I am very proud to become president of the Old Theocsbrian society.
It is nearly fifty years since the school closed and it is remarkable that the society continues to exist and thrive though with inevitably reducing numbers.
I was born in 1955 on a farm on the sugar loaf near Abergavenny. My parents were tenant farmers from the Llanthony valley but in 1967 they purchased a freehold farm in Fiddington and we moved.
I had passed the eleven plus exam and spent the first year of my grammar school education at Chepstow. On transferring to Tewkesbury the big difference between the schools was that the Welsh boys played rugby during break times whereas the English played football. Aaaahh the seventies.
I look back with affection on my time at the grammar school as it was an important part of my life and I appreciate I was given a half decent education. I remember being terrified of George Brown, you could hear a pin drop when doc. Godman came in, old school teachers like Sidney Guy, and the new deputy head Bill Rennison.
Recently the boys of 66 have had a couple of reunions and you can recognize the boys even after fifty years and it has been fascinating to learn what they have all been up to.
I left school at 16 in 1971 and started as an articled clerk training with a local firm of chartered accountants, Waugh Haines Rigby. I was paid £8 per week. I recently met my old boss and bemoaned that he only paid me two thousand pounds for five years work to which he responded that he thought I had been overpaid.
In 1976 aged 20, I qualified and at the time I was the youngest chartered accountant in the country. I owe a lot of this to my grammar school education. I then had some post qualifying experience with accountancy firms in Stratford-on-Avon and Evesham.
In 1979 I joined a Cheltenham practice, Anderson Griffin, as a qualified accountant and progressed to manager, salaried partner, partner and eventually sole owner. I worked there until 2020 when two of my sons who had been working for me took the practice on.
I still live in the same house we moved to in 1967, have been married since 1985 and have three sons and three beautiful grandchildren. My hobbies are tinkering with my collection of classic cars and tractors and watching (Welsh) rugby. I also still play squash and my greatest achievement was winning the most amount of coaching/least amount of improvement award three years running.