Float Your Boat

Before going to school I remember writing naive poetry for the spontaneous pleasure of forming words. Unfortunately for me this instinctive need to write was crushed by my teacher's seemingly obsessive need to humiliate children who struggled with 'correctly' written words. At my tiny 1960’s English village school we adhered rigidly to a curriculum based on the three 'Rs' and my inability to distinguish characters required for 'reading', 'writing' and 'arithmetic' (a play-on-words that went completely over my head for most of my life) made my teacher's very angry. Being a sensitive child I deflected their years of calling me lazy and stupid by creating a protective alter-ego who played me like a character on a stage until leaving my secondary school, with no qualifications, at the age of fifteen. After working as a Chef, Airport loader, Builder's labourer, and any other job that allowed me to hide my 'shameful weakness', I decided to harness my alter-ego's deflecting humour and verbal skills to become a sales