Here is a picture of my mum, dad and me (sitting down) and my English teacher, Mr TB Johnson, and his wife, in Bermuda at the last night party of our stay at our beachside hotel during which we played bingo. The story is that my English teacher one day (during 2nd year at secondary school) asked
us all to write an essay on the subject of "Why we would like to visit America". He chose to enter my essay, which began "I would like to visit America to see whether it is as bad as it is made out to be", into a national essay competition, putting in £1 of his own money as the entry fee. It won,
in my age category, which meant I got to go and get a silver cup from the then Prince of Wales at St James's Palace and I also won for me and my family and my English teacher and his wife (he having subbed the £1 entry fee) a trip on the QE2 to New York followed by 5 days in Bermuda. Unfortunately
however, just before we were due to sail, there was a fire on the QE2 which meant we never made it to New York but instead flew directly to Bermuda on a Jumbo Jet that was mainly full of lucky winners at Bingo at Mecca Ballrooms. The essay competition had been sponsored by Eric Morley, boss of Mecca
and founder of Miss World, and Billy Butlin of Butlin's Holiday camps, hence it was that I travelled to Bermuda with a load of serious bingo players so it was quite funny that on the final night party - with bingo obviously - I got to win the first line at my first ever bingo session. So my luck was
well and truly in. But maybe the luckiest thing of all was that I had Mr TB Johnson as my English teacher as he encouraged me to take creative writing seriously and to have fun with it as well. Next month I'll be tutoring an
@arvonfoundation.bsky.social masterclass on writing non-fiction for a
general audience aimed at people from an academic background wanting to find a place for creativity in their writing. So as I'm starting to plan the session I'm thinking back to my English teacher and the opportunity he gave me all those years ago.
www.arvon.org/writing-cour...
Masterclass: from Academic to General Non-Fiction | Writing that connects | Arvon
If you have an academic background, how do you find a place for creativity in your writing? Academics often capture fascinating stories in their research and archival work, but they don’t necessarily ...
The irony with the winning essay of course is that I never did get to go to America and it was only several years later, as an undergrad student, that I travelled round America on a greyhound bus and found out whether it really was as bad as it was made out to be.
