I said rather a lot last blog about the education I didn't get. I'd like to redress the balance by saying something about the education I did get.

I was taken out of mainstream school at the age of 8. In the un-up to this, I was being visited at school by Very Clever People from the education department of the council and undergoing an IQ test approximately every week. They kept on telling me how they were going to make sure I got the education that was going to allow me to make the best of my abilities, and how my behavioural problems (read "omnipotence and serious questioning of authority") were entirely down to the fact that I was not being challenged enough at school. They would make sure I went somewhere where there was people like me. Remember that - where there was people like me.

I first of all went into hospital - not school - for, em, assessment. More IQ tests. Lessons during the day, going to bed in a ward at night. People with nurses uniforms. One of the girls in the ward - a girl by the name of Gwen - was there because she was anorexic. A couple of orhpans, one lad who's parents were circus performers (a clown and a trapezist). Several very tough 'urchin' types.

One thing I remember as particularly striking was that the doors had a type of lock I had never seen before. Yale locks. On both sides of the door. In other words, it was impossible to get through a door, from either side, without a key. I still don't know if this was to stop us getting out of our own free will, or if it was to stop people taking us out - child protection and all that.

I went from there to a Barnardos school. More orphans and urchins. Lessons were all on site, with proper outside teachers, and then we were handed over to the residential staff for care. We got away with murder - we soon realised that the staff were not allowed to dispense the kind of short, sharp corporal punishment that you would get from your Ma or Da if you gave them too much lip. We all knew that you could curse and swear and totally get away with it. This is a pretty cool thing for a nine-year-old to play with.

I started at Barnardos on 9 December 1980. I remember it, because there was this thing in the news that everybody was talking about - somebody called John Lennon (a singer or something) had been shot.

I made brillant friends there. A young lad by the name of Ricky - an orphan - who was partially Down's Syndrome and whom I will say more about in the future. Michael Gray - another orphan - cheeky as a monkey's arse. Urchins. Misfits. The flotsam and jetsam of life. Hearts of gold - some of the warmest people I have ever met. Kids who had nothing, but who would share it with you. Kids coming back from weekends home black and blue. Abused kids. Starved kids. Abandoned kids. My friends and playmates.

I sat some exam or other and won a scholarship to some really posh fee paying school in Cumbria. I made it known to everybody that I wasn't going - I wanted to stay in the environment I had been in for (what was by now) several years. Nobody listened. Well, actually, they did - then told me point blank that I had no choice in the matter. They told me that I would be beside people of my own ability. That it would be good for me.

I hated the fee-paying school. People of my own ability? I met a couple, but the vast majority of them were just rich. The two are not the same thing, whatever you are brought up to believe. Intelligence does not go hand in hand with money - in either direction. One never guarantees the other.

I saw a sharp contrast to Barnardos. I saw well-to-do kids who wanted for nothing, yet still stealing from eachother and being sneaky. I saw selfishness on a scale that I could not comprehend. I saw bullying to appalling degrees. I saw some of this at Barnardos, but nowhere near as much. It really made me think about what it is that "salt of the eart" actually meant - and I spent a long time associating financial success with the need to behave - and treat people - in that way. Perhaps that's why I've stayed relatively poor - at least I know I haven't had to become like that in order to get ahead.

Promptly getting expelled from fee-paying school, I ended up in a place called Lendrick Muir - near Perth in Scotland. It was pretty much like my first Barnardos school - similar population and setup - and I really did enjoy it most of the time. Unlike my first Barnardos school, the residential staff were also the academic teachers. This meant that you often had weird situations like the guy teaching you English this morning was the guy who you were trading punches with last night because you weren't settling down and going to bed.

To some of the staff, it was a cushy teaching job - small classes - with this really annoying have-to-look-after-the-kids-duty in the evening. To others, it was a brilliant get-to-work-with-these-kids deal, with some annoying teaching duties tagged on to it.

Anyway, there was this great guy called Ron. As well as the residential stuff, he also taught Physics and Chemistry. In addition, he found time to be one of the top five rock climbers in the UK. An awful lot of physics lessons became "fieldwork" - which basically consisted of learning how pulleys worked by climbing up some random cliff in Tayside.

For my third year chemistry exam, he set me a task - I remember it well:

• using suitable ingredients, manufacture 1kg of gunpowder

which I obviously did. 1kg of black powder was duly produced.

My third year physics exam, the following day, consisted of the questions:

1. Calculate the explosive force required to blow through a standard telegraph pole;
   
   
2. Given the explosive force of gunpower in a sealed container is X joules per kg, calculate the amount of gunpower required to blow through a telegraph pole;
   
   
3. Using the anount of gunpowder calculated in (2), blow through a standard telegraph pole

Really. He taught me how to encase the gunpowder in a sealed container (several tobacco tins in this instance) to increase the explosive force - otherwise it's just a fizzle. A sealed tobacco tin full of gunpowder gives a really neat BANG! We then located a telegraph pole in the school grounds and he proceeded to, em, adjudicate in the process of me blowing it up.

I failed to topple the telegraph pole, but it was still a great exam. Come November 5th, I went back with an axe and finished the job - the telegraph pole became the centre pole for the largest bonfire I had ever seen.

"Craft" (or woodwork / metalwork) was completely mental. One of the guys in my class made a real working crossbow. Another one made a canoe out of the aluminim panels from an old caravan. A guy made a working scooter (complete with engine) out of old metal-frame hospital beds and the remains of a Honda C90. If we needed a screwdriver, we would use power grinders to file down and flatten the end of a nail. We had arc welders, and circular saws, with no goggles or safety equipment (or supervision) in sight. The HSE would have had an absolute fit.

We learned to drive cars - on a golf course. In Winter, we'd tie ropes to the back of the car (in said golf course) and one of us would drive the car whilst a half-dozen of us would ski behind it - water ski-ing style. People broke arms and legs, and we'd be back doing it the following day.

My point is a simple one. No degree, or combinations of degrees, could have taught me how to blow up a telegraph pole - nor given me a practical examination in doing so. I would never have learned the subtleties of ski-ing being towed by a car doing 50mph with a 13-year-old at the wheel.

I met people who really had had the odds stacked against them. The attitude of most of the teachers was that most of us were going to come to naught, but they would make damn well sure that we could at least come to something in the time we were there. They bent, mutated and broke all the rules that they could to ensure that every one of us could feel part of something, to find something that we were good at and enjoyed, and - above all - to teach us that life could be fun, regardless of what it threw at you.

I think they failed me though. To this day, I still don't know how much home-made gunpower I would need to blow up a telegraph pole.

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