I then sat the much criticised 11+ exams (since I suceeded at this, this was no trauma to me), and gained entry to my first choice school, King Edward VI, Camp Hill School for Boys in Kings Heath Birmingham. At that time, this was a direct grant grammer school, and I note has continued it's reputation for academic excellence to this day.
At grammer school, I was no sportsman, and felt not even a great scholar. My great achievements were to win the school natural history prize two years running, and to meet my future wife! I gained 9 O-level passes, and four A-levels, but inevitably, my best A-level was for General Studies (why can I never concentrate on the major subjects that I am supposed to study?) The most inspirational teacher at Grammer School was our Deputy Head, "Lefty" Wright, who took me for Biology, and also ran the Natural History club.
I then went to Aston University in Birmingham, where I spent two miserable years studying Ophthalmic Optics. I dropped out! If I can impart only one piece of advice to 18 year olds it is this: do not go straight to Higher education - take a gap year and live a little. You will get more from your studies on that basis!
Then, finding that I needed a career, I went back to Optics, and did vocational training as a Dispensing Optician I qualified in 1982, and immediately shifted my interests into the field of contact lenses, taking further training in this.
By this time, I was married to Jane Elizabeth Houghton, and had our first son, James Alexander Morris, a baby intent on subjecting his mother to intense sleep deprivation - not by being naughty or miserable, but by not seeming to need much sleep, a trait he has continued to this day (he is never happier than when he is working hard). Our other two sons, David John (nice peaceable baby - wake, feed, sleep) and Jonathan Paul came along in a very short time. We had moved to Southport, Lancashire by this time.
So far, so good, but there should be more to a person's life than work and family. I volunteered and was accepted and trained by The Samaritans. This increased my awareness of the pain of my fellow man, and I value the years I spent manning the phones for The Samaritans. This led me to persue my studies again, this time through the Open University, where I took Psychology courses, and was one of the first year of students to receive a BSc(hons) through them (the Open University had previously only awarded BA degrees, irrespective of the number of science courses taken).
