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The previous month V.E. Day had been declared, and the war in Europe was over. However in the push by the forces across Germany they discovered the various concentration camps, Belsen, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz, in which millions of people died, mostly Jews who were put to death by various horrific acts of torture. The pictures in the newspapers, and on the Pathe News in the cinemas, were graphic in detail and were meant to shock, which they did. I still see the images before me of the emaciated people who survived as a reminder of man's inhumanity to man, and I vowed to myself that I would devote my energies in the future to frying to improve the lot of man in their relationship, and care and concern for others less fortunate than themselves. This was further strengthened when, after the horrific decimation of human life was exposed after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we again were shown the brutality the Japanese had shown towards their prisoners. These two events played a very important part in the shaping of my attitudes towards my fellow beings.

Life must go on, and I was a young energetic lad, sitting my 0 levels, an important stage in my career, and having all the emotional changes mentally and physically. Girls now played an important part in my life. Being in an all-boys' school, with a Head who considered girls the downfall of men, one had to be careful, and not to be seen by the staff on duty in Fareham, Hants. If caught talking to a girl there were no questions asked, you had the cane across your backside, this was a `bumming' My energies were spent avoiding being caught rather than on my school studies.

The Tennis Club was the social centre, and here we could legitimately meet and enjoy the company of the opposite sex. Socials, properly chaperoned, swimming, as we lived near the sea, dances, especially ballroom and the new American craze the jitterbug, and theatre trips to The Kings Theatre Portsmouth, enabled the sexes to meet.

I had become infatuated with classical music. I had been learning the piano for three years, and by sixteen was on to my grade 5 examination. I played in various concerts, and in those days sang, to raise money for any good cause. The highlight for the week was to listen to Doris Arnold in `These you have loved'. Visits to the theatre to hear Myra Hess, Moira Lympany, Eileen Joyce were an extra bonus. Post war travelling Opera was also available, Madame Butterfly, with Joan Hammond, being the first of many I saw.

I had one very close school friend, who has been in a monastery as a monk for years and I still see him. We were great cinema-goers, ardent admirers of Bette Davis, John Mills, Margaret Lockwood, and Vivien Leigh. `Brief Encounter' with background music of Rachmaninov, was all the rage in 1946. We celebrated both V.E. and V.J. holidays together, not in riotous parties, but in walking across the downs and putting the world to rights in our simple way.

Rationing was still around, but bananas came into the country for the first time for years. Queues were everywhere. I stood in one for an hour and a half, but it was worth it, and my mother made them last as long as she could. Food was getting more plentiful and my father was able to have a much more substantial lunch box to take to work. He still worked in the dockyard in Portsmouth, and this brought in overtime work, which allowed us to indulge in a few more luxuries. One of these being going away for more, and longer holidays, in particular to Norfolk the home of both parents. Travel was becoming easier for we working class people, but a civil airline had been opened at Heathrow on February 1st 1946, for the wealthy.
I passed my exams and went into the sixth form. I was involved in the production of a play, `The Case of the Frightened Lady', a thriller. I was bitten by the acting bug, and wanted to go on the stage. My parents hit the roof, I was to have a secure white collar job; so as not to upset them too much I chose teaching, and went to college in September 1946.

Labour under Clement Attlee was in power, the National Health Service, and Nationalised Banks had been established. The Nuremburg War Trials started to try the people responsible for all the concentration camp and other atrocities, Yugoslavia was established under Marshall Tito, and East Germany established as a separate Communist state, and Winston Churchill warned of an Iron Curtain. I was too busy in my own College world to take in all these momentous happenings.

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