Better Late Than Never

Teachers come in for a lot of stick these days. Sometime rightly so and sometimes not.

However, I’ve been thinking today a lot about some of mine who inspired me to be interested in certain things, especially two primary school teachers, Mrs. Goodyear and Mr. Finney. Happily, we remember good teachers at least as much as we remember bad ones. This is just as well as I’m happy to go on record saying that my schooldays were often the most unhappy of my life.

Not that it was all bad. Not quite all. I remember enjoying the various school visits we did. I’m sure that my fascination with old buildings stems from a visit to the then-nascent Avoncroft Museum of Buildings at the age of about six. Birmingham's Aston Hall made another big impact, as did Harvington Hall, the first place I remember learning about religious persecution.

From Secondary school we had a very detailed visit to the Ironbridge Gorge Museums in about 1979, somewhere where, by a strange twist of fate, I’ve been working today.

It took 30 years but what we were taken to see and were shown that day in 1978 did – honestly! – come in useful this morning. Better late than never!