There have been many people in my life who have had an important influence on me and I thought that I would try to recall these people.   Don’t panic, I’m not going to talk about them all in one post.    I will pick one and talk about them.   If they are still alive I will use pseudonyms for them.   Tonight I am going to tell you about a remarkable man called Mr. Jones (not a pseudonym).

When I was 11 years old I went to Secondary School.    It wasn’t a school for intellectual children, but in Junior School I wasn’t a very bright pupil!   It was an inner city school with many of the problems of today’s inner city schools.   Yes as long as a 49 years ago schools had problems with truancy, bullying, literacy, numeracy, appalling behaviour etc.   What we didn’t have was clever people doing surveys and communicating their results to local and central government.   We just got on with it.   (I am not saying that it was a good attitude, but just that was how it was).

The teachers worked very hard with us, but we were not very co-operative!!!!   When we reached the age of 14 we had to choose which examination subjects we were going to study.    One of the subjects I decided to study was English literature, not because I was really interested in English literature.   But apart from art, I was already bad at every subject.    I had not studied English literature, so I figured that I might as well try that, ‘cause I couldn’t be any worse at that.     Our teacher was a Welshman called Mr. Jones.   He was short and fat (one of his nicknames was roly-poly).   His face was very round and he had a full grey beard.   The beard usually had crumbs of food in.   I don’t think he had good teeth (but I may be mis-remembering that).   His clothes were usually baggy corduroy trousers and a long cardigan that had pockets.   As he walked around he stuffed his hands in the pockets, so the cardigan was longer in the front because the weight of his hands pulled the garment out of shape.   At official school functions, such as parents evenings he wore a sort, but he still looked crumpled and slightly food spattered.   On his feet he always wore sandals with no socks.    He even wore his sandals with his suit.   As a teacher in the sort of school I went to he was very much a figure that was laughed at by the pupils.   I am sad to say that at 14 years old I found him as funny as the rest of my colleagues did.   Poor Mr. Jones, he always looked sad.

The literature we studied was Romeo and Juliet, the poems of Alfred, Lord Tenyson and a novel by Thomas Hardy.   When this Welshman started to talk about the books he had such an enthusiasm that the class of delinquents caught his enthusiasm and found ourselves reciting poetry, discussing critically different types of poetry, analysing the novels of Thomas Hardy.    And at every lesson we found ourselves acting out the stories.   The English Literature Class was always the last one out at the end of the lesson, no one played truant (we never even thought about it).   But the most amazing thing Mr. Jones did was that he treated us not as group of naughty children, but as individuals who were young adults.   He never judged us, even though some of us behaved very badly in other classes.   Mr. Jones also helped us realise that each one of was allowed to have ambitions and that even though the school we were attending was the worst school in the area we still had the potential to achieve our ambitions.   He encouraged those of us who wanted to really move forward in our lives because he believed we deserved and were worth a better future.

Mr. Jones gave me a life long love of books, reading, and theatre.    He also taught me that I could achieve good things in my life, and never to give up trying to achieve my ambitions.

I think he was a very remarkable man and I am lucky that he came into my life when I was open to his influences.

It has been 45 years since I last saw him and he’s probably dead by now, but I don’t think I ever thanked him properly for what he did for me.   That's my shame!