
If you join the dots, you are left with a human rights crime. Repeated in every parish in the land.
Fortunately and down to the work many of us have done over the years, as people with abilities.
We now have a Disability Discrimination Act, that although not perfect, gives us for the first time, a tool in which to find justice and bring the changes needed. So that we can participate as full citizens.
To this end I was a founder member of "Survivors Speak Out", described in the Grunadiad, "as a blueprint for the future".
What with C.N.D., green and equality issues, G.C.H.Q., South Africa, disability rights and many more, their is much one can do, even in a bed-sit on benefit.
It has taken me decades to crawl back from the damage done to me at Highcroft, but in the early eighties I began to write poetry and with my photographic skills, have produced the webs you can see.
I am now married to Lisa and have a good life.
With my small garden and my art, I have more than enough, to keep me occupied and happy.
Thanks for taking the trouble, to journey to my web.
Image. A fine Kodak snap by my father, at Aunt Jean and Uncle Selwyn's wedding, Cymau near Wrexham early 1960's.
I'm the lad in the green tie, standing, front left.