One Chance (10 page)

The following year, the choir went to the beautiful Cornish resort of St. Ives, which has long been popular with artists, and for good reason. The scenery is stunning, and St. Ives has to be one of the best places in the world for a sunset. The tour was the first that my younger brother, Tony, participated in. On the first night, after a quick rehearsal, it was time to go to bed. The piano in the hall, which had seen better days and was horrendously out of tune, was on top of Tony's sleeping bag. Somehow it had been pushed there after our first rehearsal in the hall.

We tried to push it off, to no avail—or so we thought! Tony gave his sleeping bag a big haul and to his horror, the piano came away and went crashing to the floor with an almighty bang. Tony was shocked and upset, thinking he was going to get into trouble. But when Mr. Weaver walked in, he became red faced with laughter. As it turned out, the piano's fall did it a lot of good. It played much closer to being in tune, so perhaps Tony had done it a favour.

Our tour to North Wales was also a memorable one. We spent time in the town of Llandudno, again sleeping on the floor of the
parish church. Supervision was fairly relaxed, and a huge group of us were walking along the Llandudno seafront singing at the top of our voices. It must have been strange to those in the hotels and guest houses to hear us singing
Godspell
as we strolled along. We had pooled our chip money, and one of the sixth formers went to get some beer. It wasn't exactly rock and roll; we didn't drink more than a can each, and were careful to dispose of our empties in the bin. Then we went back to singing “Day by Day” at full volume.

The tours were a rare experience for me. On tour I was surrounded by people I seemed to belong with. They didn't all like me, but at least they didn't all hate me. I could talk, laugh, and joke in this company. The choir and the tours in particular were the only times this happened.

We visited many other wonderful places on tour, including Oban on the west coast of Scotland. From there we went on to sing in the tranquil abbey on the island of Iona, in the Inner Hebrides. With its white sands, Iona was like a Caribbean desert island, if it weren't for the brisk cold April wind. On this trip our pound bought us battered haggis and chips, something I had every night. It was here in Scotland that I first developed a love of taking scenic photographs. There was something special about the land.

The last trip I went on with the choir was to the Lake District. Here we stayed not on floors in sleeping bags, but in the youth hostel in Hawkshead. My passion for hill walking started in earnest here as well as my love of the area. I climbed the Old Man of Coniston in pretty terrible conditions, but I knew how to read a map and the clouds parted on the way up. It was inspiring
and tiring all at once. My calves were on fire from walking quickly, but the climb was worth it. The Lake District is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and I have been visiting there for over fifteen years. The stillness of the area, and the views of the lakes and valleys, gave me some peace with myself, and helped me to like my own company.

Being on tour was infectious and good for my soul. We always got plenty of fresh air, and I loved the walks we went on. With my compact 35 mm camera I could capture a moment in time. Not only that, but I could capture a favourite view. That view can be the same place, but on a different day it will always be different. Photography has taught me that perspective changes everything. The same view can change in so many ways—just like life.

I sometimes think that the only reason I survived school was the choir. Not only did it mean I was able to avoid the bullies on Wednesday lunchtimes and Friday evenings, but it gave me a sense of belonging that I didn't have anywhere else. The other children in the choir seemed to put up with me without too many issues, perhaps because they weren't the most popular kids, either. I always found that when I was singing, all my problems melted away and I lost myself in the music. Whenever I sang I was appreciated, except in the assembly hall at school, where even fellow members of the school choir kept quiet when I was picked on.

Overall, I seemed to be welcomed when I sang. It was the only time that I truly believed I belonged. I couldn't put my finger on why I felt this way, but I suspected that if I understood
the mystery of how singing made me feel, it would disappear. Singing came naturally to me and was something I didn't have to think about. It was the one good thing that stayed constant in my life at this time. My voice was my friend, and at times I felt as though it was my only one. Singing was the only thing I did that seemed to have universal appeal. The more I sang, the more I wanted to sing professionally. It was my life's dream, but I didn't know how to achieve it, especially when my exam results didn't go my way.

The fifth year at Redcliffe was when academics got serious. As I was in the top stream, this meant I was expected to do mostly GCE (general certificate of education) O-levels. Not all the teachers had complete faith in me, however; although I had improved, I still wasn't putting in the amount of effort they thought I should. As a consequence, I was told that for German I would be sitting the lower-standard CSE (certificate of secondary education) examination, unless I wanted to pay for the O-level examination myself.

I used my newspaper round to pay for the private sitting of the German O-level, as I felt confident that I could prove the teachers wrong. And prove them wrong I did. I passed my O-level German, which left me with a feeling of satisfaction. My other results were mixed: I did well at religious studies and passed both history and English literature; but I sat my English language early and did less well than expected. I also only got a mediocre CSE grade 3 in both mathematics and physics. As I mentioned earlier, at one point I'd considered becoming an artificer, but now an engineering career was not possible: in the UK, certain grades were needed to train for some professions.

My biggest disappointment, however, was my music O-level. I did okay on the basic theory, but struggled a little at the advanced level. For all my love of music, I lacked compositional skills. In fact, my compositions were truly terrible. Not only that, but I was injured when it came to performing them. I'd lost my temper with a boy at school who was hitting me, and thumped him; but I was so unused to actually hitting back that I'd kept my thumb inside my fist and broke my thumb. I am right handed, but could only use my left hand—with predictable results.

In the end, I got an A for performance, recording “The Heavens Are Telling” from
The Creation
by Joseph Haydn. I sang all four parts: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. My voice had changed, but it hadn't broken in the usual sense. My compositional skills (or rather the lack of them) held me back though, so that my final grade was a lowly E (the lowest grade you could get without failing). I was very disappointed, as was Mr. Weaver. He felt that I could have done better on the theory part of the exam, although he did agree with my view that I wasn't a composer.

I felt at the time that failing my music O-level was a big stumbling block to becoming a professional singer. It meant that I couldn't study music at A-level, and to my naïve eyes, I thought that was the only route to having a singing career. I also worried whether I was cut out to sing professionally, anyway. To open myself up to perform professionally would be to risk criticism, and I wasn't sure how I might take that. I wasn't confident that I was strong enough to put myself in the firing line of such scrutiny. My parents were very supportive, but I never raised with them the idea of singing professionally. I had come to the conclusion that my singing was mine, and mine alone.

I went back to performing at local competitions, gaining success at the Bristol Eisteddfod, and winning the Musical Theatre and Gilbert and Sullivan classes, performing “Maria” from Leonard Bernstein's
West Side Story
and “Free from His Fetters Grim” from
Yeoman of the Guard
. These wins were very satisfying because, as a treble, I had never won a class at Bristol Eisteddfod. Despite that, I was still nervous about criticism, and I dreaded being told I was not good enough at the one thing I thought I was any use at.

Rather than considering it a career option, I decided to continue my singing as a hobby. I didn't think I would ever sing full time as a profession. I wasn't sad or even disappointed with this conclusion. It just felt inevitable. Singing was my private consolation for what I had gone through. I didn't want to share it more than I was comfortable with. It was mine and no one else's. In terms of a vocation, I set my sights on other things.

Although I had only got an E in music, I had done sufficiently well overall to proceed to sixth form. I chose to take the more advanced A-levels in religious studies and history, and the new GCSE (general certificate of secondary education) exam in American studies. Religious studies and history were both very strong subjects for me. For a while I thought about being a vicar again, just like I had at the age of seven. But choosing it just because I could sing as part of the job wasn't the right motivation. Being a vicar was a vocation, not a job, and so I ruled this out.

All my subjects required plenty of reading, which suited me down to the ground. On top of which, there were only two of us in the religious studies class in my year, so we got very good
one-on-one attention. The standard of my work was generally quite high, especially in the first year. I found the study of American history and culture fascinating, including studying the Amish, looking at the root causes of the War of Independence, and how the Boston Tea Party had been an important precursor for the troubles ahead.

I did well in the end-of-year mock A-level exams, gaining two C's. Now came the time to think about my university choices. I chose Newcastle, Nottingham, and Exeter universities as my three preferred places, and while Exeter declined me, I got interviews at Nottingham and Newcastle and gained offers from both. I would need to perform at my best to gain the place I wanted.

Unfortunately, the disorganization that had dogged my school career caught up with me like it had before. I started to trail behind with work and do more and more of it last minute. Part of that was because I was doing some Gilbert and Sullivan singing with a company called Bristol Catholic Players in Northern Bristol, and this was taking up more and more of my time. I had been introduced to the company by someone in church. I was only in the chorus, but I was often asked to substitute for soloists. As my A-levels approached, my first production was looming in front of me. The more I sang, the more my grades diminished.

This did not please certain people in the school, and my situation wasn't helped by the fact that I had taken on a part-time job as a shelf stacker in Waitrose, which ate up yet more of my time. The teacher responsible for exams put me under pressure to ensure that I was doing sufficient work, but I got support from my subject teachers. They were used to how I worked, and were
still confident that I could achieve my target grades if I applied myself a little better.

Everything changed, however, on the opening night of
HMS Pinafore
.

It happened on my way up to Westbury Park for the performance. I had taken one bus to Eastville Tesco and needed to get another bus from there to Henleaze; from there I could walk to Newmann Hall, the performance venue. Seeing my next bus on the opposite side of the road, I crossed rather clumsily in front of the bus I had just alighted from.

Then everything went black.

I came around to find a crowd surrounding me. Bemused, I tried to get up.

“I have to get to Henleaze,” I said weakly. “I have to be on stage at seven thirty.”

“You're going nowhere until the ambulance gets here, young man,” came a concerned voice.

The person talking to me was the man who had hit me in his car. He was a doctor who lived in Fishponds, and had been about to do his shopping. The way I had crossed the road was pretty careless: I'd had no chance of seeing the car that was coming round the bus. I was taken to Frenchay, a hospital I was very familiar with. On being unloaded from the ambulance, I was asked to produce a urine sample. I hadn't yet had an X-ray, and I hobbled to the patients' toilet and had to run all the taps to try and get myself to wee. It took ages. I must have looked quite a sight in my hospital gown, hobbling around with a partially full plastic urine bottle.

When the results had been examined, I was told that I was to be admitted to ward thirteen. The doctors were concerned about
my kidneys, and needed to X-ray me the following day. This they did, but not before injecting a dye into my system that would highlight my kidneys to check for damage. It had a horrible taste and smell, but I wasn't allowed to drink any liquids, which meant that I couldn't get rid of the unpleasant taste. It was revolting, and stayed with me all day.

The news wasn't good. The doctors found that not only were my kidneys badly bruised, but also that I had a hairline fracture to my lower fourth vertebrae. This meant I had to stay in ward thirteen for another week, and that I would have restricted movement for some time after. This was the last news I needed—not only was I meant to be singing, but my A-level exams were only three weeks away.

I didn't yet know the exact date of my exams. I explained the situation to the ward sister, who was kindly if a bit of a battle axe. She said that if my school let them know exactly when the exams were, I could sit the exams in the hospital school, as it was an accredited site. My parents contacted the school, but heard nothing back.